“Staff Picks” is a deeper look into movies that we love here at Video CULTure. Each edition of this column will focus on a single film that we think you should check out, either for the first time or for a long-overdue revisit
By Patrick Bartlett (Twitter: @alleywaykrew)
If you look at the history of horror cinema, it tends to be most popular in times of higher cultural anxiety. For example, probably the most popular and almost certainly the most prolific was during the Cold War. The second really massive boom period was during the post-9/11 war on terror. It seems almost ironic that the filmmaker that managed to best capture the overarching anxiety of that time period and reflect it back cinematically would be Steven Spielberg. Sure, he started with horror. He did episodes of Rod Serling’s “Night Gallery”. He did “Duel”. He obviously did “Jaws”. However, by the early 2000s, he was more known for making films for the whole family. Even the scarier ones, like his 1993 adaptation of “Jurassic Park” were aimed as much at kids as they were at anyone else. His 2005 adaptation of “War of the Worlds” is not only a perfect encapsulation of what those times felt like but also a criminally underrated film in its own right.
Everyone reading this probably knows the history of “War of the Worlds”. Starting out as a novel by H.G. Wells, it’s most famous for its 1930s radio adaptation by Orson Welles that’s purported to have been mistaken for a real news report and a cause of mass panic in the nation. For a long time though, that’s kind of all it was. It was a book and then it was a cultural moment from a long time ago. Something famous bordering on infamous but certainly not part of the modern zeitgeist. However, after Tom Cruise and Spielberg had such a good time making “Minority Report” a few years previous, they wanted to work together again. Cruise presented a few ideas to Spielberg and the one that caught was “War of the Worlds”. On paper, it seems like such a cool idea that it seems fated to happen. Spielberg doing “War of the Worlds”, in 2005, with a massive budget and the best special effects money can buy. What the adaptation turned out to be was exponentially more interesting than what was likely intended. For anyone that was cognizant of the world in the early 2000s, I don’t know if any American ever really has felt the same as they did on September 10th of 2001 ever again. We were brutally attacked on our soil by people that wanted to end our way of life. The loss of life wasn’t even something one could completely get their head around. What happened that day wasn’t something anyone here ever thought could happen. Through that lens, “War of the Worlds” was so much more potent than it would had been in any other recent time period.
The plot of the film is essentially a modernized, Americanized version of the book (as H.G. Wells was British man in the 1800s and the book takes place in his native England). The adaptation takes the basic idea and goes from there. Moreover, it leans things out tremendously. Cruise plays a divorced dock worker named Ray Ferrier. Ray’s not a bad guy necessarily but definitely a selfish one. His two children, Rachel & Robbie, are being dropped off for the weekend by his ex-wife while she goes to Boston to visit her parents. It’s clear that the relationship that Ray has with his kids is strained but as soon as the characters and their relationships are established… what seems to be a massive lightning storm begins. All of the power for everything in sight is knocked out. The weirdest part is that almost all of the lightning strikes occurred in the same place, opening a hole in the middle of main street. Out of that hole comes a massive mechanical tripod that wouldn’t seem out of place in a Godzilla movie. The tripod begins to open fire and starts turning everyone in its path into ashes. Ray goes back for his kids, steals a car from a nearby garage, and starts off towards Boston with the plan of bringing his son and daughter back to their mother. On the way, the scale of the destruction created by whatever’s operating the gigantic machines becomes more and more clear. They’re wiping the slate clean. Any semblance of normal life in the beginning of the film is completely wiped away less than a half hour in. Everything just gets darker and bleaker as the death of everyone we hold dear seems like a foregone conclusion.
I liked “War of the Worlds” when it came out but rewatching it almost two decades later, I was really struck by the imagery that Spielberg creates. The 9/11 parallels are very clear and very deliberate. Watching Cruise’s character, a lone survivor, covered in the ash of his friends and neighbors is gut-wrenching. Sure, it’s a result of giant alien machinery but that’s literally all that makes it tolerable. It’s not far off from what everyone saw on CNN that September. Watching the world around the main characters get darker and darker (both literally and figuratively) as the aliens cause what seems like endless damage is harrowing on an immeasurable level when you think of that specific context of the time the film was released in. Legitimately scary times that we still haven’t completely recovered from as a society and maybe never will. The fact that Spielberg went from making stuff like “Close Encounters” and “E.T.” and took such a hard left turn with this film probably speaks to his mental state at the time as well. It’s because he’s such a skilled filmmaker that he could make something like this though. When I first saw the film, it just appealed to me on the level of a big piece of blockbuster filmmaking. Exactly what I was looking for when I heard Steven Spielberg was doing “War of the Worlds”. It’s why I’ve always remembered this movie fondly and it does absolutely still work on that level, even now. It’s an extremely thrilling piece of work. It’s also as allegorical as I’ve laid out and I’m not sure that anyone else could have pulled off what was managed to be pulled off here.
I will say that there is a thing with Tom Cruise where he’s such a natural movie star that when he’s playing a regular guy (such as a common dock worker in this case), it’s never completely believable. Some part of my brain is like “Ray Ferrier? Nope, that’s very much Tom Cruise.” It just can’t be helped. Especially in the time of this movie’s release when Tom Cruise was fairly ubiquitous. Cruise is a good enough actor that it doesn’t ever really pull you out of the movie though. I will say that much for him. It also has to be said that I never for one second didn’t buy the relationship with his on-screen kids. Part of that is Cruise and part of that is how good Justin Chatwin and especially Dakota Fanning are in their roles. Their chemistry is undeniable. They feel like a real family. The rest of the cast is really just glorified cameos though. Sure, Tim Robbins has a memorable turn as kind of a “tinfoil hat” guy that Cruise and Fanning take shelter with for a period (a period which is maybe the most tense sequences in the film overall)… but in the end, the reason it’s Tim Robbins is because everyone wants to work with Spielberg, so of course you’re going to have big stars in small parts.
“War of the Worlds” is a perfect snapshot of a very specific time in American history. The courage of everyone involved using something as classical as “War of the Worlds” to reflect what was going on at the time can’t be overstated. To me, it seems like this film has never been as respected as it should be. It’s a shame really. If you look past the fact that it’s a big Hollywood blockbuster, it’s a far more interesting a film than it had to be. Its importance becomes even more obvious when you observe other blockbusters Spielberg made after the ’90s. If you’re paying close enough attention, it’s a night and day difference when you’re getting a fully engaged Spielberg versus one going through the motions. Blockbuster filmmaking is something he’s long since mastered. It’s a mountain he’s climbed so many times. It’s old hat. As such, you know when he really cares about a project he’s bringing to the screen and when he doesn’t. It’s unmistakable. This is one of the ones where he swung for the fences and we all reap the rewards. “War of the Worlds” is maybe not the film that anyone involved will be remembered for but is far more meaningful than it’s given credit for and truly is an important piece of 2000s cinema.
To find out where this film is available to stream, click here: Just Watch