So, I saw War of the Worlds last night… My bro’, Tim works projection at the Camera Theaters and he was test running the film to make sure he didn’t splice it upside down which would make the premiere audience “boo” him, so he invited me down to watch the test run. Hey Tim… It wasn’t even anamorphic wide-screen WTF! War of the fucking Worlds!!! Not wide-screen… Fuckin’ lame… I shoulda booed you.
I even brought a real live girl to the showing… The boyz were out a couple weeks ago and we all ended up meeting and chatting with these chicks… then a week later, while out, we saw them again and were hanging out with them. On the bar TV, the War of the Worlds preview was playing with the bridge blowing up and ship flipping over and I said, “Ooh! I want to see that!!” and one of the girls said, “Me too!” We’d already chatted enough to be comfortable with each other, so, I ended up asking her if she wanted to go and she said, “Sure!”
So, we went, but I didn’t know her enough to flip up the armrest, so I just kept looking for a signal if this was a just a friend date, or a date date, like if she was interested in me or not… All I know about women’s signals are what I’ve seen in the movies, where girls walk up to guys and start making out with them… Hey! In real life, when a girl is kinda curled up and leaning against the opposite armrest as far away from me as possible without being in the next chair over, does that mean she’s interested or not? Hmm. eh, whatever.
So, the movie.
War of the Worlds, as you all know, is an old H.G. Wells story that was written in 1898. For 1898, War of the Worlds was pretty mind-blowing with the mechanical tripods, heat rays, the mysterious red weed, etc. Shit, the tank hadn’t even been invented yet, and H.G. Wells was coming up with giant mechanical tripods burning things up with heat rays.
With that, The 2005 War of the Worlds stays somewhat true to H.G. Wells vision of the story… While it’s set in the current day, the invasion is still Mechanical tripods shooting heat rays and destroying everything in their path and planting the mysterious red weed. The movie was indeed a spectacle… I dig Spielberg’s style of directing, but the the story and writing… eh… I’ve got some issues with that. I’ll be nice and won’t blow any secrets or revelations for those who haven’t seen it…
Now part of me loves the idea of paying homage to H.G. Wells vision of the story… But, remember, He wrote it in 1898. And the other famous War of the Worlds movie was made in 1952. So, for those days, big ass mechanical tripods and camera eyes on extension arms were pretty fuckin’ far out! But technogizometry has come a long, long way since 1898 and even a long way since 1953… So when I’m watching Tom Cruise in a basement and the camera arm is extending into the basement, and all Tom has to do to avoid being detected is stay behind and out of view of the alien camera, I start thinking, “Why don’t these superior aliens who just wiped out a bunch of cities and a bunch or armies use infrared sensors to see through walls, or maybe ultrasound to hear breathing or heartbeats, or some other superior sensing device that I can’t even imagine because these aliens are so far beyond us…” So, while Spielberg was able to make a lot of suspense with the script, if your trying to sell this as the big summer super spectacular blockbuster event of 2005, you writers need to think up some new shit that makes me go “WHOA!!!”like H.G. Wells did with his story back in 1898. Something better than, “Ooh, the aliens have an extendable arm camera, not even a wireless hovercam, I’m sooooo impressed.” The friggin’ NFL has better cameras.
The effects, of course, if you’ve seen the previews, are fuckin’ awesome, but I was hoping for some updated alien shit that was beyond crap I could imagine, I was hoping for something fresh, new, and completely unexpected from the alien invasion point of view, not the same 1953 movie updated with bigger explosions.
Gripe two, too much Tom Cruise running around and not enough global catastrophe… When the previews show all that shit exploding and blowing up, you better have a lot more shit exploding and blowing up in the movie, there was a lot of human drama with Tom Cruise and his family, and I liked that too, but I wanted equal time for shit exploding, getting heat rayed, and blowing up… After the initial alien attack, the rest of the movie was mainly Tom Cruise and his family on the run. Kind of like “The Day After Tomorrow, where they sold that movie on the previews of just complete catastrophe, and in the movie, the catastrophe hits in the middle, then ends and the next hour of the movie is just watching people hiking through the sno-oorrrrreeeeee…
So, War of the Worlds was entertaining, it kept my interest all the way through, Spielberg’s still an awesome director, it’s just the story and writing that will sadly keep this one from being a true, fresh classic in my book.
Back to my date, after the movie, I asked her, “So did you like it?”and she replied, “Eh, too much Science Fiction.”(By the way, there can never be too much science fiction), and I replied, “But the name of the movie is War of the Worlds, and you saw the previews, and you were excited about it, what did you think you were going to see?”and she said, “Eh, I don’t like the aliens.” I’m pretty sure she just wanted to see Tom Cruise run around. hmph. But I suppose I can’t blame her… I’ve seen a couple crappy Angelina Jolie movies just to see her run around.
So War of the Worlds didn’t suck, but it wasn’t super awesome either. But no worries, I have my zombie movie coming up tomorrow which I’m going to see which I’m sure will restore my faith in movies. And I’m not bringing any girl to this one, the girl I brought to War of the Worlds was wearing something that smelled pretty on her and it kept attracting me and distracting me, yet she wasn’t making any other indication that she was interested in me, keeping me constantly wondering, “Do I make a move, yeah, no, yeah, no, yeah, no…”Because of course if you do make a move, and she’s not interested, which, odds are that she is indeed not interested and she’s just their as “friends”, then the rest of the night is awkward and the movie’s now fucked up for both of us. I don’t need some broad distracting me while I’m trying to concentrate on people getting their intestines ripped out of their body and getting their flesh bitten off, not unless she’s going to flip the armrest up and grab my arm or anything else for security against the scary zombies, and since that ain’t gonna happen, I’m going to ride this one alone and enjoy the movie with no distractions.
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