reVIEW (20)
WAR OF THE WORLDS

With the latest Body Snatchers redux, The Invasion, about to hit theatres, I thought to look back at another recent alien invasion redux.

Steven Spielberg is the undisputed Popcorn Movie King: exhibits A and B—Raiders of the Lost Ark and Jurassic Park. (By Popcorn Movie, I mean a movie that’s fun, and fun to watch, doesn’t have any deep moral truths in it, but doesn’t insult the audience’s intelligence, either.)
And though there have been pretenders to the throne (Roland Emmerich: Independence Day and Godzilla; Stephen Sommers: The Mummy films and Van Helsing), and an upstart challenger (Kerry Conran: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow), Spielberg still sits squarely on the throne.
It is in the milieu of the Popcorn Movie where Spielberg’s admittedly manipulative brand of storytelling is most at home, the button-pushing and emotion-cueing, welcome, and in point of fact, expected by the Popcorn Audience.
Spielberg’s post-millennial redux of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds however, is not a Popcorn Movie.

The thing is, though War is by no stretch of the imagination, a horrible movie, it really isn’t all that fun to watch. In this updated, Americanized version of Wells’ tale, Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) is a divorced father in charge of his two children, Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and Rachel (Dakota Fanning), for the weekend. This, of course, the weekend that cruel, bloodthirsty aliens decide to put their millennia-old plan of territorial take-over into effect.
Taking a page from M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs, we are treated to the Everyman’s point of view of a global crisis.
In the past, protagonists of movies of this ilk were either military men or scientists, by virtue of their profession, at the forefront of the action. Alternately, if they were civilians, they would still invariably find themselves in the middle of things, reluctant heroes, pivotal roles thrust upon them, the fate of humanity in their hands.
In War, as in Signs, the main characters are on the far-flung periphery, their motivation, to weather the storm. To survive. Thoughts of “How are we going to stop this alien invasion?” dwarfed by questions like, “How do we get to Boston?” and “What’s my daughter going to eat if she’s allergic to peanut butter?”
Of course, given that this is a Steven Spielberg film, it’s got a whole lot of Hollywood in its celluloid DNA. It is, actually, rather like the Hollywood version of Signs. And I mean that in the best and worst possible ways.

It’s got all the gee-whiz-bang CGI explosions and property damage you could ask for (the sequences of the tripods in urban decimation mode are some of the most heart-stuttering, jaw-dropping scenes I’ve seen in any alien invasion movie), as well as characters so painfully Everyman, they’re generic.
What we know of Ray is the barest glimmer of a personality. All we know is, his children don’t really know who he is. Well, kids, to paraphrase Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, You are not alone.
Ray’s kids, meanwhile, are the Rebellious, Angry Teen and Screaming, High-Strung Little Girl. Not much hope there, either.
In the void of any honest emotional connection with the film’s characters, the audience is left to do the Everyman thing and project themselves onto the scenario, which sometimes works, and more often doesn’t.
But given the Hollywood genes in War, it’s no surprise that Ray, Everyman schmoe that he is, still somehow manages to, a) damage a tripod with an axe, when trained military forces couldn’t seem to dent it with heavy artillery, and b) fortuitously find some grenades just when they can most come in handy.

Which is not to say Spielberg’s War isn’t worth its price of admission: if cars and buildings going boom are your thing, hey, knock yourself out. And there is some truly evil camerawork (undoubtedly computer-aided) as Ray and kids make their exodus from the city on the freeway, courtesy of long-time Spielberg cinematographer Janusz Kaminski.
It’s just that, as I said, it isn’t really fun to watch.
It’s isn’t fun seeing people get vaporized, or worse, turn on each other for a vehicle. Now, if this had been some sort of anti-war Statement, then perhaps I would have seen the point. But it isn’t.
It isn’t a Popcorn Movie. It isn’t a moving story of real, tangible individuals in a crisis (as was Signs). It isn’t a Statement Film.
So, in the end, I have to ask, What is it, then?

Parting Shot: Are all Earth-invading species inherently stupid? In Signs, a race whose Kryptonite is water attacks a planet that is 75% water. In War of the Worlds, they planned millennia for this, and didn’t think to bring along some cold medicine? Haven’t these people heard of advance scouts?

(War of the Worlds OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

(The above review was previously published in 2005 under the title, “Sound and Fury.”)

ON THE LOT
Auditions Round 1

Opening with one of those interview montages Oscar loves so much, we get to hear some of the 50 would-be contestants of this reality show, as they talk about why they love movies so much, and this is the sort of effective intro sequence that hooks your audience. As one of them says, everyone loves to watch movies.
So, yeah, seeing the boulder roll after Harrison Ford, that was a Movie Moment, and we’ve all had that, whether it was with Raiders of the Lost Ark, or some other treasured film of our perpetual youth.
Sometimes, it isn’t just the movie that sears itself into your brain; sometimes, it’s the experience too. The anticipation of the night before, the trip to the theatre, the standing in line for the ticket; all this melds into one seamless memory of that movie.
All this is successfully conveyed in On The Lot’s opening, as is the reality that here are 50 dreams, 49 of which will be basically dashed by the end of this season.
And yes, other dreams may emerge over the course of the show, new opportunities present themselves, but let’s face it: 49 of these people taking the Universal tour will not get the dream that is inside their heads at this precise moment in time. But then again, that’s the nature of the beast that is reality television, and On The Lot has the potential to follow in Project Runway’s footsteps, in being that rare reality competition show about creative people where the audience can actually see what the judges are making pronouncements on (as opposed, say, to all those chef shows where someone at home can’t really taste the food, can they?).

And speaking of the judges…
Garry Marshall. Cool. He’s done some funny stuff, but I think more importantly, he seems (like his sister Penny) to be a really funny individual who doesn’t exude an air of Hollywood pretension.
Carrie Fisher. Way cool. I mean, Princess Leia. Come on! And, post-Star Wars, she proved she was an excellent writer (for the printed page and the screen).
And then there’s Brett Ratner. Wha?!
Note that they were introduced as Hollywood “legends” (or something to that effect).
Brett. Ratner.
Let’s just leave it at that, shall we?

At any rate, the first episode shows just how insane this show can be: the first challenge, given one of five loglines*, you’re to come up with a pitch for a feature-length film overnight, and present it to the judges the following day.
On very little or no sleep, the 50 finalists (from a field of over 12,000, from 33 countries) go through their pitches, and there are the overconfident ones, the hyperactive ones, the nervous one, the ones who are just all over the map.
14 don’t make it through, and for the 36 left, they’re told to form groups of three for the next challenge: write the script for, shoot, and edit a 2 and a half-minute short film… in 24 hours.
Insane!

And though it’s at that early stage of a reality show where you’re still getting a feel for the contestants** (harder still with shows of this sort where you’re privy to the preliminary elimination rounds, when there are far too many contestants to keep track of), I will say that they interestingly decide to present the second challenge and show us the initial part of it (ego clashes, two crews attempting to shoot at the same location at the same time), before coming to the end of the show, thus leaving the audience with a cliffhanger of sorts.
For a premiere episode, it’s got enough of a hook to make me come back for round 2, and though not as cleverly shot and edited as Project Runway, it kicks off to a promising start.

* Personally, my favorite one was the one where a man is watching television, when on the news, his picture is flashed on the screen, and he is reported to be either missing or wanted.

** There are of course, the ones who were focused on who actually got through the first round: Andrew Hunt (confident pitch) and Will Bigham (pointed out by Ratner as having very commercial ideas). Still too early for me to say whether I’d bet on either of these two guys, though Hunt did have a particularly strong and effective pitch delivery.

(Images courtesy of fromscripttodvd.com [Marshall], schwartzmanpr.com [Fisher], and yahoo.eonline.com [Ratner].)