H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds -- 2005 -- R

Not to be confused with the Spielberg version that came out the same month, this film is from a company called The Asylum that works with a bit of a lower budget than that of a small, undeveloped country like Spielberg tends to have at his disposal. 

Ok, on the whole, it was no where near as bad as a lot of people tend to rant on about. Sure, it isn't perfect, but those films are very few and far between, and we could punch holes in the Godfather if we wanted to. But I enjoyed the film as a whole. Most of the detractors of this film either never watched it, or for some reason rely on special effects to tell a story.

The good parts. Gotta start with the good. I felt the main character, George, was decently rounded for the genre. We understood his journey, and could follow the plot very easily. He hooked up with the priest (pastor?) Victor, who was also a well thought out character and in some respects better rounded than George was. Kerry seemed a bit thrown in to give George someone to talk to for awhile, but on the whole, he was ok. Kind of threw me off when they separated. 

The effects were by no means distracting and did not take away from the experience at all. If nothing else, it showed what the company is capable of. Many of the sets give a good appearance to a big budget disaster movie, so well done there. 

The writer/director seems to have a bit of a penchant for inside jokes. George Herbert, for example, as in Herbert George Wells being one of those. 

My prime beef was with the driving point of the plot. It just seemed a bit upside down. Guy's wife and child go to D.C. while he stays at home. Bad stuff happens, and he wants them to stay put while he goes to them. I do like what one of the characters brought up in that it would make more sense for him to stay home while they came to him. He travels in the hope that they will be waiting for im on the step of the Lincoln Memorial in the capital of the superpower of the free world. I know it make for a cool end shot to see D.C. rampaged, but it just seems that it would have been a easier to swallow premise for him to be away from home and they waiting for him to arrive there. Now, the home could have been in Washington, D.C. to still achieve those end shots, and actually most of the film would have played almost exactly how it played, but the overall feeling would have been "I have to get home to them" as opposed to "I will meet them on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial if she got my message during the 30 seconds of time when the power worked and I was able to get through to her. I have faith she'll wait there." 

I'm also not a big fan of blind coincidence. A lot of these coincidences could have been easily rectified with a setup somewhere else in the film before the big use of it occurred. 

The chances of someone catching something through a telescope without actually spotting it first is very small. Telescopes are very difficult devices to use well, and someone just happening to look through one at the exact spot at the exact time something just happened to pass in front of the lens's field of vision is hard to swallow. Better would have been spotting something in the sky, repositioning the telescope, and then looking at it. This would also have helped the hard to accept "I think I'll look through a telescope (generally accepted as a night device with the exception of peeping Toms) during the day." 

The power surge thing was a bit of a strange point since it allowed for some coincidences. When the power comes on, the phone instantly rings. This means that the power is surging at the same time at points hundreds of miles apart or that person just happened to call at the exact moment the power would be back on at home. 

One way to have gotten around this one as a coincidence would have been the flip-flopping of the plot that I mentioned earlier. Another way that would be ok with the existing plot would have been for the caller to mention that their power just came back on or something. It's weak, but it would have worked. 

The boat was a bit of a strange find as well. It was the only one on that shore (wherever that shore was), no one was using it, and Kerry disappeared before George got in it. Also, I got the idea that we were in North Carolina, and him going to D.C. means he has to travel North. The only river in the world that travels North is the Nile, meaning George put himself a night in the wrong direction by riding this boat. 

The setup would have been to mention where they are and why there were boats here. Also would have worked if more people were taking these boats and it woudl have helped to see Kerry get separated from him. 

The final big coincidence was remeeting Kerry and the Lieutenant turned Major. The chance of him running into them after the path he'd taken was incredibly microscopic. Add to this that the scene really did not serve to drive the plot forward at all, but give a finality to Kerry's character, something that (given his end) was rather unnecessary from a dramatic standpoint. I could see a single point to that scene, and that is Samuelson's speech about the scientist's winning the war, not the infantry. This speech could have been in the first meeting very easily and this later scene trimmed right out. I would have trimmed it just to get away from the coincidental factor. 

As I understood the rabies angle, by injecting this into that one alien (another coincidence the character was praying for, since they had no way of knowing whether they'd see an alien close enough to actually inject it), they might somehow kill off the entire invading force? Unless every alien in the world were linked together somehow, this would not have worked at all. Better to stick with the book reasoning and have our native bacteria wipe them out. Sure, it isn't dramatic, and it doesn't involve our main character actually doing it, but it's an adaptation and in the book, so people more easily accept that. 

A few other things that got to me. Sometimes the aliens shot people, sometimes they dragged them off. There would need to be some kind of reasoning behind their choices. Otheriwse, it's easier to just pick one or the other. The weird alien acid slime that did in Victor was out of nowhere as well. I got the purpose (I think), but it just seemed like it was thrown in. 

I did like the green death mist thing; that was cool. 

Ok, there it is. At the end of the film, I did find it to be a good job. It's actually worth watching as long as you take it on its own merits and don't draw comparisons between it and the bigger budget version with Tom Cruise.