I didn't think Stephen Spielberg could make a movie this bad

[solarbird]

spazzkat put the Spielberg War of the Worlds on his Netflix queue a couple of months ago; it showed up today, and he and annathepiper started watching it while I was out. Picoreview: "My god - it's full of crap."

Damn, this is a seriously, seriously bad movie. I'm not just talking ordinary bad - I'm talking Mission Impossible: 2^* bad. It isn't even edited coherently; it's like Spielberg thought, "okay, this one has just turned out to be poo," slapped a bunch of scenes together, and kicked it ass-first out the door.

If not for some reasonably good disaster pr0n, I'd absolutely nominate this as a suck-off candidate. Every character is incredibly annoying. Every character is incredibly stupid, including the aliens, who apparently are actually parakeets, as is demonstrated by their being confused by mirrors. The aliens have global shields around them except when they don't, so that you can run up to them and go BOO!, but do again so that when you throw the grenade, it bounces back off. The metapolitics are grotesque enough that I don't even actually want to think about them, and what, exactly, does Spielberg hate about 10 year old girls, anyway - other than, apparently, everything?

There's not one surprise in this film - other than, maybe, how much it sucked; in fact, I would have to say that any surprise count would have to be negative, as I actually did a four-beat countdown to the "click" moment in one particularly tedious, but intended to be suspenseful, scene. Also, I don't think I was supposed to laugh uncontrollably at the car ferry incident, but I did, particularly when the sedan o' family plunged straight into the river at Tom^**. Man, that part was a fucking laugh riot.

Sadly, that was the last fun this pile had to offer. You don't even get to watch any of the characters you hate - which is to say, all of them - die. Even the obviously most dead jackass magically reappears hale and whole at the end, hundreds of miles away. Damn you, Stephen Speilberg, for crushing my dreams of Robby on fire!

Bah. I've wasted too many perfectly good words on this shitfest. I think I'll go floss out my brain.

^* I didn't think John Woo could make a movie that bad either. I'm 0 for 2 on these things. And no, it's not an irrational hatred of Tom Cruise. It's a purely rational hatred of Tom Cruise. No, wait, I'm just being glib. That has nothing to do with these films sucking harder than a five dollar wharf whore on swing-shift; it's merely the icing on the top.

^** If this and Battlefield Earth are what Scientology does to filmmaking, I want to know where the hell the MPAA is. Fucking useless bastards! Why the hell aren't they protecting me from copies of this?

Comments

[darkphoenixrisn.livejournal.com]

I labeled it Bore of the Worlds. It's going on my worst films of 2005 list.

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

Another suck-off candidate, which I may be scoring a copy of:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/bigtitch/88398.html

[epawtows.livejournal.com]

Admittedly, it *did* follow the book closer than a lot of other big-budget movies based on classic SF books have (Starship Troopers? I, Robot?). But, I agree, it wasn't good for much, other than as a mindless action/adventure movie.

I liked the looks of the war machines: they had a good Wells/steampunk feel to them. I hate the flying-wing things the 1950's version used.

I really liked the battle with the Thunderchild in the book; Wells managed to get in a "the humans win one" scene without being gratuitious, or disrupting the feel of the the story. It irks me that it was mutated into a ferry tipping over.

[chipmunck.livejournal.com]

RYan and I cut a lot of holes through the movie.. but being that I have a critical eye on editing and camera I have to say this was full of those "money shots" where Tom turns around w/ astonishment on his face, or any other sort of looks, and the camera zoomed in. It was quite funny after a while.
I reallllly want to get the movie, cut out ONLY those scenes and edit them together. :)

[rmd.livejournal.com]

also, it immediately won the "most annoyingly blatant product placement" award for this past summer's movies. (customer, of course, was tivo)

[kvogel.livejournal.com]

I liked the machines and their hoots. The death beams were kind of silly.
The rest of it stank on ice. Illogic plot elements, crummy acting, unsympathetic characters, illogic plot elements, poorly integrated "homage" scenes (liked the idea, but not the exicution), wrong-headed or just not paying attention editing, illogic plot elements.
The whole ferry scene stank of "wow, what a neat idea for an action sequence" which had no connection with the pervious scenes.

[poodlgrl.livejournal.com]

Have you seen the original? Eric and I were in Hollywood early winter of 2000, and it was playing at the newly renovated Egyptian. They actually had a couple of the original cast members too and some of the original props, etc.

[quen-elf.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was pretty shite. Why did you watch it? :) I only went to see it because the other guy from work wanted to. Can't believe it was high in the DVD sales charts here.

To be fair I think part of the shiteness may be from the original story. I mean it's basically just a lot of running around from scary monsters then 'oh, they're dead'. Not the most involving plot.

It's possible that another part of the shiteness may be from the speed at which the film was made. Wired had a feature about it, how it was being done incredibly quickly - for an effects-heavy blockbuster - in order to fit in between other commitments or something. (This involved using lots of whizzy new technology, hence Wired story.)

Ferry scene was a nice action sequence though :) All the human-against-human stuff could have made for an interesting story, shame it wasn't this one.

[kieri.livejournal.com]

It really was a piece of crap. And weirdly, of all the things that annoyed me the most, it was how a bloody EMP went off and knocked out all the electronics...except for the guy's camcorder, which we zoomed in on to get a nice shot through the viewfinder.

Totally rancid. The MPAA should do that thing that the DMV does when you get a speeding ticket -- points on your license directly proportional to the crappiness of your films. Tom Cruise would never work again.

[starsongky.livejournal.com]

I put it on for knitting background a couple of weeks ago. The whole thing was "Ahh, run! Whew, we're safe now. Crap, no we're not, run some more!" I kept wondering when the actual story would get started, then it's rolling credits and it never did get to the story part. Hell, the "making of" extras were more interesting than the movie.

Maybe he was making it for MST3K...

[(Anonymous)]

The tripods were cool(tho' a three legged walking machine isn't a good design-four or six would be better)..and odd bits that stuck close to the book(communicating with air horns instead of radio or some such)..other than that, the best you could hope for is for a resurrected MST3K to get ahold of it..Scott