War of the Worlds – An Honest Review

The 2005 sci-fi disaster flick was directed by Steven Spielberg and was written by Josh Friedman and David Koepph, who based it on the novel by H. G. Wells. It’s the story of New Yorker Ray Ferrier ( Tom Cruise ) Father of two, trying to survive the alien apocalypse.

PLOT:

After some nice narration by none other than MORGAN FREEMAN, we start the story. Ray is stuck with his estranged kids, the insanely annoying Rachel ( Dakota Fanning ) and Robbie ( Justin Chatwin ) as his divorced wife, Mary ( Miranda Otto ) is out visiting her parents in Boston. He has no idea how to make either of them happy, the relationship seemingly being dead, though he clearly hopes to reconnect with them one day. So later that day Maverick is chilling at home and lightning strikes, several times at the exact same spot. Also Robbie took off at some point before this.

Cruise goes into town to figure out something I guess, which follows another series of unexplainable lightning, and an underground giant tripod alien robot set on destroying all humans like it’s a 2005 video game. He runs back home, gets the kids together and takes off to his empty ex’s house. This is where Ray realizes he hates sandwhiches so much, they all deserve to be – I’m not spoiling it.

Later on they leave, ending up on a ship. It gets sunk by an alien. They swim to a field or something where it’s all out war between the aliens and the military. Robbie plays hero and takes off like the idiot boy he is. Last but not least, a guy named Harlan ( Tim Robbins ) takes Ray and Rachel in. Fun fact; Top Gun reunion! He also plans to kill the entire population of alien robots. Because a crazy dude with a shotgun in his basement is totally equivelant to a dozen giant robots with lasers. And yeah, within about two seconds we can already tell he’s a whacko. Also there’s this bizarre flesh-like moss substance that’s growing everywhere, doesn’t play into the plot at all, but I still thought it’d be worth mentioning.

Our two main characters get out of that psychiatry basement and leave. Eventually ending in Boston. Also, despite having clearly been killed in an explosion, Robbie’s back. Somehow. The End. Happily ever after. Right after some more narration from Morgan Freeman. – 0.5 a point for the TOTALLY BELIEVABLE ending

CONCLUSSION:

War of the Worlds was one of THE most entertaining films I’ve seen in a long time. Wether it be that I constantly find myself watching mediocre to bad films, or the fact that this is just a great movie, well, that’s hard to say. The film did a great job at slowly unnravelling itself to us, the viewers.

While yes, most of the movie is just Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning going from place to place avoiding laser blasts, it works, and it works well. Though I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel about how, based on the whole scientology thing ( especially after hearing what Leah Remini had to say ). I’m definatally now no less open to a film of his, than say; one of Tom Hanks or Al Pacino. Which is funny, because Cruise had so little character in this film other than fight to survive and protect his family. Maybe this is what Blake Snyder meant with his “caveman motivation” quote. 8.8/ 10.

-The Screenwriter