Happy Panic Productions

Roger, Ebert, I read you: War of the Worlds (2005)

I'm considering retiring this feature. Ebert's reviews of the last three movies I've seen didn't produce anything particularly noteworthy (I didn't even bother to do a post for Revenge of the Sith), and I've agreed with him more than I've disagreed with him. I think he's pretty right on with everything he says about War of the Worlds, except I'm surprised that he focuses solely on the surface details of the film. The real reason I was interested in seeing this one was because of the adage that sci-fi/horror/disaster movies are an expression of the anxieties of society at the time. From what I could tell of the previews I'd seen, Spielberg seemed conscious of this and its application to 9/11 when making this movie. And watching it, it is so conciously hitting all of these memes that you imagine the filmmakers running down a checklist to make sure they got them all (and interestingly, hit a few points I wasn't expecting, with a wider eye toward the War on Terror and Iraq). Too bad the end of the movie departs completely from these themes and feels irrelevant to our world outside the movie; Ebert hits the nail on the head when he compares it to Jurassic Park. Funny how Spielberg made the same error in Minority Report: he spends most of a movie building a story about a deeply flawed justice system, but sacrifices all of his themes for a neat and thrilling dramatic climax, with the result that it's no longer the system that's flawed, just one bad man. War of the Worlds isn't as bad, since it doesn't undermine its themes so much as depart from them. Anyway, I was surprised Ebert never addresses the 9/11 angle in his review.

Overall, it's interesting, yet very difficult to enjoy. The tagline should read, "Relive the trauma!"