Tom Cruise, whether he knows it or not, really needed War of the Worlds to be a smash hit. I am not sure he is aware of the damage he has done to his own reputation in the last couple of months, but that wouldn’t matter AT ALL if the movie was a smash hit. Sorry, purists. That’s the breaks. We live in a capitalist society. Huge ASSHOLES have remained stars for DECADES because their films bring in the doe. It’s about the MONEY. All of that being said: Cruise needed this movie to be a huge hit, along the lines of … oh … Top Gun. A hit that could, conceivably, sweep away the last couple of months … so that suddenly all we can talk about is the MOVIE as opposed to his bouncing chimpy ravings. This is what really needed to happen, at this point in Cruise’s career. How quickly the mighty fall (but again – I’m not sure that he’s aware of how his star has fallen – at least not yet. He is now surrounded entirely by “yes” men – or to be more accurate: “yes” women. So I’m not sure reality is really getting in there yet.)….
So now it looks like the smash hit won’t happen. I’ve read a couple of reviews and while they are not hostile, or unremittingly negative (no, they couldn’t be. Spielberg is too good for that) – they certainly aren’t emanating “smash hit”. It will not be enough to sweep away the public perception that Tom Cruise is now legitimately insane, and either needs to shut UP, or just GO AWAY.
Ebert’s review is really interesting, I think. He gets caught up in the WHYS of the alien invasion, which – under the circumstances – is a really good question. He kind of can’t get past it, which is not a good sign for the film as a whole.
The problem may be with the alien invasion itself. It is not very interesting. We learn that countless years ago, invaders presumably but not necessarily from Mars buried huge machines all over the Earth. Now they activate them with lightning bolts, each one containing an alien (in what form, it is hard to say). With the aliens at the controls, these machines crash up out of the Earth, stand on three towering but spindly legs and begin to zap the planet with death rays. Later, their tentacles suck our blood and fill steel baskets with our writhing bodies.
To what purpose? Why zap what you later want to harvest? Why harvest humans? And, for that matter, why balance these towering machines on ill-designed supports? If evolution has taught us anything, it is that limbs of living things, from men to dinosaurs to spiders to centipedes, tend to come in numbers divisible by four. Three legs are inherently not stable, as Ray demonstrates when he damages one leg of a giant tripod, and it falls helplessly to the ground.
This paragraph I think is particularly interesting:
Does it make the aliens scarier that their motives are never spelled out? I don’t expect them to issue a press release announcing their plans for world domination, but I wish their presence reflected some kind of intelligent purpose. The alien ship in “Close Encounters” visited for no other reason, apparently, than to demonstrate that life existed elsewhere, could visit us, and was intriguingly unlike us while still sharing such universal qualities as the perception of tone. Those aliens wanted to say hello. The alien machines in “War of the Worlds” seem designed for heavy lifting in an industry that needs to modernize its equipment and techniques. (The actual living alien being we finally glimpse is an anticlimax, a batlike, bug-eyed monster, confirming the wisdom of Kubrick and Clarke in deliberately showing no aliens in “2001”).
That’s a good point, I think.
Ebert keeps going back to his questions, although he does touch briefly on the acting and the special effects. But to him: it’s almost a childlike response (which is one of the best responses a reviewer can have … Kids smell bullcrap from MILES away).
Ebert:
The thing is, we never believe the tripods and their invasion are practical. How did these vast metal machines lie undetected for so long beneath the streets of a city honeycombed with subway tunnels, sewers, water and power lines, and foundations? And why didn’t a civilization with the physical science to build and deploy the tripods a million years ago not do a little more research about conditions on the planet before sending its invasion force? It’s a war of the worlds, all right — but at a molecular, not a planetary level.
All of this is just a way of leading up to the gut reaction I had all through the film: I do not like the tripods. I do not like the way they look, the way they are employed, the way they attack, the way they are vulnerable or the reasons they are here. A planet that harbors intelligent and subtle ideas for science fiction movies is invaded in this film by an ungainly Erector set.
Looks like the film War of the Worlds will not be enough to take our attention away from “the crazy”.
It is interesting to contemplate, though: The dude has been everywhere lately. Yes, because he’s a big movie star, and he got engaged, and so the tabloids will be interested. But obviously, the REAL reason he has been everywhere lately, is because he has a movie coming out. (You wouldn’t know that from his interviews, where he seems to focus on his medical expertise rather than THE MOVIE … but still. That is the primary reason why Tom Cruise is all over the place. He has a MOVIE coming out.)
Okay, so now the movie’s opened.
No more press junkets, no more blitzkriegs, no more public spotlight (I mean … relatively. Cruise always lives in the public spotlight, he can’t help it). But … what on earth will he do now? The press blitzkrieg will die out in a couple weeks … but then what? He and Katie will settle down to decorate their house … or … what? Cruise lives with his entire family, his sisters, his mother, their kids, all of whom are scientologists. Will Katie be moving into that commune? Or … Still, that’s a side question. The real question is: without a built-in reason to be here, there, and everywhere (big movie coming out) – how will Tom Cruise deal with reality? How will the couple deal with the relationship OUT of the glare? What the heck?
I think the next couple of months will be very very interesting.
I hope he doesn’t Shut up or go away- I’m enjoying his psychotic outbursts. They make me happy.
“Perhaps it would have been a good idea to set the movie in 1898, at the time of Wells’ novel, when the tripods represented a state-of-the-art alien invasion.”
That’s a very good point by Ebert.
“bouncing chimpy ravings”
HAHAHA!
You may find the links here interesting.
mere – hahahah Yeah, really. More crazy! More crazy!!
I just saw the Jeffrey Lyons review on MSNBC. If he didn’t like it (and he likes everything), it can’t possibly be any good.
Bill – that link is great. Thanks for that. Makes me think I should put asterisks everywhere, to keep Googlers away.
It really doesn’t look like there’s anything new here. From looking at the trailers and reading reviews, I don’t see anything this movie could have to offer that “Independence Day” didn’t – and I like Will Smith better than Tom Cruise anyway. (We rented “I, Robot” the other day and thoroughly enjoyed it.)
Wells’ stuff was about more than plot. He used his fiction to express political and social ideas. Some of his ideas were probably really bad ones, but other people were dazzled by communism too. He had some trenchant points to make about the Victorian class system that were expressed nicely in The Time Machine. It’s sad to take his work and turn it into a series of special effects.
I saw this on a message board:
“psychiatry is a pseudo science”
this from a man who follows a pseudo Religion
Here’s a Spielberg quote from MSNBC:
“Science fiction for me is a vacation, a vacation away from all the rules of narrative logic, a vacation away from physics and physical science.”
Please. Science fiction can be a vacation from rules of narrative logic, or it can be as formula-ridden as a Harlequin romance. I’ve enjoyed Spielberg’s movies, but I wouldn’t say they are devoid of formula. Not at all. And if you get too far away from rules of narrative logic, you end up with an incoherent mess. As to the vacation away from physics and physical science – I think he’s confusing SF with fantasy.
I read that as him meaning a vacation from the big heavy movies he has done like Private Ryan and Schindler’s List – where he not only has an obligation to the story, but he has an obligation to the actual history of the time. Working on something like Jurassic Park or War of the Worlds after those grueling experiences probably do feel like a vacation to him.
I saw a clip of Cruise being interviewed by Matt Lauer. Well, it was suppose to be an interview.
Cruise seemed almost abusive arguing with Lauer
over Ritalin and other subjects.
There’s something strange about Tom.
Regards
Hank
“Okay, so now the movie’s opened.”
It has? I’d no idea.
“I read that as him meaning a vacation from the big heavy movies he has done like Private Ryan and Schindler’s List – where he not only has an obligation to the story, but he has an obligation to the actual history of the time.”
Perhaps not strangely, those are the only films of his I like. (Alhtough not so much Private Ryan.) This from a guy trying to make a splash writing science fiction. What he’s describing isn’t science fiction, it’s the action genre (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
Season of Crazy
Oriana Fallaci – because you need to read it. To remember. NEVER FORGET.
The Declaration of Independence “We hold these truths to be self evident that all …
“Millions of stars, and we’re supposed to be the only living creatures? No, there are many things out there, we just don’t know,” Cruise, 42, said in the interview published in German.
– that’s a quote from the CNN news site. Perhaps Tom should remember that Clint Eastwood promoted his movies without telling the world how to fight crime…
That Time article Bill McCabe linked to is chilling. I remember reading it 13 years ago, shaking my head, and moving on. But it seems so much more alarming now, maybe because Shitology is even more popular and rich now and hasn’t been quelled in the slightest. If their goal is to make money, and they have these voracious, ruthless lawyers, investigators, “advisors”, and others out there doing their filthy work, then about the only thing that could cripple them is to have their A#1 Top Gun Celebrity adherent fall into a huge, messy, full-on public meltdown while espousing the bogus drivel about Narconon and Applied Scholastics and Pseudo-Science he’s been spoon-fed all these years.
I’ve seen enough movies about “operatives” who no longer are “serving” their organizations (I’m thinking The Bourne Identity here) to realize that the Shitologists aren’t gonna let Tom accidentally destroy their money-making machine. So far, Tom is in there pitching for the team and the results are mixed, but too many more desperate public moments of heated argument over bullshit theories with morning show hosts won’t be allowed to happen. These goons are at Defcon 1 right now, in some underground Media Analysis Center (MAC), making intricate mathmatical calculations about Cruise’s recent activity (Katie Holmes conversion, +286; Over-the top Oprah sofa jump, +108; Matt Lauer interview, -163). As soon as the MACmeticians conclude that Tom has veered too far into the negative column, well, there will be some serious “actions” taken.
I’d sure love to see it happen, though – the complete dismantling of their money-making/personality-destroying combine at the hands of their golden boy. Now that’s a plot Roger Ebert could get excited about!
I don’t think he was saying that to promote the movie. I think he was saying that to promote Scientology.
Noggie,
Compared to most of what he’s said lately, that comment actually makes sense. He’s right. We don’t know. Scientology claims it does.
“I read that as him meaning a vacation from the big heavy movies he has done like Private Ryan and Schindler’s List….”
Maybe, but I don’t think that’s what he meant. Because he didn’t say it was a vacation from historical accuracy. And really, “Jurassic Park” had narrative logic too, but it was very formula-ridden – compare it to the book and you can see it. Maybe that’s what he meant – with SF you can just rely on the formulas and forget about fooling with narrative logic.
Katie Couric was discussing “Glibby McGlibberson” the other day in regards to his comments about psychiatry and what he “knows.” The best comment was from one of the doctors, who said, “Tom Cruise may be a halfway decent actor, but he does not know everything about psychiatry and medicine.” HAHAHAHA Halfway decent actor! And he’s totally right!
Please, Tom, just fade away.
Again, Laura – it’s not that Jurassic Park did not have logic – but he was more free to create whatever was in his imagination as opposed to having to be accurate historically.
This whole thing makes Tom Cruise’s amazing performance in Magnolia even MORE interesting. I’m thinking about the big interview scene – when the interviewer puts him on the spot, calling him on his lies, etc. I am sure he didn’t see the parallels with his own cult – but that guy – Frank Mackey – was sort of an L Ron Hubbard for pissed off whiny beeyotch men.
Interesting: after seeing Boogie Nights, Tom Cruise contacted PT Anderson saying, “I don’t care if I only have one line – I want to be in a movie you direct.”
So PT Anderson wrote THAT part for him. hahaha Wild.
Paul Clinton on CNN.com give a glowing review to War of the Worlds.
I generally disagree with all of his reviews so now this flick won’t even rate a spot in my NetFlix queue.
Sorry, I meant to hit preview, really I did.
Paul Clinton on CNN.com give a glowing review to War of the Worlds.
I generally disagree with all of his reviews so now this flick won’t even rate a spot in my NetFlix queue.
Yo, She–
Have you read this?
(You have to sit through a brief ad if you don’t have a subscription to Salon, but it’s relatively painless, especially if your speakers are turned off.)
“In Sc******gy, we have the only successful drug rehabilitation program in the world.” – Tom Cruise
I know a lot of people that have successfully gone through drug rehabilitation programs that have nothing to do with Shitology.
I am an anti-religious extremist!
Emily – yeah, apparently Salon is doing a 4 part series on the dreaded cult. I’m looking forward to the rest of their pieces.
Sheila, I had to stop reading this post. Not because it was uninteresting, but because I really WANT this movie to be good. I want it to do well. Not because I love Tom Cruise, but because I like this sort of movie and NEED it to be good. Good movies of this sort are so rare and when theyre good Im happy.
I felt the same way about Titanic. I refused to watch the trailers or read any reviews or articles in the entertainment magazines. I NEEDED it to be good and not be so overplayed by the time I saw it that nothing was new to me. Thats one of the reasons Ive been begging Tom Cruise to shut the f up for the last few months. Every time he speaks I think, Tom, if you ruin this movie for me Im going to hate you. I need the movie to be about War of the Worlds and not about your insanity.
Help. I’m trapped in the chorus of a Partridge Family song and the cult won’t let me leave.
“If evolution has taught us anything, it is that limbs of living things, from men to dinosaurs to spiders to centipedes, tend to come in numbers divisible by four.”
Yeah, like insects, starfish, and squid. Oh, wait….
While I don’t have much hope for the movie (Victorian SF has never done much for me), that comment is just silly. It also seems to be Mr. Ebert’s major objection to the movie. Here’s a hint for Mr. Ebert: Supporting yourself on two legs is less stable than using three. Somewhere or other, I suspect I could find creatures using two legs.
Most land animals are bilaterally symmetric, so most have a number of limbs divisible by two (note: two is not equal to four), but we have lots of examples of radial symmetry too. Why assume that aliens are likely to be bilaterally symmetric? It makes even less sense when you consider that he was talking not about the aliens, but about their vehicles. How many legs does a sled have? (I’m betting it’s not integrally divisible by four*, counting runners as legs, since he seems to want to count wheels as legs.)
Never mind that Verne’s book unambiguously (and quite memorably) uses tripods as well. Spielberg clearly should have ignored his source material. After all, it worked so well for Paul Verhoeven.
Frankly, this is the sort of review you get when the reviewer dislikes and misunderstands the genre of film he is reviewing. Just as I should never be allowed to review lit-fic, Ebert should be kept away from Victorian SF.
Sorry for the ranting digression. We are all obsessed by things; one of my obsessions is rampant scientific ignorance.
You might think that this wouldn’t speak well for my likelihood of enjoying a movie described by its director as “a vacation away from physics and physical science”. But I’m entirely willing to suspend disbelief for the premise of a work of fiction, so long as I have the feeling that the author isn’t an idiot. I think it’s Orson Scott Card that says that, “The first paragraph is free”; that you can make nearly any claim, or violate nearly any phyisical law, at the start of the story, as long as the remainder is internally consistent. But you had better know that you are doing it.
* Here’s another clue for Mr. Ebert: While he talks about “divisible by four”, he clearly intends us to understand that as “integrally divisible by four”. Three is divisible by four; the result is 3/4.
My eyes started to glaze over 2 sentences into your comment.
Patrick – please do not let me disturb your fantasies or your expectations.
I completely understand.
But you might want to stay away from my blog in the meantime, because it’s pretty much Tom Cruise central here.
Look: he’s even leaving cries for help in my comments section!!
This is a quote from today’s Sacramento Bee, in an article about polls showing that Gov. Schwarzenegger is now trailing his potential Democratic contenders in 2006:
“I am paying about as much attention to these poll numbers as I am to Tom Cruise’s lectures about religion, which is to say none,’ campaign adviser Todd Harris said.”
Oh, boy…when campaign operatives start making fun of you, you know you’re in deep trouble!
Oh, that quote is *beautiful*.
Does anybody know where David Miscavige put my thetans and how I can go about getting them back?
“My eyes started to glaze over 2 sentences into your comment.”
Sorry. I hope you needed the nap. 8-)
Patrick, one word: Serenity.
Doug: Wells not Verne.
Even Dooce has commented on The Crazy!
“All the other vitamins I take the Neurontin, the Valium, and the Prozac I call those Thank God Tom Cruise Is Not In Charge Otherwise I Would Be Dead Right Now Vitamins.”
Hahahahahahahaha!
Emily
“extracting and altering out of context bits of esoteric data”
Does he mean Xenu?
There’s a slight flaw in the theory that Cruise’s behaviour has to do with him becoming an OT7 though – Travolta.
Pete,
I don’t think he is talking particularly about Xenu. I just think he is flat-out lying. How do you take “they moved my mother to Clearwater and made her wash dishes for 14 hours a day” out of context? If so, in what context would that be a reasonable and civilized thing to do to a person?
Flat-out lying definitely.
So, about these aliens, Tom..
Tom needs to be audited. He’s sounding a little stressed out to me.
Um…oops.
Sheila
Tom’s a little stressed? We’ve got him calling the official spokesman a liar.. I say we keep up the pressure.
God. Look at THIS. I guess I need to question my received beliefs about gynecology, too. Damn.
GYNECOLOGY KILLS! MY THETANS TOLD ME SO!
“Be sure to join me next week, when I’ll discuss the fakery known as orthopedic medicine as we continue to walk across the bridge to total freedom.”
Another myth shattered..
Why is everybody picking on me? Don’t they know I am only revealing these truths because I care about them?
Whatever.
I saw that RottenTomatoes.com rated it 91% which is pretty goddam high for any film.
And Lord knows the critics can only buy so many tickets.
Besides, the domestic box office doesn’t matter anymore — it’s all about the DVD sales and the video games. And the foreign grosses.
Besides, are we sure it isn’t a hit anyway? We won’t know for a couple of days at least.
P.S. He’s a nutjob. And have you seen his face? He looks…haggard. Not so boyish anymore.
I thought he was going to throttle Matt Lauer.
Doug, Ebert did says “tend”, not “always”, and “limbs”, not “legs”, but “two” was probably what he meant, but, what with those big coke-bottles of his and years of being called “four-eyes” I’m sure he just got confused…
And I did say “says” when I meant “say”.
Tom believes in aliens.
Just fanning the flames…
Ara – are you saying “whatever” in response to my whole post? If you are, then that’s highly obnoxious.
Whatever right back at ya.
I believe aliens exist, but I do not believe that they have inhabited my body in little thetan clusters.
Ok, Saw it. It didn’t suck, overall. I like the gesture to the original film at the end, where the hand came out of the cockpit. Very classy.
Not a bad job. Of course, when the action figures come out, I’ll be dissapointed.
Aren’t there Alien Burger packs at some Fast Food Chain already?
What about tripod War-of-the-Worlds Shishkabobs?
Never mind that Verne’s book unambiguously (and quite memorably) uses tripods as well. Spielberg clearly should have ignored his source material. After all, it worked so well for Paul Verhoeven.
Frankly, this is the sort of review you get when the reviewer dislikes and misunderstands the genre of film he is reviewing. Just as I should never be allowed to review lit-fic, Ebert should be kept away from Victorian SF.
Doesn’t Ebert actually call for the film to be set in the Victorian era as a means of making the Martian technology more believeable? And which work of Jules Verne are you referring to?
Frankly, this is the sort of review you get when the reviewer dislikes and misunderstands the genre of film he is reviewing. Just as I should never be allowed to review lit-fic, Ebert should be kept away from Victorian SF.
That should also have been italicized as part of the quote from Doug Sundseth‘s post.
Yeah, Ebert does say that maybe it should have been set back in the late 1800s to deal with this disconnect.
You know though – I’m reading reviews all over the place, and in general, they are VERY positive. David Edelstein – my favorite reviewer – raved about it, and he is no dummy. He has written some of the funniest scathing reviews I have ever read – but he was really into War of the Worlds.
So go figure.
I was waiting to post or to read these posts til I saw the flick. The good thing for me is that someone who knows moviemaking like Speilberg does can’t make a flat-out shitty movie. There are some sequences in there that are so cool, and the sound was awesome. A scene at a railway crossing, the ash and tatters like 9/11, the palpable fear associated with keeping the one working car – all of these things I found really effective.
So, Doug S, did you see the flick yet? And if so, were you disappointed or no?