The War of the Worlds

Wow...

I picked this up at the local Wal-Mart after reading online that it had been released early. I've been following this online for some time, and just had to buy the film.

Wow...

I guess the thing that really struck me was the editing, or lack thereof. Time and again, characters (usually The Narrator and whoever he is with) are shown walking...and walking...and walking. I am not an editor, but I do know that you can cut between someone leaving point A to show them arriving at point B. There is no need to show almost the entire journey! Wow...

I actually ended up feeling somewhat sorry for the actors involved in this. They seem to have been given no direction as to what to do during scenes other than to look scared or look happy, depending on what action was to be added at a later date.

Wow...

Why it was decided to do almost all the effects using CG is beyond me. Even ILM still employs miniatures sometimes. One of the most distracting uses of green screen in this film is the constant rushing about of (according to the end credits) the same group of people representing the citizenry of different towns and cities, including London. At times these folk are coming and going with no regard as to the angle of the shot or the distance they are from the camera. In one shot in London, there appear to be at least two men over six feet tall walking just behind the narrator's brother (played by star Anthony Piana without his distracting mustache). Not since GETTYSBURG have I seen such a fake piece of facial hair.

Wow...

Why Timothy Hines talked up this film the way he did is beyond me. It is a turkey, plain and simple. On the plus side (at least for me) it has provided some of the most genuine laugh-out-loud bits of hilarity I have seen in quite a while.

After hearing the word of mouth of just how bad this film is I took the plunge and bought the DVD. That said everything previously mentioned about this film is true. For a film that claimed to have a budget in the millions it just does not show on the screen at all. The list of problems with the film could drag on forever. Chief amongst them is the film is simply too long. It dragged on for a few minutes short of 3 hours. Nearly an hour probably could have been cut off the run time had the editor simply removed the overabundance of scenes dealing with nothing more then the main character wandering around aimlessly.

Secondly, as many had pointed out from the "trailers", the special effects are anything but special. The tripods looked OK in a few shots here and there but beyond that everything was grade-Z 1970's or 1980's quality. Probably the worst effects of all were the horses, which stiffly tottered back and forth as they moved. The heat ray effects were laughable, as people were reduced to bones that somehow were still able to flail about without any muscles. Also pitiful was the Thunderchild sequence, in which the Thunderchild, described in the book as an ironclad ram, looked nothing of the sort. Instead it resembled a World War 1 era destroyer, complete with deck guns (which fired but had no visible crew), and torpedo tubes.

The colors and backgrounds were just as bad as the effects. Most laughable of all was a scene early on in which the main character and his wife go for a nighttime stroll and he points out Mars to her in the sky. Well, the sky is black, but the views of the characters and the landscape around them is broad daylight. There is also a very sharp demarcation between the real landscape, bathed in full sunlight, and the fake black night sky with overly large fuzzy stars. To detract even further, the color of the scenes made no sense. In some they are bathed in orange light. In others green light. In still others it's blue light. In some instances the outsides are orange lit but the interiors of houses are green or blue. The frame-rate and camera is very shaky, giving everything a stuttering look.

Finally, the acting is overall sub-par. One man portrays two characters who's sole difference was one lacked a mustache. This led to some confusion at times as to who was who and where they all were. The English accents, even to American ears, are outrageous.

In summary, this movie could very well make a claim to being the worst film released in recent times. I have not seen Gigli or some of the other recent flops but this one, because of it's poor quality in every respect, must easily be worse then anything that mainstream Hollywood has put out. I would not be surprised if the movie makes it to the bottom 10 or 20 in the IMDb rankings. It's a pity that Mystery Science Theater is not still around.

Is it possible to give a movie NO STARS? I suppose not. However many stars IMDb displays this just think zero and you'll get my drift. Director and photographer Timothy Hines didn't have much of a budget compared to Spielberg's Herculean effort with the same material (rumored to be the most expensive movie ever made), but that need not be an insurmountable handicap. I've seen some wonderful work done on a comparative shoestring ("Soldier and Saints" is a recent example). With hard work, integrity and, above all, talent it is certainly possible to realize a faithful rendition of Wells' novella -- and at fraction of what was spent by Dreamworks on its "War of the Worlds". Unfortunately, Hines failed in all these departments. Even if he had had Spielberg's budget and Tom Cruise signed for the lead his movie would have stunk just as badly as this barnyard animal he's foisted on us.

Primarily, Hines seems unable to tell a story. Thanks to digital video technology he can record images and sound, but he shows little aptitude for assembling a narrative with what he records. A guy walks down a country lane, a lot. He talks badly aped Received English to some other guy. Then he walks down the same lane, only shot from the back this time to show he's returning -- clever, eh? Walking and talking, for nearly an hour that's all that happens. OK, I'll grant that one extended excursion from the main character's house to the impact site on Horsell Common to show that it's a considerable distance from one place to the other might be useful (a first-year film student could storyboard a more economical and more aesthetical establishing sequence than this, btw), but half a dozen times? Back and forth, back and forth, et cetera, et cetera with some yakkity-yak in between. Remarkable. The only explanation for this surfeit of redundancy other than total artistic ineptitude is a desire to pad out thirty minutes of wretchedly amateurish CG works into something that could be offered as a feature-length film. Finally the Martian fighting machines appear and the walking and talking becomes running and talking, or shrieking. Later we get staggering and wailing for dessert.

Thankfully, much of the dialogue is lifted straight from H.G. Wells' text; else we'd have no idea what is going on. But is it not the whole point of cinema to illuminate a text, to realize what words alone can't convey? If a film relies on dialogue or monologue to tell us what we see or how to feel, why bother? Why not do a radio play? Orson Welles made himself a household name doing just that. However, Hines thinks he's a filmmaker, so he's content to mouth the words and swallow the meaning.

Secondly, Hines was able to buy some CG effects of a sort for his movie, but he has no idea how to use them. Now I for one have no unquenchable sweet tooth for eye candy. I believe good science fiction cinema doesn't need dazzling technical effects. Some really potent Sci-Fi's have flourished on virtually none at all. But "The War of the Worlds" as film requires a certain baseline effort. Wells tells a story that hinges on things can be seen and heard and even smelled. The effects don't need to be complex; they can even be crude (e.g. fighting machines on wires gliding over miniature streets as seen in the George Pal/Byron Haskins 1953 version), but they must be handled well. Unfortunately Hines' effects are both crude and incompetent – tripod fighting machines higher than a cathedral spire stomp around making a noise like a pogo stick bouncing on linoleum – Martian squidoids even though oppressed by four times the gravity of their native world scurry and flit about without perceptible effort – skeletons totally denuded of flesh and muscle writhe and scream -- the same damn horse and buggy greenscreens its way across the foreground a dozen times (flipped left for right occasionally in hope that we might not notice) – and on ad nauseum. Crude technique is forgivable. So you have a CG fire effect that's less than convincing? Fine, we can work around that. Just don't use it too often and only show glimpses of it. That stomped woman sequence looks more like a crushed plum? Throw it away. It's not necessary. You say your Martian flyer looks like a toy on a string? If you must use it, go ahead, but please don't show it twice! But no, Hines won't listen. We get the worst looking stuff used again and again. Gotta get those 180 minutes somehow, boy.

Next we have acting, or more precisely too much acting. Whether in a speaking role or just paid to die on queue everybody in this film is acting his little heart out. Evidently Hines thinks he's getting a bargain -- More fleeing in terror over there! You, quaking behind that tree, let's have a real conniption fit this take. You call that writhing in agony? Nonsense, my grandmother can writhe better -- Nevertheless the cast as a whole and individually stink. They aren't even good amateurs. But this needn't prove fatal. Many a good movie has been made with rancid acting. That's what directors are for. And editors. Which brings up another point… Who the hell let Tim Hines edit this cheese factory? If America's butchers were as adept at meat cutting as Hines is at film cutting your next hamburger would be all fingers and no beef. In spite of the near three-hour running time there is lots of stuff missing from this movie -- not sequences, but single frames, creating a herky-jerky effect that's nauseating to watch. Maybe Hines intention was to simulate the effect of a hand cranked cine camera of the 1890's. If he was I can say he doesn't know how to do it.

I am currently sitting here, forcing myself to finish this. I figure I blew 6 bux on the VHS, might as well suffer for it. I remember about 4 or 5 years ago doing a search on the internet for "War of the Worlds" cause of the rumors of the Spielberg movie at the time, and I missed the old TV series from the early 90's. The website make it out that this was a multi-million dollar budget rendition of the classic book. It was going to be a "perfect translation". Perfect CRAP is more in tune with this film.

First off, the video on this movie was glitched! It looked as if I was watching the Full Motion Video from an old mid-90's PC or Playstation CD-Rom video game. Sadly enough, the color quality was similar. The acting made Shatners classic "dramatic pause" look damn near Shakespearean in quality. The CG rendering of various scenes was horrendous, and green screen sequences were worse than those seen in old Dukes of Hazardd scenes.

Secondly, it is slow and terribly drawn out. I sat thru 45 minutes of the video (no promo's at the beginning) before the cylinder actually Opened to reveal the first alien. After that, the alien was a terribly constructed CG squid. I am now an hour into it and the most of the alien weaponry I have seen is a spinning silver disk (crappy down even) attached to a mechanical arm. The dramatic scenes are murdered with overly done instrumental's. The last thing on that, for an alien invasion in the turn of the century 1900's NO ONE is concerned for their life. It's like they have no concept. Even though media was slow, word of mouth spreads fast and people would have known. The "illusion" of day and night was shoddy at best. Simply changing the color around the people to purple, blue or green does not signify NIGHT TIME. Perhaps some lighting and actual night time shoots would have given a MUCH better illusion. THere is a lot of wasted sequences throughout the film of just watching the "hero" gallop around or walk down silly roads. Get on with the film. I know how people get around, you do NOT need to be so in-depth.

Now, finally an hour and 5 minutes into the film and they show the alien machines. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers had better looking effects. Even the skeletons of vaporized humans looked as if animated by a freshman high school computer app class student. The animations do NOT match up to the scenery at all.

In closing folks, if you want "The War of the Worlds", do one of four things. 1) Watch the 1953 original, 2) watch the early 90's TV series, 3) wait for Spielberg's rendition to be released shortly, OR 4) Read the frikkin book (something we all probably did in elementary English class). AVOID THIS MOVIE. IT IS A WASTE OF YOUR MONEY.

Normally when I write a review for a movie online, it is for one of three reasons. Either, I have found something exceptionally lacking in a film that otherwise would have been excellent, I feel that the public's perception of a film before viewing it is inaccurate for a number of reasons, or I believe that the purpose or message of a film needs to be clarified or explained with the help of other reviewers. While all of these reasons may appear to be somewhat negative, I find that writing a review that lavishes nothing but praise and statements such as, "This is one of the best films of all time!", does nothing to enlighten a potential viewer on its merits and downsides, nor does it often give reasoning as to why a movie is so good, which should be the point of the review in the first place. With that being said, War of the Worlds is nothing more than a hurried, incompetent attempt at a money grab; piggy-backing its loathsome carcass on the multi-million dollar advertising campaign of the film of the same name directed by Steven Spielberg. Many people will buy this DVD in anticipation of the summer blockbuster and many more poor souls will buy it looking for more material on the same subject. This movie is not even "so bad" that it becomes funny or endearing, rather the audience will be so unbelievably disappointed as to reach the point of anger. Now with most of the insults out of the way, allow me to give some arguments as a warning to those more fortunate than I.

Judging from the cover and the lack of any publicity for this film (I found it as SAM's Club for 8 bucks), I assumed that the cast would be no-names and that the special effects would be nothing too spectacular. Check. This is not a big deal for me, as I find a large budget and an over-reliance on big name stars and SE can diminish an otherwise decent movie. I also did not expect to be blown away by great dialog or a moving score. Check again. What I did hope for was an actual serious attempt at a classic theme and a few alien/battle scenes.

Now, as per IMDb's policy any spoilers must be announced in advance, no matter how small, so here is fair warning. The movie opens with a lot of inane small-talk, followed by a trip to an observatory to look at a red dot. Seriously, it is a pictures of a red dot in a tube. It is very hard to describe every little issue in depth, but by the end of the first ten minutes, the combination of shaky camera-work, spliced scenes, and a LOT of walking begin to frustrate the viewer. However, the costuming is surprisingly not bad and the hope that the pods will reveal something mysterious keeps you going. The next 30 minutes basically go as follows: one of the main characters walks to one of the pods, he looks at the pods and talks to another main character about looking at the pod and it may be hot. They both walk back to town. These walks aren't two seconds or added so that dialog may be exchanged. They are twenty seconds or more and are there simply to add filler to an already bloated three hour movie. In a particularly grueling scene, the main character is shown looking at a pod, then he is shown pacing and panting, then he looks at the pod, then he takes a one minute walk through a field to town, then comes in to town and walks into a building, then he has a cup of coffee and says "Thank you Mary" to a random maid that serves him coffee, then he puts down the coffee and walks out the building, then he walks a minutes through the field and back to the pod. I apologize for the extreme run-on sentence, but it is perhaps the best way to summarize this entire film. Characters speak way too long about mundane things, they walk a lot, they send other people to walk, the camera fluctuates between high speed and slow speed, but for no dramatic effect, simply the camera man is a sophomore at Tech somewhere. The editing is mind-bogglingly bad. People actions make little sense. For instance, when the professor goes to a farmer's house and says that he needs the farmer to give him a ride to town, the farmer stutters and paces around. When the professor says that there is a pod and that men might be trapped inside, the farmer locks him in a shed only to see the professor grab a pitchfork and open the weak shed a second later. Nothing of any consequence of course comes from this entire scene, as the professor runs into the main character a moment later so they can begin their afternoon walk. The entire film feels as if someone at one point had a good idea about making a film, but absolutely no idea how to put that in motion. I have seen better high school video productions. Finally, the special effects are laughable and do nothing to advance the story. I get the feeling that the director really wanted this film to become somewhat of a cult classic of campy garbage. However, it is so awful in technical aspects, and in sheer common sense that it only makes people mad. Avoid this film at all costs.