Been saving my free "pay per view" coupon for about 6 months now, and finally decided to try "War Of The Worlds". What a crappy crappy movie! That Tom Cruise has to be one of the worst actors I've ever seen, and the movie just seemed totally low budget to me. Did I read right? Was it directed by Steven Steilberg or Ed Wood?

it´s a spielberg movie. didn´t like it either in fact i turned it off after one hour
:boring:

It's what happens, I guess, when you try and mix H.G. Wells and Scientology.

Whatever the reason for the movie's failings, it's yet another forgettable remake of a movie that didn't need remaking.

Amen to that, Cleve. Anybody in Hollywood ever heard the old saying-"Leave well enough alone ?"

I thought it was called "Wart On The World"...

I too found it lacking. It felt like the aliens were only attacking Jersey and not the entire earth. The focus was to specific.

It seems to me that some directors lately want to take the "big budget movie with a specific human story" theme a little to far. You can see it in the movies Pearl Harbor, War of the Worlds, The Thin Red Line, Independence Day, etc. These movies are about huge world changing events in history, yet they focus in like a (friggin) laser beam on one human story and thus the story about the events around them suffer.

Sometimes it is OK just to focus on the world changing event with just a little humanity thrown in and it still be a good movie. Why does everything have to be a love story....ugh.

Pearl Harbor - that one was hard to take. Especially in comparison to the masterpiece "Tora! Tora! Tora!"

All movies that you already know the ending of before you see it tend to stinko i.e. Titanic = boat hits iceberg, boat sinks, people drown. Or in this case WotW = Creatures come to earth, kill humans wholesale, creatures die from common cold.

I tend to like films that have unexpected endings but what do I know.

sdz

I found it really bad, esp. that the human race didnt get extinct. They had absolutly no chance to win the war against the aliens but only survive because the alien gets a cold :scratch2:

Well i found the sound effects pretty cool in the cinema, but thats pretty much it. Also the translation into german was pretty bad :sigh:

I haven't watched the entire movie but what I saw follows the general plot of the original book reasonably well, including the ending. It's been 20 years and thousands of books since I read it but I think the biggest difference was in the location. For some reason I'm thinking HG Wells set it in England.

This is one of the rare movies that I hear is bad, and I dont watch it because of what I heard. Reading the comments here I am glad I didnt waste a couple hours of my life watching this piece of garbage.

This is one of the rare movies that I hear is bad, and I dont watch it because of what I heard. Reading the comments here I am glad I didnt waste a couple hours of my life watching this piece of garbage.
Here here!! I almost rented it the other day when there was simply nothing else on the shelf. But I could not bring myself to do it, because I thought that the original story was just so lame, and I couldn't imagine how it could ever be anything but lame...

Thanks for saving me a couple of hours of my life. :thmbsp:

No doubt the movie could've been a lot better, but c'mon! The tripod coming up from the ground was pretty cool. I liked the way it just kinda stood there a moment looking down on everyone.....Lets out that fog-horn-attack-siginal......then Whamo! It starts "laser-blasting" everyone into dust!


Uh...everyone except Tom Cruise, of course. :smoke:

I hated the ending. Just lame.

Russ

Pearl Harbor - that one was hard to take. Especially in comparison to the masterpiece "Tora! Tora! Tora!"


Yes. "Pearl Harbour" was crap!

Some of the technical goofs were a real hoot! How about the moderen day aircraft carrier "dressed-up" to look like a WW2 ship!!(The Hornet) I mean for goodness sake you can even see the catapult runs on the deck! The "Belknap" anti-collision pole too!

You also see some 1960's vintage ships getting blown up!

The money they spent on that movie there is no excuse for such mistakes.


BAD movie Mr. Bay.....REAL BAD.

Russ

I just can't bring myself to watch anything Tom Cruise is in. What a pantload he is! BTW concerning Pearl, I have a fondness for it since the ship I served on for four years was used in the filming. DE-1062 is seen in a number of scenes.

cubdog

Talking about Tom Cruise. I will rent, not go see, his new Mission Impossible III when it comes out on DVD. Looks pretty decent. I wish they would release the original television series on DVD. That was a great show. Good Day Mr Phelps. Your mission, if you decide to accept it is to find out why the avatars got yanked ?????

Wow, Why all the hate? (just kidding :) )

I REALLY liked WoW's even to the point of buying the HG Wells original book. Nice thing is the book came w/ the Orson Wells radio broadcast (very cool I might add).

Reading the original, the Tom Cruise / Spielberg movie was pretty close. The reason the 2005 movie focused on Cruise (and family - this was the character diff between original novel and movie) is because that what Wells did.

The movie and book had the "Burning Train crossing", "The Red Weed", "The Ferry Crossing (this was a combination of 2 scenes in the book), "The Weird Tim Robins character (combination of 2 characters / combination of 2 hide out scenes), "The murder of the guy w/ the alien tube thingy" was in the book, I mean don't blame the movie for the ending either, it was in the book.

Anyway, I'm a proud owner of the DVD - to each his own I guess ;)

Okay (fire retardant suit on) - "FLAME ON"

This movie was a dismal remake and couldn't hold a candle to the entertaining George Pal version of the fifties. No characters that you could care about, and the usual computer generated effects coupled with an, at times, hard to follow script are the culprits here. Speilberg is a great director, but I suppose he is allowed a few failures.

With Pearl Habour apart from the scene of the attacke itself, great effect BTW, it just smacked to me of Titanic, ie A full on love story with a bit of history as the baseline.

Just my 2d's worth

After watching Pearl Harbor, I barrowed my Dad's copy of TORA TORA TORA...

WOW, TORA TORA TORA was EXCELLENT. Pearl Harbor is the movie that can't hold a candel to the earlier movie. The only thing going for Pearl Harbor was the effects were much better. But MAN, TORA TORA TORA was just such a good story.

The greatness of TORA TORA TORA compaired to PH is like compairing the greatness of Das Boot to U-571

CGI doesn't bother me a bit, I figure it's here to stay. Therefore I just watch movies and try to get into the stories that interest me.

I need to breakdown and watch the earlier War of the Worlds and see how it compares. What I remember though is that I wasn't very impressed w/ the earlier WotW's. Watching the newer version I was completely on the edge of my seat, I felt more hopeless watching the 2005 version of WotW then what I remember w/ the earlier version (even though I already knew the ending). My Wife was even disturbed watching the 2005 DVD and she's not a Sci-Fi fan like me.

That Tom Cruise has to be one of the worst actors I've ever seen

I have to say that I am not a fan of him myself. Im boycotting hollywood.
People should try it. It's fun and definitely free. :thmbsp:

I have to say that I am not a fan of him myself. Im boycotting hollywood.
People should try it. It's fun and definitely free. :thmbsp:

Me and you both KC... I haven't been to see a movie, or even rented a DVD in ages. I decided that if Hollywood was so bereft of new material that all they could do was remake classics... They didn't need my money.

I mean c'mon, Flight of the Phoenix? Some how Dennis Quaid feels qualified to reprise Jimmy Stewart? Geez... CGI airplanes (or spaceships - Battleships - etc) don't cover for the fact that you're incapable of telling a story.

Hollywood's been freaking the last couple years because people aren't coming to see films at the theatres. Here's a hint! Tell a story you nimrods, preferably one we haven't already heard a half dozen times!

One huge problem that I have with the new version that I didn't mention earlier was the fact that there were no full on battle scenes with our military and the aliens. There is only a reference with the actual battle being fought on the other side of a hill. We never actually see any of it. Come on, a huge budget and no battle sequences! You would think that with todays effects technology that they would depict at least one grand confrontation. After all this is "War of the Worlds". At least in the original, they did a have a great battle scene with great special effects for their day. I'll never forget seeing our weapons and soldiers being disintegrated as a kid. Also, I loved the cool shots of our artillary trying to penetrate the alien force fields surrounding the alien ships. Remember also, that Gordon Jennings and his effects team were working on a limited budget. What imagination and genious these guys displayed. These people were pioneers that todays effects technicians owe a debt of gratitude to.

Sbarber, Good point. Even the novel had some battle scenes.

The reason WotW works for me is, if normal people were put in a similar situation I believe they would act like the people did on screen. Whether I care for the characters or not, in my mind the acting was believable for the given situation.

Just my (dissenting) opinion - no biggy :)

Titanic = boat hits iceberg, boat sinks, people drown.

Dammit man! I hate it when people blab the ending of a movie! I was looking forward to renting this.






:)

Dammit man! I hate it when people blab the ending of a movie! I was looking forward to renting this.






:)

Is that how it ended? I thought the boat would resurface, everyone climbs abord and sails back to shore........


Oh wait....i was watching it backwards.. :no:

I found it really bad, esp. that the human race didnt get extinct. They had absolutly no chance to win the war against the aliens but only survive because the alien gets a cold

For the day, I would think this to be a pretty creative ending. I only saw it because I wanted to see the tripods. The movie sucked, IMO, and I will stick with my vinyl copy of Jeff Wayne's musical WOTW and leave the images to my brain. However, certain scenes were kinda cool/gross (ie - when the martians are "feeding").

I found it really bad, esp. that the human race didnt get extinct. They had absolutly no chance to win the war against the aliens but only survive because the alien gets a cold :scratch2:

Sorry Guys, but that's the way H. G. Wells wrote it.

Part of the irony in the book/film

Sorry Guys, but that's the way H. G. Wells wrote it.

Exactly.

I too felt the movie missfired somehow but the scene that really got me laughing was when they emerged from their home in the morning to find the neighborhood in ruins, a plane on the front lawn etc yet there was still a clear path for them to drive away in their SUV....or did I fall asleep and just dream that sequence?

Cheers

what I want to know is

when will they make a movie where the aliens win ?

what I want to know is

when will they make a movie where the aliens win ?

So true!

This is why i loved the beginning of the "Hitchikers Guide Trough the Galaxy" (Sorry i dont know exactly how to spell it in english).

The earth is in the way and they just blow it up. Simply, its in the way....


Awsome!

But the rest of the movie sucked :boring:

It was bad but far from the worst I've ever seen. I did appreciate some of the homage paid to George Pal's version and the SFX, while there was far too much of it, was well done.

One a scale of 1 to 10 I would give Spielberg's "War of the Worlds" a 5.

Since "Mars Attacks", a movie of which I am a huge fan, I have been unable to watch any movie with evil aliens without hearing "Indian Love Call" somewhere in the depths of my sick mind. :yes:

Hitchikers Guide through the Galaxy is somehow hilarious... Yeah me too I'm giving "War of the Worlds" a 5... when I saw the previews I thought it was a great movie but hell no! lol

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://mydvdreviews.com

I did watch a friend's DVD of WOTW a couple weeks ago. Thankfully, I found no evidence of Cruise-injected wacky Scientology stuff buried in the script - except possibly that plot point that the aliens had come to earth millenia ago and planted their invasion machines thousands of years ahead of time.

But like most Spielberg movies, it had the requisite sappy happy ending which I always find incredibly grating. And for me - the movie's worst sin - the battle scenes didn't happen onscreen. Not much "war" in WOTW.