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Special Features
- Featurette: Designing the Enemy - Tripods and Aliens
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Despite super effects, a huge budget, and the cinematic pedigree of alien-happy Steven Spielberg, this take on H.G. Wells's novel is basically a horror film packaged as a sci-fi thrill ride. Instead of a mad slasher, however, Spielberg (along with writers Josh Friedman & David Koepp) utilizes aliens hell-bent on quickly destroying humanity, and the terrifying results that prey upon adult fears, especially in the post-9/11 world. The realistic results could be a new genre, the grim popcorn thriller; often you feel like you're watching Schindler's List more than Spielberg's other thrill-machine movies (Jaws, Jurassic Park). The film centers on Ray Ferrier, a divorced father (Tom Cruise, oh so comfortable) who witnesses one giant craft destroy his New Jersey town and soon is on the road with his teen son (Justin Chatwin) and preteen daughter (Dakota Fanning) in tow, trying to keep ahead of the invasion. The film is, of course, impeccably designed and produced by Spielberg's usual crew of A-class talent. The aliens are genuinely scary, even when the film--like the novel--spends a good chunk of time in a basement. Readers of the book (or viewers of the deft 1953 adaptation) will note the variation of whom and how the aliens come to Earth, which poses some logistical problems. The film opens and closes with narration from the novel read by Morgan Freeman, but Spielberg could have adapted Orson Welles's words from the famous Halloween Eve 1938 radio broadcast: "We couldn't soap all your windows and steal all your garden gates by tomorrow night, so we did the best next thing: we annihilated the world." --Doug Thomas
War of the Worlds at Amazon.com
 The Soundtrack |  The War of the Worlds (1953) |  War of the Worlds - The Complete First Season (TV series) |
 Classic Sci-Fi Movies and Their Remakes |  Aliens Invade on DVD |  The Prog-rock Opera (no kidding) |
Product Description
Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning. A phenemonal adaptation of H.G. Wells' sci-fi classic with Steven Spielberg at the helm! A disgruntled, divorced, failure-as-a-dad" guy desperately seeks to save his family from annihilation against an alien fleet of killer tripods. 2 DVDs. 2005/color/117 min/PG-13.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
23 of 27 people found the following review helpful
By AH-1Z
Format:DVD
This is a really, really good movie. No, it's not a literal depiction of the H.G. Wells novel, but they never said it was going to be. It's sort of an "Inspired by" version. The basic elements of Wells' tale are here, placed into our time and world. To do that there have to be some changes.
This has both advantges and disadvantages. The latter include that we know already how the story has to end (although apparently some reviewers have never read the book, judging by their comments), but if you're good enough, you can still create suspense and maintain interest throughout the whole picture. Spielberg and Cruise are good enough. To draw a parallel, in the TV show "Smallville", we Know he's going to grow up to be Superman. We Know he's not going to end up with Lana. We Knew the friendship with Luthor couldn't last. Still, they made the journey itself interesting. Same thing here, in spades.
People have to understand this in order to review the movie fairly. Certain things about anyone doing the War of the Worlds just have to be there. Aliens; We're losing; An everyman who doesn't solve the situation, just survives it; TRIPODS! The 1953 version (which I enjoyed) didn't have them because the FX technology of the time didn't permit them to make them realistically. With what we can do now, any version that didn't have them would be unacceptable; Germs. Accept it, folks. The Titanic sinks at the end. Like it or not, Custer dies. Bruce Wayne is Batman. No one recognizes it's Superman behind Clark Kent's glasses. In Wells' story, we are saved by germs. Spielberg doesn't get to change that and still call it War of the Worlds.
One clever thing that was done here was that everything was seen from the Earthlings' point of view. There was no attempt to explain why the aliens came ("They need our land/resources/women, etc. so they can relocate from their dying world/save their dying planet/breed and save their dying race, etc..."). We have no idea why they're here, and It Doesn't Matter. They're just here, slaughtering everyone in sight. Apparently they need the planet itself becuase they don't just nuke Earth from space and they do start their version of terraforming. However, none of the characters in the movie know why this is happening, and again, It Doesn't Matter. The movie says to us, "Give us that it's happening, and we'll play fair with you in the context of Wells' basic plot". Some might argue that the "biological" ending wouldn't really happen (our bacteria might not recognize the aliens as food), but that's how Wells' ended it and any other ending would be a cheat.
Tom Cruise gives a brauva performance. Despite whether you like or dislike him personally, the man can act. This movie wasn't the only demonstration of that, just the best. He's totally believable in his characterization, performance and evolution, and at the point where it appears he's going to sacrifice himself, it's completely credible. It's not in there just to make the star look heroic, it makes total sense, given what's happening and what he expects the immediate future to be. He never gives up. Not a "Die Hard" type of never-gives-up, just a that's the way it has to be kind of never-gives-up.
Although I think it would have been more bittersweet and better at the end if Robbie hadn't been found, I can accept it, especially since Ray's relationship with his ex-wife doesn't magically turn into bliss as would a typical Hollywood ending. No, we don't find out what happens to the characters next. At the final scene, the movie is definitely over, as it should be. No tidy wrapping up. This is where the story we are being told ends.
After suffering through that total waste of time called "Signs", all I can say is that someone should tie M. Night Shyamalan to a chair and show him this film until he understands that THIS is how you make an invasion from space movie.
This has both advantges and disadvantages. The latter include that we know already how the story has to end (although apparently some reviewers have never read the book, judging by their comments), but if you're good enough, you can still create suspense and maintain interest throughout the whole picture. Spielberg and Cruise are good enough. To draw a parallel, in the TV show "Smallville", we Know he's going to grow up to be Superman. We Know he's not going to end up with Lana. We Knew the friendship with Luthor couldn't last. Still, they made the journey itself interesting. Same thing here, in spades.
People have to understand this in order to review the movie fairly. Certain things about anyone doing the War of the Worlds just have to be there. Aliens; We're losing; An everyman who doesn't solve the situation, just survives it; TRIPODS! The 1953 version (which I enjoyed) didn't have them because the FX technology of the time didn't permit them to make them realistically. With what we can do now, any version that didn't have them would be unacceptable; Germs. Accept it, folks. The Titanic sinks at the end. Like it or not, Custer dies. Bruce Wayne is Batman. No one recognizes it's Superman behind Clark Kent's glasses. In Wells' story, we are saved by germs. Spielberg doesn't get to change that and still call it War of the Worlds.
One clever thing that was done here was that everything was seen from the Earthlings' point of view. There was no attempt to explain why the aliens came ("They need our land/resources/women, etc. so they can relocate from their dying world/save their dying planet/breed and save their dying race, etc..."). We have no idea why they're here, and It Doesn't Matter. They're just here, slaughtering everyone in sight. Apparently they need the planet itself becuase they don't just nuke Earth from space and they do start their version of terraforming. However, none of the characters in the movie know why this is happening, and again, It Doesn't Matter. The movie says to us, "Give us that it's happening, and we'll play fair with you in the context of Wells' basic plot". Some might argue that the "biological" ending wouldn't really happen (our bacteria might not recognize the aliens as food), but that's how Wells' ended it and any other ending would be a cheat.
Tom Cruise gives a brauva performance. Despite whether you like or dislike him personally, the man can act. This movie wasn't the only demonstration of that, just the best. He's totally believable in his characterization, performance and evolution, and at the point where it appears he's going to sacrifice himself, it's completely credible. It's not in there just to make the star look heroic, it makes total sense, given what's happening and what he expects the immediate future to be. He never gives up. Not a "Die Hard" type of never-gives-up, just a that's the way it has to be kind of never-gives-up.
Although I think it would have been more bittersweet and better at the end if Robbie hadn't been found, I can accept it, especially since Ray's relationship with his ex-wife doesn't magically turn into bliss as would a typical Hollywood ending. No, we don't find out what happens to the characters next. At the final scene, the movie is definitely over, as it should be. No tidy wrapping up. This is where the story we are being told ends.
After suffering through that total waste of time called "Signs", all I can say is that someone should tie M. Night Shyamalan to a chair and show him this film until he understands that THIS is how you make an invasion from space movie.
253 of 329 people found the following review helpful
The War of the Worlds is a great novel and Spielberg is a director of exceptional talent and accomplishment, so I had been hoping for a lot from this film. In the event, I have got part of what I was hoping for. Very occasionally, a novel can be 'walked' straight on to the screen (The Big Sleep, with a script by Faulkner, is a striking case), and I found myself wondering whether this novel might not have benefited from the same treatment. Some of Spielberg's changes are perfectly reasonable, others less so in my own opinion. It makes perfectly good sense to bring the action forward by a century into the present day, for instance. I suppose there's no harm either in changing the main actors from Wells's scientist with a wife and a brother to a dysfunctional American family, as this may provide enhanced 'human interest' or some such benefit for all I would know. Again, I have no real problem with the way the film combines the roles of the curate and the artilleryman in the book into the single persona of the former ambulance-driver, and I can well understand that Spielberg would have thought it prudent to tone down the socialistic elements in this aspect of the story in order to avoid setting off the wrong types of reaction in American audiences. What I do have a major problem with is the appearance of the Martians themselves. I'm sorry to report that these have far too much in common with a certain wretched TV series. The author's own description is one that stays in the memory, to say the very least, and Wells's Martians look the way they do for very clear reasons that he provides. What was gained by going downmarket in the way Spielberg chooses to do? Nothing that I can think of except perhaps better audience figures from harking back to that ghastly broadcast series.
In fact the best things in the film come directly from Wells. Even one of the best lines, where the statement that the invaders come from somewhere else is met with the question 'Where - Europe?' is a very clever adaptation of a good joke in the book comparing the attitudes of Mrs Elphinstone to the Martians on the one hand and the French on the other. The Martian tripods are simply terrific, their appearance lifted more or less exactly from the book. However The War of the Worlds is a work of political and social philosophy and speculation, not just some science-fiction yarn. I really would have liked Spielberg to be a bit more ambitious and reflect this more than he seems to have felt like doing. For one thing, the Martians are invading the earth because their own smaller planet is cooling and dying around them. Wells explicitly says that there is no reason to suppose them 'pitiless'. They have come for pressing practical reasons connected with their own very survival. We know now, as Wells did not, that all they were going to find on Venus is a searing hell under the rolling white clouds, so it would be more than likely, as Wells says again, that they would learn from the failure of their first expedition and come back to the earth better prepared the next time rather than stake everything on one throw, which is what the film seems to be suggesting. The last gesture of the Martians in the film is an expression indicative of hatred, which doesn't even make sense considering they saw us as their food source. What consumer of beef makes hostile faces at beef-herds? The Martians' purpose can't have been 'extermination' as someone is made to say in the film, only subjugation, another matter perfectly clear from the novel.
More survives of the view Wells takes of the behaviour of humanity itself, and Spielberg handles the mob-scenes rather well. However what he tones down more than I would have wished is the reflections, in the novel expressed via the persona of the artilleryman, on the likely behaviour of human beings towards one another once the Martian dominion was hypothetically established. The artilleryman's predictions are class-based like the vision of the Eloi and Morlocks in the Time-Machine, but they are far from endorsing Marxism and there is no reason to see them as any firm viewpoint held by the author himself.
Perhaps the very best things in the entire film are to be found in the voiceovers right at the start and right at the end. The words are lifted almost verbatim from the novel itself at these points, and they are simply awesome, the first page in particular of The War of the Worlds being surely one of the greatest in all English fiction with the last page not far behind it in that respect. The exquisite irony of the fact that the Martians, who might have viewed us as we view micro-organisms in a laboratory were in their turn thwarted and destroyed by just such organisms when nothing humanity could do availed in the least is obviously not lost on the director. I just wish he had raised his game more consistently to something like the level of the theme he was taking on.
In fact the best things in the film come directly from Wells. Even one of the best lines, where the statement that the invaders come from somewhere else is met with the question 'Where - Europe?' is a very clever adaptation of a good joke in the book comparing the attitudes of Mrs Elphinstone to the Martians on the one hand and the French on the other. The Martian tripods are simply terrific, their appearance lifted more or less exactly from the book. However The War of the Worlds is a work of political and social philosophy and speculation, not just some science-fiction yarn. I really would have liked Spielberg to be a bit more ambitious and reflect this more than he seems to have felt like doing. For one thing, the Martians are invading the earth because their own smaller planet is cooling and dying around them. Wells explicitly says that there is no reason to suppose them 'pitiless'. They have come for pressing practical reasons connected with their own very survival. We know now, as Wells did not, that all they were going to find on Venus is a searing hell under the rolling white clouds, so it would be more than likely, as Wells says again, that they would learn from the failure of their first expedition and come back to the earth better prepared the next time rather than stake everything on one throw, which is what the film seems to be suggesting. The last gesture of the Martians in the film is an expression indicative of hatred, which doesn't even make sense considering they saw us as their food source. What consumer of beef makes hostile faces at beef-herds? The Martians' purpose can't have been 'extermination' as someone is made to say in the film, only subjugation, another matter perfectly clear from the novel.
More survives of the view Wells takes of the behaviour of humanity itself, and Spielberg handles the mob-scenes rather well. However what he tones down more than I would have wished is the reflections, in the novel expressed via the persona of the artilleryman, on the likely behaviour of human beings towards one another once the Martian dominion was hypothetically established. The artilleryman's predictions are class-based like the vision of the Eloi and Morlocks in the Time-Machine, but they are far from endorsing Marxism and there is no reason to see them as any firm viewpoint held by the author himself.
Perhaps the very best things in the entire film are to be found in the voiceovers right at the start and right at the end. The words are lifted almost verbatim from the novel itself at these points, and they are simply awesome, the first page in particular of The War of the Worlds being surely one of the greatest in all English fiction with the last page not far behind it in that respect. The exquisite irony of the fact that the Martians, who might have viewed us as we view micro-organisms in a laboratory were in their turn thwarted and destroyed by just such organisms when nothing humanity could do availed in the least is obviously not lost on the director. I just wish he had raised his game more consistently to something like the level of the theme he was taking on.
253 of 336 people found the following review helpful
H. G. Wells wrote the novel over a century ago and Steven Spielberg has done a fantastic job of incorporating some of the literary tale's elements into his version: the tripods and their ear-shattering "ULLA!", the heat ray, the retaining baskets, the growth of the "red weed," the demented "Ogilvey" (Tim Robbins), the devastating onslaught from the invaders, man's futile efforts to defend himself, and the final "solution," among other parts familiar to fans of the book.
The director also paid tribute to producer George Pal's 1953 Technicolor classic by using a similar "probe" into the basement occupied by Cruise and daughter Fanning, the destruction of a church, an American setting, and a brief appearance by the earlier film's stars: Gene Barry and Ann Robinson.
There are many tense scenes, making this film not quite suitable for younger audiences. The sound is loud and abrasive, befitting the on-screen destruction. Surprisingly, John Williams's score is quite subtle and, on occasions, is barely audible.
Actingwise, Cruise, contrary to his behavior off-screen, asserts himself well as the estranged father of two kids who must now do all that he can to save his children, as well as himself. Fanning's strong performance shows why she is one of most popular child performers today. And Robbins is appropriately creepy as the man with the plan to bring down the invaders.
While megahit "Independence Day" toured similar ground, "War of the Worlds" is more the work of a master storyteller and his name is Steven Spielberg.
That alone makes it a film not to be missed!
The director also paid tribute to producer George Pal's 1953 Technicolor classic by using a similar "probe" into the basement occupied by Cruise and daughter Fanning, the destruction of a church, an American setting, and a brief appearance by the earlier film's stars: Gene Barry and Ann Robinson.
There are many tense scenes, making this film not quite suitable for younger audiences. The sound is loud and abrasive, befitting the on-screen destruction. Surprisingly, John Williams's score is quite subtle and, on occasions, is barely audible.
Actingwise, Cruise, contrary to his behavior off-screen, asserts himself well as the estranged father of two kids who must now do all that he can to save his children, as well as himself. Fanning's strong performance shows why she is one of most popular child performers today. And Robbins is appropriately creepy as the man with the plan to bring down the invaders.
While megahit "Independence Day" toured similar ground, "War of the Worlds" is more the work of a master storyteller and his name is Steven Spielberg.
That alone makes it a film not to be missed!
Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
WAR Delivers the Goods, Despite Some Hard Knocks
If Amazon had a ten-point scale, WAR OF THE WORLDS would be a 7...but I'm giving it a 4 because I don't feel its 3.2 rating here on Amazon is fair... Read more
Published 16 hours ago by Brian D
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great movie - Will make you think!
I grew up on the original "War of The Worlds" and loved it. This latest version exceeds the original in every way but one - the kids. Read more
Published 4 days ago by Bill M.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great
Love it .....OK 18 words are required so what more do you want me to say the movie is a good remake and blah blah blah
Published 6 days ago by Michael Jeffrey Pirrung
1.0 out of 5 stars
Horrible Movie, Hidden Motives?
Pathetic horrible excuse for entertainment. Virtually every last character is so without merit and so annoying that I wonder if this is not some cloaked message that the world and... Read more
Published 14 days ago by W. Dancer
5.0 out of 5 stars
As far as I am concerned it's a modern day classic!
Ok I admit the first time I saw this I was only marginally impressed. I was expecting something different. Tons of battle sequences I think and more aliens vs man battles perhaps. Read more
Published 17 days ago by Natja Kristy
1.0 out of 5 stars
Misleading
This movie is NOT a true widescreen but merely made to fit the common screen dimensions of the typical flat panel TV. Read more
Published 23 days ago by Indey
5.0 out of 5 stars
movie
bought this as a replacement for our dvd library at a hotel. personally never seen it but it arrived quick and in great condition. no problems
Published 1 month ago by erika01930
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not what Wells had in mind!
HG wrote his book in 1895 concerning an attack by aliens of another planet. This Spielberg film sticks somewhat with the original book, but takes extravagant license with most of... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Get Serious
2.0 out of 5 stars
Quality Was Terrible
I own 100's of DVDs and Blu-rays and this might be the worst quality Blu-ray I have ever seen. Try and find a better version. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Edward J. Husar
4.0 out of 5 stars
Needs wide screen
I saw this movie at the theather and it will blow you away. When it came out on dvd I had one of the Rose's special player and a 19" tv. Read more
Published 1 month ago by NC. movie man
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