Originally published 7/5/2005
War of the Worlds
Director: Steven Spielberg
Writers: Josh Friedman and David Koepp, based on the novel by H.G. Wells
Producers: Colin Wilson and Kathleen Kennedy
Stars: Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Justin Chatwin, Tim Robbins, Miranda Otto
It doesn’t appear to be much of a war in War of the Worlds, and the characters would totally agree. Holed up in a basement with his shotgun, digging tunnels with a shovel, Ogilvy (Tim Robbins) gives it the proper label – “This is an extermination”. In the face of the skyscraper-tall tripods which have sprung out of the ground and begun lasering humanity into little poofs of dust all over the globe, he has already surrendered the war and is optimistically plotting a resistance movement against our new masters. The world is fighting back, though, just not in the most obvious of ways.
Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) has little use for proper labels, future plans or a global progress report. All he cares about, and by extension all this most unusual big-budget action picture chooses to focus unwaveringly on, is how to keep his family alive when every minute he is at the mercy of a chaotic populace and an incalculably better-equipped invading army.
We have not seen this in the likes of Independence Day – humanity is not going to rally behind some fortuitous special effects and one-liners to win the day. The military is all but useless and the rest of the citizenry is gripped by their own personal terrors. The world is coming apart in spectacular fashion, and Ray Ferrier knows he is nowhere near the smartest and most capable man even on his own street. He is what we have come to recognize as the Spielberg hero, the average Joe who does the best he can out of a love for something greater than himself. Although we do not see the childlike wonder and trusting warmth of E.T. or Close Encounters of the Third Kind, in this serious feast of apocalyptic popcorn we still see classic Spielberg filmmaking – wizardly with cinematic spectacle but never losing perspective on the emotional yearnings of our broken humans in the foreground.
When we open Ferrier is taking custody of his son Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and daughter Rachel (Dakota Fanning) for the weekend. His ex-wife Mary Ann (Miranda Otto) has little faith in Ray’s ability to monitor the brood; his job moving cargo crates on the docks keeps him up odd hours and he uses his kitchen for rebuilding muscle car motors. Robbie can barely stand him and refuses to call him “Dad”, and when Rachel asks what they are going to eat Ray tells her to call for food, falls asleep, and wakes up poking with suspicious distaste at the hummus she has ordered from the health food place. All through their conversation she is flipping around a big ribbon from school, and Fanning is eerily good for a juvenile actress to know she should flip it just hard enough to make it look like she is not thinking about it; so Ray can think he noticed it on his own, if he notices it. She wants him to notice it.
Here is where the casting of Tom Cruise as a blue-collar joshin’-with-the-boys sort falls apart. You cannot believe he has never heard of hummus. With that fitted leather jacket and well-practiced steely-devilish look in his eyes he has no fundamental connection to a guy who habitually comes in second in life. He cannot help portray being a Jersey deadbeat dad as a sort of hip alternative lifestyle choice, like next season the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog is going to be featuring designer countertop engines. Speilberg used to cast mere mortals like Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss for his heroes – in a more featherweight rollercoaster Cruise might have been ideal but in this unexpectedly brutal epic where loss is real he is adequate at best and jarringly-inappropriate at worst.
But once the dysfunctional family dynamics are established little time is wasted getting down to business. The first signs are low, mysterious, ominous, like the burbling introductory notes of John Williams’ restrained score after a long and unusual silence from the soundtrack. Storm clouds gather and winds howl. Electronic equipment frizzes out. Lightning hammers the same spot on the ground repeatedly. Ferrier locks his kids in the house and heads to the spot to see for himself.
And that’s when it begins.
It is never said outright that the invaders are from Mars, but whatever their origin they have had this scheme in mind for a long time – the machines have been buried, undiscovered, since before the dawn of civilization, and only now are being activated. It’s a vicious surprise assault and Spielberg’s knack with tweaking everyday imagery to make it unsettling (the ground caving, buildings at an intersection shuddering apart, a bridge twisting and snapping) has gut-level impact.
It’s a potent reminder – what works is not finding some bigger or better thing to explode and framing it so we can appreciate how much money you have spent, it’s putting you in a place where you can sense viscerally how scary it would be to be around it when it explodes.
Through quick thinking Ferrier manages to pile his family into the one working automobile in town, but his good ideas run out there. His instructions to Robbie to pack all the food in the house has only produced a crate full of Bran Flakes and Tabasco sauce, and with tripods rising up everywhere he has little idea where to take the kids except to try and reach their mother in Boston. And when he drives into a crowd of thousands of refugees – none of whom have a car and all of whom think their lot might be improved by getting a seat in a car – he is completely unequipped to deal with the horrifying mob scene that ignites. Who would be?
But this is the point. A hero who always knew how to come out on top would not have our sympathies in this story since scenes like this wouldn’t be allowed to play out organically, they would be skewed to orchestrate his triumph. Spielberg treats this War of the Worlds, which references and acknowledges not only H.G. Wells’ original book but Orson Welles’ landmark radio play and George Pal’s 1953 Technicolor version, with intimate seriousness.
The film’s lasting visual metaphor is a virtuoso trick shot by longtime Spielberg cinematographer Janusz Kaminski that dips in, out and around a fleeing minivan as Ferrier tries to calm his screaming children, explain what little he knows about what is happening (“Is it the terrorists?” Rachel whimpers fearfully), and steer his lurching vehicle around all the other stalled cars with mechanized death roaring behind him.
Dialogue overlaps and Ferrier’s eyes dart in every direction and there are no visible cuts for a jaw-dropping length of time – there is a hell-bentness to it, a frantic zip that echoes the speed with which this mammoth production was mounted (greenlit not 11 months ago when simultaneous holes appeared in the director and star’s schedules).
It’s a little sloppy even, this movie, sometimes leaving things unexplained or forgetting it has made the same point twice already, but overall it is with refreshing faith Spielberg that hitches the movie to this single troubled family unit and lets it fly.
No alien ever announces their master plan. News of the outside world is sparse and hysterical rumor. The life-or-death perils are as relentless as they are pitilessly arbitrary. no one in this situation wants to see Ferrier or his family personally hurt. To the aliens he is just another speck to be killed or harvested, and to his fellow man he’s just a threat to their seat on the ferry leaving town. But to his kids he’s their only hope, so he must be better than he is and pray that courage and fortune will see them survive.