The Tease of Things I Don't Need

Kill Rachel

(Once more, as it's opening week for a movie, I'll endeavor to avoid significant spoilers.)

Son Nick, his friend Zack and I went to see the Spielberg/Cruise project, War of the Worlds Saturday night. It was pretty much all I expected, so I wasn't disappointed -- though it's important to note that my expectations were kept close to the ground. It's a summer, holiday weekend movie, so I went in looking for a spectacle and was given a spectacle. Things go boom, things go bam, and people 'splode into steam and ash real cool-like. The alien machines are impressive, all the way down to the bellowing sound they make just before commencing the latest slaughter.

Cruise's character, Ray Ferrier, was almost exactly what I expected, as was his awakening/transformation through the course of the film, which rendered me immune to most of it. The scene involving the lullabies was really the only effective one for me in that vein.

I was pleased that there were really only a couple "what the f--- are you thinking?!" spots in the film, though that expands somewhat once one applies the subject to the screenwriter & director rather than the characters. At least a technical problem or two will come to mind for anyone watching it with a hint of consciousness, along with suspicious thoughts of the apparently magical conveyance which always finds a path amidst the chaos and survives an overnight holocaust. Digitally editing in Dick Van Dyke and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang might not be out of the question for a re-released expanded edition.

Spielberg gave the characters a reason to proceed in a given direction, which apparently spared them from a need to make some more rational decisions.

I'm guessing they decided to keep one element out of the aliens' arsenal because it was too "real world" in its potential for Spielberg & the studio to be comfortable including it in a violent fantasy. I don't know that Spielberg has it in himself to deliver a story with any real, dark consequences in it for any of the central characters anyway, which takes much of the punch out of any new projects. He himself recently admitted that he wouldn't even be able to make Close Encounters of the Third Kind end the same way were he to do it today, because he's become a family man in the intervening years and so couldn't have the father leave his family behind to join the aliens at the end of the movie.

The cameos by Gene Barry and Ann Robinson, the stars of the 1953 version of this story, were a nice touch.

Oh, as for the title line for this entry: Well, see the movie and then you tell me if that suggestion doesn't cross your mind at least once.

There are many little items to kick around about the movie, but that's best done off to the sides with people who have either already seen it or have no intention of catching it until it hits a cheap rental or cable.