War of the Worlds: because nothing's sacred anymore

NOTE: This is the single oldest article on the site. It is shitty. Thank you. -Fenris

Behold, Spielberg's latest creation: a reenactment of H.G. Well's War of the Worlds, adapted to present day. The previews looked good (trailers are ALWAYS better than the movies they advertise. Why?) and the effects looked better; perhaps even Oscar-worthy (the Oscars are getting more predictable by the year. Of COURSE Jamie Foxx was gonna win something.) But otherwise, Spielberg coulda done waaaaaay better.

The first thing that popped into my head when I saw this was this: for a bunch of aliens that were apparently advanced enough to fly across the galaxy billions of years before humans could pick their noses with opposable thumbs, they sure were friggin' stupid. I mean, really, did they plan on leaving those tripod thingies underground for billions of years without anyone noticing, tampering with, or damaging them?

Fast forward a bajillion years. The smarmy narrator guy talks about how the aliens don't like the humans overpopulating and such. Therefore, to blow away the freakishly vast population, they use their mondo-advanced tripods to pick them off one at a time. Monuments to effiency.

As if dumb aliens weren't enough, there was the acting. I get this knot in my stomach everytime I see Tom Cruise on a big screen. He always raises his upper lip whenever he's trying to look surprised, like he's sniffing out the other actors with his Jacobson's organ, similar to the way pit vipers sniff out their prey from a distance. Are they related?

Just about every Tom Cruise movie I've seen, he's always come off to me as just plain...pompous. That's not just any sneer he's giving the camera: that's a rich-guy-with-shitty-acting-skills-soon-to-get-a-fat-paycheck sneer.

Dakota Fanning was marginally less gut-wrenching. She's a kid, I'll give her a little grace (not because I like children.) Let's just blame the screenwright for making most of her lines some variation of "Aaaagh! Eeeek! Yaaaaah!"

Ah yes, the curse of the Spielberg ending. All of his most recent films (and various other thrillers from the early '90s,) he ended with a feel-good mush. This mushiness ruined potentially good movies such like A.I: Artificial Intelligence and The Terminal. Seriously, Stevie, happy endings are okay, but give them a little dignity.

My rating: Two outa five...thousand.

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