Tom Cruise, whether he knows it or not, really needed War of the Worlds<\/i> 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<\/i>. 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.)….<\/p>\n
So now it looks like the smash hit won’t<\/i> 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.<\/p>\n
Ebert’s review<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This paragraph I think is particularly interesting:<\/p>\n 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”).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That’s a good point, I think.<\/p>\n 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).<\/p>\n Ebert:<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n Looks like the film War of the Worlds<\/i> will not be enough to take our attention away from “the crazy”.<\/p>\n 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.)<\/p>\n Okay, so now the movie’s opened.<\/p>\n 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?<\/p>\n I think the next couple of months will be very very interesting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 … Continue reading