(1) Next time, if there is one, I am bringing earplugs or an iPod to the theater. I could not believe the volume of the pre-show screen adverts, loathsome in-theater radio station yammering and coming attractions. My ears were ringing before the film proper even began. Am I the last person who remembers when people could sit in a theater before the film started and just talk to each other, read a magazine and get an early start on some popcorn munching? Ye gods.
(2) To the fellow who sat behind me: I am tall (6'3"). I am wide. I am a visual obstruction. You should have chosen a better seat. Sorry, but there it is.
(3) Ah, the opening. Good Morgan Freeman voice over. I think he's James Earl Jones' heir apparent for Wise Black Voice now that Ossie Davis has left us. (PS - I would trade the lives of every Gen-X, nose-ringed clown in the theater that night for Ossie to have one more year. What a loss; gifted actor, remarkable man and class act.)
(4) Ah, the film... I was afraid of this. There's an old saying in journalism: Don't bury the lede. It means keep your focus on the point of the story, not the incidental or peripheral. This film sent its lede to the bottom of the Marianas Trench. One might think that the conquest of Earth by aliens (not actually Martians this time) would be the point of the movie, being a pretty important thing, after all. Nope. Here it's merely the setting for a familial reapproachment between an immature father and his children - both of whom are the kind of insufferable "movie kids" I would have doused with A-1 Steak Sauce and thrown to the advancing alien war machines as a peace offering.
(5) Cruise is pretty good, although stopping myself from yelling out Xenu or Katie Holmes jokes caused me actual, physical pain. Truly, I suffer for art.
(6) The aliens are not from Mars, as mentioned previously. Okay. No harm done. And kudos to Spielberg for his old skool use of tripod walking machines instead of the floating manta-rays of Pal's 1953 version - as wonderful as Pal's were.
If the changes had only stopped there. Alas, the 2005 story has the aliens delivering their pilots to machines buried deep in the earth "over a million years ago," as one character observes, rather than the ships arriving in meteor-like LCMs (Landing Craft, Martian).
This revision makes an absolute hash of the invaders' defeat from a microbial Achilles' Heel, since it's inconceivable that such an advanced race, having visited Earth before to bury their machines, would be caught unawares by the basics of Terran biology.
Pal's (and Wells') versions explained this by having the Martians view us from afar, but not actually experience our ecology until the invasion. Wells, in fact, was making a direct reference to the tropical diseases which struck European armies during their colonial and imperial conquests in Asia and Africa.
Spielberg's story has character dialog making pointed references to how well the aliens have "planned" this, yet once they arrive, all it takes is a few deep breaths of our air and a few swallows of water before they're all dropping dead.
Tripod driver Xerghon: Sir, do you smell that?
Tripod commander Gharzhek: Smell what? That's just Terran air.
Xerghon: I don't feel so good...
Gharzhek: Stop goldbricking and get this thing moving. We're due in TEE-neck, whatever that is.
(Xerghon coughs, falls over backwards and dies.)
Gharzhek: What the...?!
(Gharzhek vomits his innards across the control panel, then dies.)
(7) Along those lines, how did hundreds of house-sized war machines, buried a few hundred feet under the ground, go undetected by 20th Century human technology? The film takes place in New Jersey, which was (and is) part of the great post-WW2 buildup of America's east coast. Highways, commercial and residential surveying, tunnel excavations for sewers and utility lines... I doubt there's a single square mile of that area which hasn't been explored, mapped, thermal-imaged, sonar'd and whatnot.
(8) George Pal's version alternated scenes of government and military leaders making plans with the personal story of Dr Forrester. By keeping the story locked on Cruise's character and his brats, Spielberg loses the larger view to the detriment of the story. The aliens are handily conquering the word... and then they all just die.
Bottom Line: As befits a Spielberg film, the technical quality is outstanding. And there are a few scenes - such as the hellish, apocalyptic spectacle of a burning train roaring through a railroad crossing - that are simply marvelous.
Alas, there's too little of that and too much family drama. Near the end I wanted the aliens to disintegrate them all so the narrative could move on to a more interesting viewpoint.
A few other things:
- How did Cruise's son survive? Do the alien war machines have a Great Walls of Fire attack which can obliterate a battle line of armored vehicles but is too weak to take out one moody teen in a hoodie?
- The "All Tom's Children" material was bad enough, but why did the writers have to hit rock bottom by including the I must! / You can't! moment between Tom and his son?
Dad (yelling into son's face): You can't go! I won't let you!
Son (yelling into dad's face): I have to go!
Dad: I can't lose you again!
Son: I have to see! I have to fight!
Dad: No!
Son: Yes!
I mean, COME ON. Does it get more cliche than this?! When you have characters literally yelling out their motivations to the audience and each other, are you even telling a story anymore?
Finally, was there a scene cut wherein it's explained that the red vines were part of the aliens' (orig. Martians') ecosystem, which were transplanted here in order to reform the environment to their liking? Note to screenwriters: not everyone read Wells' book.
No comments:
Post a Comment