War of the Worlds

OK Tom Cruise is a bit of dork and his acting skills are questionable, however in WOTW he plays a dork and does it very well.

First of all I am a Sci-Fi nut, I recognise the important contribution HG Wells made to the literary world and to the world of sci-fi. I also recognise the importance of George Pal to the genre of sci-fi movie making and his contributions to the movie world.

Spielberg's WOTW certainly has a different interpretation from Wells' original book and Pal's movie version. Spielberg naturally adds his own twists and turns without losing the audience. The similarities to the original book are harder to recognise, but they are present. Spielberg captures the relationship of the father and the children very well; in doing so creates a similar personal struggle experienced by the narrator character in Well's original. The battlefront is not only on the worlds stage but also in the personal lives of the main characters, Wells and Spielberg emphasise this angle particularly well in their own styles.

Needless to say I identified with Cruise's character and his relationship with his daughter, being a 42 year old with a 10 year old daughter. Albeit, I don't have Cruise's roguish good looks nor a daughter with the personality disorders or her ability to scream in perfect pitch, thankfully.

There are some very silly moments in this movie, such having the ability to drive through the wreckage of the crashed jet in a perfectly unscratched Dodge caravan, where did all the jet fuel go ? Maybe the aliens took it out of the plane before it crashed. The Martians looked stereotypically alien, however their tripod ships were perfect.

The strongest point of the movie is the first person perspective that Spielberg chose to use, it was about the only similarity to the original book. Both Spielberg and Pal chose to add secondary characters to the first person singular narrative of the original, it worked in the best interest of both movies.

I've seen this movie twice, I took Lizzy with me the second time and it scared her, it was Dakota Fanning's character who scared her the most !

All in all a great adaption and tribute of the 1953 movie and a not so obvious, yet none the less decent adaptation of the original book.