War of the WTF
W.O.W, as the tagline suggests on the hats they wear promoting this movie, is right. Not only for the great special effects, the chilling and realistic mayhem scenes, but also for the atrociously bad ending. Please note there are going to be major major spoilers in this review, so if you haven’t seen this movie then I would not recommend reading this until after you have seen the movie. I will give you an additional warning before I get into my major problem with this movie.
The movie starts off with a great buildup a father/son/daughter relationship, that to say the least, is a wee-bit dysfunctional. I really enjoyed the way they did these scenes. They weren’t too long and we effectively got the essence that Ray (Tom Cruise) is a bad father, who knows very little about his children. Not only do the kid’s not respect him, but they aren’t afraid to show it either. The pacing was great here, getting us the message and then getting into what the movie is all about: THE INVASION.
The invasion scenes were extraordinary to say the least. The special effects were top-notch, and while they were bloodless, they were shocking (haha). For the entire invasion scenes you are wide-eyes and open-mouthed. You feel the fear and it is scarier than any “High Tension” or “Jason XXXVI” will ever be. They are scary because they are so realistic. Everyone has seen similar images on the news with 9-11 and we can all rememeber and relate to them. It wasn’t lame, jump out at the camera when your not expecting it scary. It was genuine high tension and it delivered in spades.
The acting was fine, I can’t complain there. You forgot Tom Cruise was a complete nut job for most of the 2 hour run time, so if he can accomplish that then there isn’t much to worry about in that aspect of the movie. Although, there were a couple too many closeup crying shots, we get the point: they are scared. Moving on.
SPOILERS WARNING: You will know everything to know about the ending of this movie if you read any further.
Now to my major problem with this movie, as was almost everyones who has seen it, the ending. I’m not talking about the abrupt “we won and its over ending”. That was all fine and good. My major beef was with the resolution of what was revolved around moreso than the actual warfare, which was the family. The ending of this movie was a legimate kick in the balls. Not only did they kick you in the nuts, they then proceeded to spit in your face, and topped it off with a cleveland steamer and a golden shower.
I can forgive plot holes. Plot holes are fine. Noone can write perfectly and everyone makes mistakes, but this wasn’t a plot hole. This was an war on the intelligence of the audience. This so-called “plot twist” wasn’t a twist, oh no no. It was cheap trickery and whoever thought of the idea should be ashamed and perhaps tortured.
The son, Robbie, lives even though he goes to war and you get a happy old family reunion with hugs and joy all around. That would have been dandy, although it is sappy and sentimental, I could have lived with that. Even if they showed him going off with the soldiers in the beginning when he wanted to “fight with them and get back at the aliens” and have everyone thought that his platoon had died, but he someone how lived, okay I would have been fine. I would want an explanation at least but I would have been fine. HOWEVER (this is an exaggerated example), in theory they basically showed him getting stabbed in the face twenty times, shot thirty times, and lived through fourty grenades. Then in the end, to everyone’s surprise he is alive, in the same clothes he was wearing after being basically incinerated by the aliens. Okay, if you show him alive you better have a darn good excuse how he made it through what everyone thought he made it through. What do you get at this critical juncture in the film? Nothing, absolutely not one attempt at an explanation. Unforgiveable, I say.
Okay, some argue that in the book the narrator’s wife was thought to have been dead and in the end they had a reunion, an “Oh my god, I can’t believe you’re alive” type deal. Okay, fair enough. However, while not having read the book in many many years, I don’t think that they go into great detail about how she died. Correct me if I’m wrong please, but I assume they presumed she was dead, but I doubt H.G. Wells wrote out exactly how she died and then brought her back to life. If this is the case, then I apologize to Mr. Speilberg and whoever his writers are and my issue is with you Mr. Wells.
Even if they did gave a vague scenario in the book, such as: a building falling down, that she was believed to be in or a fire engulfed the area where she was at, then I would expect her to explain that she escaped the area or something to that effect. However, this is film and while it can be a bit unrealistic you have to be true to the principles that apply. If you are making a serious film where all the laws of nature apply then you have to respect those. For example: you can’t show a human being that can’t fly, floating around in mid-air. You are setting your realistic story on earth so therefore you can’t say gravity doesn’t exist, regardless of how much it will assist in turning your ending into a gay sappy love fest. Now in the case of this movie: if you show someone die or you show the area that they ran into and that area was TOTALLY engulfed in the biggest explosion ever, then you can’t say they are alive, let alone say they are alive and then give no explanation for them being alive without an additional scratch on them.
Another argument for being able to forgive this was that you shouldn’t care because how he lived was irrelevant because the story was about the family. If this is the case then he definitely should have died. If this movie was all about the family then Robbie should have never left his sister with a dad he didn’t trust in the first place. He should have stayed with her and protected her. You could argue that he was trying to protect her and everyone else by fighting the aliens, in essence killing two birds with one stone, but even he said “He was trying to get back at them and he had to see what was over the hill.” If that was his reason for going, like he himself stated, then he turned into the thing he hated most about his father, which was being neglectful to his kids. The argument could be he cared more for the welfare of humanity in general, which wouldn’t make him selfish. However, it wouldn’t be about family, it would be about sacrafice of yourself for the good of everyone else. So if he died it would have been fine. Although I don’t agree, you could then realistically aruge that he died a hero not only to his family but to the country and world as well. I don’t see how him living has anything to do with the story of his family. It made him nothing more than a arrogantly “brave” person who not only didn’t kill the machines, since the Earth itself killed them, but also abandoned his family because he was curious.
The last argument that I have a little respect for is that they had an explanation but they didn’t want to drag out the movie. Please, most of Speilberg’s movies are well over two-hours and this one didn’t even make it that long. A minute explanation of how he survived wouldn’t have “padded” the run-time and ruin the movie, but leaving it out almost made me lose all respect.
I respected and was engrossed in this movie so much up until the end. This was a dark movie that you know is going to draw criticsm for playing on the public’s fears and reasonably fresh memory of the events of 9-11. Regardless of this, they went ahead and pushed the envelope and didn’t let up. They knew parents would be very angry for taking their kids to this. This isn’t your typical summer blockbuster PG-13 family fare. This movie was also ballsy in that they didn’t show any Michael Bay-esque type war scenes. No large sweeping shots showing total destruction on a massive scale, even though the techology could have easily allowed for it. They stayed with Ray’s perspective and very rarely showed anything but that, besides a few early tv clips speaking of the mysterious lightning storms and a brief scene of news footage being shown to Ray. This movie was ambitious, dark, and took risks until the preposterous ending brought it all crashing down harder than the alien tripods.
This was the most asinine ending I have ever seen in a movie. I literally cannot think of an ending worse than this. I heard that the ending was bad, but I wasn’t expecting anything like this. I couldn’t even expect this from a hack like Uwe Boll (Alone in the Dark, House of the Dead), let alone Steven Speilberg.
There are other things I could complain about this movie. I didn’t even care though because the great and good overshadowed the mediocre and bad up until that point of the film. I still would have to recommend this movie highly, however prepare yourself for a painful, laughable, and (although Colin disagrees) studio ending.
If you disagree with my thoughts please let me know why I should accept this ending as anything more than a horrible attempt at cheap applause. Not only did this attempt fail, it fell flat on its face and induced unintentional laughs.
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