I was rewatching the Spielberg War of the Worlds last night and for the first half was thinking this film is pretty underrated and by the end thought no, it’s rated about right. Somehow less than the sum of its parts
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Yeah it's... ok. Nothing groundbreaking. Does a good job of building suspense I thought. Captures the 2005 vibe when Dakota Fanning asks if it's terrorists.
aug 31, 2025, 10:48 am • 4 0 • view
Rewatched it a couple of months ago, almost identical reaction. Unheroic Cruise, unremitting grimness, unstoppable onslaught (and that incredible burning train moment, that I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten); superb first half. Then it switches to claustrophobia and loses all pace.
aug 31, 2025, 9:26 pm • 1 0 • view
Yes, very much this
aug 31, 2025, 9:29 pm • 1 0 • view
Visually stunning as always with Spielberg and full of the flaws as stated here, my highlight is that through a decent chunk of the film, you feel dread. If an invasion takes place at scale surely you would feel this dread and never feel at ease.
aug 31, 2025, 12:02 pm • 2 0 • view
Yeah that's about right. It's mainly the son that does the damage for me. Wanting to go fight, all the arguing, he finally goes over the ridge.....which then erupts like a hill cosplaying as god damn Krakatoa, but he's somehow fine and waiting for them at the end? No. Gtfo, Steven.
aug 31, 2025, 10:51 am • 2 0 • view
Yes, that element is pulling against the rest of it. It’s very clearly a result of the time the film was made, in the midst of Iraq and the post 9/11 landscape, and a comment on the reflex to lash out in response to national hurt and humiliation, but it doesn’t fit. The Martians aren’t AQ, or Saddam
aug 31, 2025, 10:58 am • 4 0 • view
And as you say, narratively it’s wonky because ‘somehow, the son returned’
aug 31, 2025, 10:59 am • 3 0 • view
Yeah. All the battle hardened soldiers and armour were wiped out, but he was ok. 🙃
aug 31, 2025, 11:30 am • 1 0 • view
Deus ex machina is always a great way to end a film. If we were given some reason why he was OK it would help, but for Spielberg, Koepp etc the whole thing is really cheap Mind you, for all Koepp is a fantastic writer, he does have a bit of a weakness for that kind of thing
aug 31, 2025, 11:34 am • 1 0 • view
I should say that my neurospicy brain always picks out stuff like that, so it's absolutely doesn't represent the general opinion. I'm one of those types who called out mistakes in the first minute of Independence Day. 😅
aug 31, 2025, 11:37 am • 1 0 • view
No you’re absolutely right. It’s one of those things that in the moment in the cinema you’re like ‘whew’ but as soon as you start questioning it, it falls apart. Like The Sixth Sense
aug 31, 2025, 11:40 am • 1 0 • view
Anything Shymalan (spelling?) really.
aug 31, 2025, 11:41 am • 1 0 • view
Totally. Can’t believe anyone ever thought he was a genius
aug 31, 2025, 11:44 am • 1 0 • view
The problem is that Ray (omg was his nickname ‘Heat’?) has to make the decision to go to Rachel and abandon Robbie, and it has to be the right decision. But actually, Rachel was going to be taken away by people who were going to look after her so the logical thing was to let her go and stop Robbie
aug 31, 2025, 11:38 am • 1 0 • view
I feel that a lot of issues with the film would have been fixed by sticking to a longer timescale like the novel. You could have easily had Robbie going off the join the army and being thought lost but actually being OK if it takes place over weeks not days.
aug 31, 2025, 11:42 am • 2 0 • view
Yeah that would work. Hell, you could even work a longer timeline that way so that he takes the role of the artilleryman.
aug 31, 2025, 11:48 am • 1 0 • view
Yes! Now I’m thinking about it, what was the point of the machines already being here? I don’t really get why that’s necessary, other than to afford the cool ‘unscrewing’ sequence
aug 31, 2025, 12:56 pm • 2 0 • view
Yeah, it's hard to accept 'one day thousands of years in the future there might be a civilisation we need to conquer, let's make preparations' as a plot point lol. If they could send them here then, just take over then.
aug 31, 2025, 12:58 pm • 1 0 • view
I've always felt short-changed by that, too
aug 31, 2025, 12:01 pm • 2 0 • view
Several ways to make it work and they just.....didn't.
aug 31, 2025, 12:04 pm • 1 0 • view
A few years ago (I think after the most recent BBC adaptation) someone said ‘how do people keep wanting to make War of the Worlds and then making something that isn’t War of the Worlds’? And it’s a fair question. All adaptations seem to wander off the source material at some point…
aug 31, 2025, 10:47 am • 22 1 • view
The original novel (technically a ‘romance’ according to Wells) to be fair, is structured weirdly for adaptation. The first half is very cinematic but the second half is almost that of a different story. It’s kind of like Dune in that respect (and same reason adaptations struggle)…
aug 31, 2025, 10:49 am • 13 0 • view
…and the climax of the first half (‘The Thunder Child’) is a weird-by-current-standards separate episode with a completely different POV to the rest of the book. It also happens to be the best bit, but for obvious reasons the most often left out when adapted
aug 31, 2025, 10:52 am • 10 0 • view
The changes Jeff Wayne made (essentially folding up two characters into one) are probably the best solution. Even there it peters out. Independence Day also solves the pacing and perspective issues by a) not worrying about being a bit daft and b) disguising itself as an entirely different story.
aug 31, 2025, 11:01 am • 9 0 • view
It is in many ways a better adaptation than most, although I find the American exceptionalism too nauseating to stomach - it ditches the point of the book which is essentially about humility and replaces it with
aug 31, 2025, 11:06 am • 8 0 • view
Oh for sure! Thinking about it, the real problem with the original is the lack of human agency in the resolution. That's both narratively unfulfilling and also a bit of a cop out if it's fully intended as allegory. Colonised peoples should just... wait for the British to die?
aug 31, 2025, 11:13 am • 6 0 • view
In the original draft the aliens just took over the Colonial Office and nobody outside the UK noticed the difference 🫡
aug 31, 2025, 11:18 am • 3 0 • view
Now I think about it some more, it would work narratively if you balanced it against the main character’s actions in some way. So, it’s the Martians’ hubris that makes them vulnerable to tiny microbes where the main character realises their humility before nature can save them, or something
aug 31, 2025, 1:10 pm • 2 0 • view
These days you could make it an environmental theme. Protect the biome and it will protect us against the Martians (If I could be bothered I would make up a ‘he attac/he protec’ meme with a microbe)
aug 31, 2025, 1:13 pm • 3 0 • view
Idk I think it’s more about recognising that we are all bugs, not the masters of the universe ruling over bugs. But yeah, it’s problematic both moralistically and in terms of conventional narrative. On the latter, I don’t have a problem with it, though I am a story-structure sceptic/hater
aug 31, 2025, 11:17 am • 3 0 • view
I peg the triumphalist tinge to the fact outside of the ACW the US never experienced the horrors of transitioning from war to peace. If you read the Spielberg ending critically, this is not good: the infrastructure is shot, millions dead (among whom are the people who could fix it), food is scarce.
aug 31, 2025, 1:45 pm • 2 0 • view
Now *that* would have been an interesting thing to see on screen
aug 31, 2025, 3:00 pm • 1 0 • view
Humility and Summer VFX Action Blockbuster are kinda antithetical, to be fair.
aug 31, 2025, 11:08 am • 2 0 • view
I’ll just be over in the corner, feeling a bit dense. 😅
aug 31, 2025, 11:05 am • 1 0 • view
My dad made a radio controlled version of Thunder Child based on Japanese torpedo rams from the Russo Japanese War. Bridge is a spam can.
aug 31, 2025, 10:54 am • 1 0 • view
Awesome! I am fascinated by the Thunder Child (and will chew anyone’s ear off about how it’s not HMS Polyphemus - the Japanese angle is intriguing, I’m going to go look that up)
aug 31, 2025, 11:00 am • 2 0 • view
It's not a class copy but picture this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayabus...
aug 31, 2025, 11:02 am • 1 0 • view
looks a lot like they saw Turbinia & deciced "we're putting torpedoes on that"
aug 31, 2025, 12:01 pm • 2 0 • view
Very much so!
aug 31, 2025, 12:52 pm • 2 0 • view
There is enough in the original novel to make a film adaptation to do it justice. I wonder if the decline in Britain's power status makes a US based version more obvious for modern audiences. The BBC version was a dog's breakfast. I preferred the 1950s take over it. A Bonfire night staple way back.
aug 31, 2025, 11:10 am • 2 0 • view
The good old George Pal version is probably still the best
aug 31, 2025, 11:11 am • 3 0 • view
That with a run of Day of the Triffids or the Time Machine...perfect Guy Fawkes fodder on the BBC after we'd used all the fireworks when I was a kid.
aug 31, 2025, 11:14 am • 3 0 • view
Absolutely. That era was great for Wells and Wydham adaptations
aug 31, 2025, 11:18 am • 3 0 • view
Nobody ever adapts the Shepperton scene where the British Army's artillery manages to knock down a tripod either. That and Thunderchild were the most vivid parts of the book when I read it at 12.
aug 31, 2025, 1:33 pm • 2 0 • view
Yes, that’s true. Most adaptations seem to make them indestructible rather than just very powerful. I suppose you could say that the scene near the end of the Spielberg version where the US military takes out an already ailing tripod with MANPADs is influenced by it
aug 31, 2025, 1:38 pm • 0 0 • view
The Spielberg one does at least have a bit with a boat. But it’s trying by turns to be super faithful to Wells and at others to do Spielberg’s usual broken-but-remade-family thing, and then to be a commentary on the post 9-11 US, and ends up doing none of them well
aug 31, 2025, 10:54 am • 8 0 • view
Radio and the musical did it well enough. I expect serialised telly could too. Video games definitely could. It's film that's the limited medium here.
aug 31, 2025, 10:56 am • 1 0 • view
This is very true, but the BBC managed to balls it up a few years ago too
aug 31, 2025, 11:01 am • 2 0 • view
I somehow wasn't even aware of that one!
aug 31, 2025, 11:02 am • 0 0 • view
But yeah, obviously you also need a competent creative team. The fact that Steven Spielberg couldn't make a good film of it though suggests maybe it's not really doable.
aug 31, 2025, 11:03 am • 1 0 • view
I wonder if Spielberg hadn’t been making it at that exact moment, it might have been better. On the one hand, the timing meant that the initial invasion was handled with more grit and gravity than would otherwise have been the case, the whole thing fell apart under the 9-11/Iraq allegories
aug 31, 2025, 11:10 am • 1 0 • view
I suspect if not for 9/11 that particular adaptation wouldn't have happened at all. The opportunity for thinly veiled allegory was the point.
aug 31, 2025, 11:12 am • 1 0 • view
True. If nothing else it’s fascinating to watch it next to Independence Day and see how the tone has changed
aug 31, 2025, 11:14 am • 1 0 • view
I think it’s hard to translate the original novels core metaphor. The Edwardian era’s fear of Kaiserism threatening British naval supremacy
aug 31, 2025, 10:53 am • 0 0 • view
You can think of it as an invasion novel rather than SF, which is the genre landscape within which it is written. Maybe someone should have a go at The Battle of Dorking instead. At least nobody much would complain about faithfulness to the original since nobody's read it for a century and a bit.
aug 31, 2025, 11:56 am • 0 0 • view
Not sure I agree with that. Yes, there was the invasion fear context too but WotW was one of what Wells called his ‘scientific romances’ and the Martians based on his essay ‘Man In The Year Million’ attempting to take a scientific view of the long term evolution of humans, physically and morally
aug 31, 2025, 12:46 pm • 1 0 • view
Why waste money on Martians when you can have the French instead?
aug 31, 2025, 11:56 am • 0 0 • view
There's a Pendragon adaptation, 2015 & visibly low budget, but it does try to keep the correct time period from the book
aug 31, 2025, 1:28 pm • 1 0 • view
Would love an American remake to be 100% faithful, and then having to spend large amounts of time explaining things like towns called "Basingstoke" and "Leatherhead"
aug 31, 2025, 10:51 am • 3 0 • view
2020s US audiences discovering there's a place called "Woking" (where Wells was from, IDK if it gets namedropped in the books)
aug 31, 2025, 12:02 pm • 2 0 • view
It very much does, and Woking loves it www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-m...
aug 31, 2025, 12:48 pm • 3 0 • view
I can only remember Basingstoke and Leatherhead, but it's 30 years since I read the book. My teenaged brain also made a note of a passage where someone runs from her house semi-naked and her husband follows "ejaculating" and I don't know if that meant shouting or... something else
aug 31, 2025, 12:19 pm • 2 0 • view
lol, I tried reading it once, but was already familiar with the Jeff Wayne summary, so it didn't really work
aug 31, 2025, 12:41 pm • 1 0 • view
It has really well shot moments, but I think I only felt tension during the Tim Robbins sequence. That son was pretty much emo Jar-Jar Binks. I was so mad when he survived.
aug 31, 2025, 12:11 pm • 1 0 • view
I was most impressed, on a technical level, with the two fleeing sequences early on (the first where Ray is running from the heat ray on foot and the second where the family is escaping in the car), which were mostly if not entirely done as single shots
aug 31, 2025, 12:51 pm • 1 0 • view
That’s why I’m sticking with the Ice Cube War of the Worlds. Yeah, it’s worse, but at least it knows it’s bad and runs with it. Spielberg’s version is like... trying too hard to be good and ending up kinda forgettable. Give me the dumb fun one.
aug 31, 2025, 2:05 pm • 1 0 • view
Oh that a man's reach should exceed his grasp/ Or what's a heaven for
aug 31, 2025, 2:59 pm • 0 0 • view
It’s definitely a film that goes into the half with a 3-nil lead and it finishes up with a score of 3-2
aug 31, 2025, 10:49 am • 7 0 • view
Spot on
aug 31, 2025, 11:04 am • 1 0 • view
Yes, completely left me with no feelings at all about it.
aug 31, 2025, 11:17 am • 1 0 • view
It looks spectacular and the tripods are probably one of the best depictions on film but yeah, the whole family drama thing didn’t really work for me. You could’ve entirely cut the son out and it would probably work better?
aug 31, 2025, 10:53 am • 1 0 • view
I understand at an intellectual level that Dakota Fanning is acting the exact way a small child would react to this very scary and incomprehensible situation. But dear god her character’s freak outs annoy me so much.
aug 31, 2025, 11:26 am • 2 0 • view
Yeah. It is an amazing performance by any standards, and I think the freak outs work well in that the audience feels that intense reaction which would completely upend you while you’re trying to deal with the alien invasion, but my god it’s grating
aug 31, 2025, 11:31 am • 2 0 • view
Its an example of a ting being too real. It reminds me of the scene in tropic thunder where they discuss Ben stillers acting in simple jack.
aug 31, 2025, 11:34 am • 2 0 • view
I tried to watch Tropic Thunder but after about two minutes couldn’t stand any more
aug 31, 2025, 1:02 pm • 0 0 • view
What?! It’s so good!! But fair it’s not for everyone
aug 31, 2025, 2:21 pm • 1 0 • view
All I'll say is the scene with the out of control train hurtling past with every carriage a blazing inferno was straight-up terrifying, as was the sinewy rendition of the Tripods.
aug 31, 2025, 11:09 am • 3 0 • view
Don’t get me wrong, there are many scenes like that which are out-and-out horrifying Btw that scene always reminds me of the descriptions of HMS Black Prince at Jutland
aug 31, 2025, 11:13 am • 3 0 • view