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War of the Woeful

#1 User is offline   Ham Salad Icon

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Posted 29 June 2005 - 05:58 PM

Spielberg is done. He's wealthy, powerful, and burned out. Let's see, A.I.:sucked, Terminal: Sucked, Catch Me If You Can: Sucked, Minority Report: sucked...
This guy has lost it.

Now the film: Go see Signs with Mel Gibson, M. Night Shamalayadingdong's homage to Welles. It goes like this: Father protects daughter and son by hiding in the basement for the entire movie, Father learns how to be a dad again, Aliens, despite being extremely intelligent and deft are allergic to water and die. I guess they don't have Pfizer on their planet to brew up antibiotics in order to mount a comeback. The aliens sucked (why must they all have Geiger's huge Aliensesque heads?, their tech sucked (a serpentine vacuum with headlights and a camera, a cage with a tentacle, why not suck them all up and blend them at once?)

Faults:
Here are the big ones:
No electronics function, but some dork is recording with his hand held camera (not for long). Is this some sort of metaphor from Spielberg?
Looney with lantern is waiting specifically for them (Cruise & Kid) to enter his basement, let's them in and shuts the door...why?
When Cruise gets harnessed for feeding the other caged humans decide to help him, not the other hundreds already devoured, apparently because a soldier catches on?

The writers should be embarrassed. I'm sure they’re the Ivy League educated brats of some Spielberg cronies, or pals from Temple or the country club, but gimme a break! Awful, boring, redundant. No originality. Shamalayadingdong should sue, be embarassed, or extremely flatered that SS is copping his stuff.

With the exception of Batman, this year's crop of summer fun movies just plain sucks.

Hollywood deserves to lose receipts, they can recoup their dough by suing file sharers who are not stupid enough to actually pay for this crap!
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#2 User is offline   Whirlpool Icon

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Posted 01 July 2005 - 02:14 AM

I just got back from seeing WOTW. My opinion (spoiler free):

The first hour is great. There's a lot of action, and some great CGI. Also, I really liked that it had a sort of old-school sci-fi feel, with giant robots, death lazers, etc. You could almost just watch this movie for the first hour.

Then, it goes downhill.


The second hour slows signifigantly. There are more plot holes, and some plot bits that are just plain corny (though I know that some of these may simply have been sticking to the plot of the novel). The ending left most of the audience saying "Huh?"





A few nitpicks (some spoilers): Ham Salad points out some of the same nitpicks that I noticed- the part with the camcorder, for example. Also, I found it funny that Tom Cruise was the only person who figured out how to fix cars- are there no mechanics in all of Boston? It consisted of replacing one part, and it took his character all of 20 seconds to discover the problem.
Another nitpick: There is a scene in a basement where Tom Cruise and his daughter are camping out with a man who has a screw loose- though this descent to insanity happens rather quickly. This scene lasts way too long, but my main problem with this is that the invaders send 5 aliens and 2 giant robotic eyes into this little basement to find...2 men and a ten-year-old? Is this neccessary? I don't see why incredibly powerful beings would concern themselves with three people.
Finally: The ending bites. It was as if Speilberg was thinking,"Hmmm...I've done a good job on the first half...maybe the audience won't realize that the ending makes no sense whatsoever and seems to show Tom Cruise pointing at birds on a robot, and then all the robots dying." This conclusion is very abrupt; the WOTW narrator was required to explain what had happened. Otherwise, no one would have had a clue. The way I understood it was that humans had adapted to Earth's microbes, but the aliens were not. Would an invading race not check if the planet they were invading was...inhabitable? This would be like humans trying to live on Mars, and then realizing that there was no atmosphere.
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#3 User is offline   Private Zod Icon

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Posted 03 July 2005 - 09:24 PM

I just saw it. Not bad, the 2 scenes where the aliens first start attacking in NY and the Harbor scene does give you the chills.

No doubt Spielberg was influenced by the events of 9/11...a little too much if you ask me.
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Posted 03 July 2005 - 09:36 PM

Yeah. I liked but it was full of plot holes and the most important is:


WHY DID THOSE ALIENS WAITED MILLIONS OF YEARS INSTEAD OF ATTACKING WHEN HUMANS WERE MORE WEAK IN TECHNOLOGY?

And you might say they waited for the human population to grow so they could eat them or use their blood to harvest the planet but that raise this question:

THEN WHY DID THE ALIENS VAPORIZE MOST OF THE HUMANS IF THEY INTENDED TO USE THEIR BLOOD?

AND WHY DID THEY HARVEST THE PLANET WITH THAT BLOODY VINES?

The ending was weak and it hurted the movie pretty bad.
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Posted 03 July 2005 - 11:09 PM

Well to be fair, the ending was pretty weak in the book too. Alittle anti-climatic in all three (book and two movies) adaptations.
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Posted 04 July 2005 - 01:05 AM

being a poorer area, i would have thought some old fords would have survived the EMP. and there would probably be a few deisel cars and trucks and could be clutch started...


::SPOILERS BELOW::


my biggest greif was the anticlimactic ending. which many of you may argue was no different to how it was portrayed in the book or audio disco thing, but for a film that was uncomfortabley dragged into modern day, was too abrupt.

it reminded my James Earl Jones at the end of that simpsons episode where all the kids end up on the island...

"...and then the children were killed by... oh... let's say mo."

(which is exactly what i quoted when i got up)

the ending was right, but it was presented too poorly for the way the film built up...

it was like morgan freeman was saying, "we're calling a night there, go home!"

other than that i liked it...
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#7 User is offline   jariten Icon

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Posted 04 July 2005 - 01:50 AM

Im the same, the film seemed to do a good job of bringing up the books inconsistancies in a way that the older b/w version didnt.

Also- Tim Robbins claims to know that a robot was brought down in Osaka, Japan. But how could he possibly have access to this information? (Its another "keep absolutly still, their vision is based on movement" clunker)

The first bit was awesome. but y'know, a film needs characters. LET YOUR SON GO! HES A SELFISH IDIOT!
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Posted 04 July 2005 - 08:34 AM

QUOTE (jariten @ Jul 4 2005, 01:50 AM)
Also- Tim Robbins claims to know that a robot was brought down in Osaka, Japan. But how could he possibly have access to this information? (Its another "keep absolutly still, their vision is based on movement" clunker)




I think that he really did not know. "I heard from a guy, wo has this friend, and his sister...etc". Kinda like that scene when the crowd was walking towards the harbor and one guy said "Europe was barely hit" when a guy two feet away said "Europe got the worst of it."
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#9 User is offline   Ham Salad Icon

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Posted 04 July 2005 - 04:51 PM

Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, was a far more suspenseful film which was done on a very small budget, with unproven actors, and had creativity which did not ultimately depend on CGI.
I think an approach to War of the Worlds, similar to 28 Days would have been more uniquel (as opposed to the obvious Independence Day route), suspenseful and faithful in keeping with the retroness of the story.

Spielberg can get way with not having marquee actors, and had the ability to craft films with little more than creative camera work at his disposal. Too bad those days are behind him.
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Posted 06 July 2005 - 05:26 AM

This may well be a SPOILER contaminated post.




Saw WOTW last night. Poor.

I've seen the original WotW a couple of times, and I always felt the most disappointing aspect was the ending. In principle I think the failure of the species to adapt to the bacteria on Earth quick enough is a sound one. The theory it raises about the evolution of the human race is an interesting one for me. However I always felt it was a bit rushed through, a problem I was hoping would be addressed in this one. I was to be disappointed.

The Tom Cruise factor was evident. I'm finding it increasingly hard to watch a film that you know without any doubt that the lead character is going to survive. No suspense there whatsoever.

In the scene of the pilgrimage to the Hudson ferry port, Cruise and co. meet a woman whom he knows and her teenage daughter, who they get seperated from a few minutes later. WTF was the point of that? We had no emotional attachment to these characters, so why should we care that they didn't make it onto the ferry? That one was lost on me.


QUOTE
There is a scene in a basement where Tom Cruise and his daughter are camping out with a man who has a screw loose- though this descent to insanity happens rather quickly. This scene lasts way too long, but my main problem with this is that the invaders send 5 aliens and 2 giant robotic eyes into this little basement to find...2 men and a ten-year-old? Is this neccessary? I don't see why incredibly powerful beings would concern themselves with three people.


The aliens at that point didn't know there was anyone down there, but this makes it even less plausible. Why spend so much time investigating the basement of one house? What was the significance of this house? Quick scan to see if there are any nice tasty humans down there, then onto the next one surely!?

And don't get me started on the whole Robbie making it to Boston thing! I was glad when I thought he'd snuffed it, he was pissing me off. Then right at the end we have "Hi Dad, I survived that giant flaming mass of metal somehow, but I won't bore you with the details of my miraculous and virtually impossible escape, lets hug to show that our reconciliation is complete".

Maybe I was expecting too much from a Hollywood summer blockbuster. I'll put it right up there with Deep Impact and Pearl Harbour.
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Posted 06 July 2005 - 04:47 PM

''I'll put it right up there with Deep Impact and Pearl Harbour.''

That's the best place to put this movie.
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#12 User is offline   DragonLord Icon

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Posted 09 July 2005 - 09:35 AM

I just saw the movie. It really really really sucks. If I hadn't seen it for free I would have gone mad.

The aliens, the dialoges, the ending.. There simply is no plot in this movie.

One of the worst movies I've ever seen, together with Battlefield Earth and Constantine.
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Posted 09 July 2005 - 09:54 AM

OMG, i think this is the best movie ive seen in a long time, a lot better then RotS.
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Posted 09 July 2005 - 06:50 PM

Minority Report was a really good movie. It seems like some people here moved from bashing Lucas to bashing other great directors. Do you think it is easy to make movies? It is only easy to criticize.

And I hope WOTW is much better than Signs or Independence Day, right?

This post has been edited by Lord Melkor: 09 July 2005 - 06:51 PM

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Posted 09 July 2005 - 10:31 PM

Even the worst movies I can think of has some kind of story to tell. This movie didn't.

What the hell was the story? They flee for two hours, running from basement to basement, seeing a burning train go by, etc etc. And then suddenly the aliens die. The end.

A lot of times you felt like they were gonna explain something about the aliens.
We know they're killing humans, sure. Then suddenly we see the aliens suck something out of a human being. Blood? The aliens use our blood for energy? We're gonna understand something now right? No.

We see a scene where a bunch of people are captured by an alien machine. Obviously they want to use them for something, otherwise they would just kill them right? They're gonna explain something to us now? No.


I would like to quote a funny reviewer: "If a town centre cracked open in broad daylight, revealing a 500ft metal flower of death, you'd know about it a mile away. However, when Cruise and his appallingly unsympathetic kids (including the interminably shrieking girl-woman that is known as Dakota Fanning, who surely popped straight from the birth canal clutching a contract) flee to the 'burbs, it's as if the news hasn't filtered through, with by-standers milling about doing nothing much of anything......

..... On that note, the one effort to bamboozle the uni-eyed tendril is laughable too: they place a mirror in its way. Surely something of this power and capacity isn't going to fooled by a bunch of reconstituted silica? The acting, as you'd expect, is uniformly awful – Cruise (who specialises in playing gormless obnoxious assholes) is especially bad – his two facial exp​ressions wavering from "shock" to "delayed shock" at inopportune moments."


Awful movie.
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