I had great expectations for this movie. The trailers were very good and it seemed like a movie worth watching. Moreover Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning are really talented individuals and they along with the fact that this is a Spielberg flick made me want to see this movie.
Luckily I had these discounted $5 tickets which helped me save $4.50. The theatre was packed and the crowd waited with bated breath.
The story goes like this:
Tom Cruise is a crane worker in Queens and has a normal working job. He has 2 kids with his ex-wife who come to spend some time at his place. After his ex-wife and her boyfriend leave the kids at Tom’s place wierd things begin to happen. First lightening begins to strike in various parts of the city and the lightening is unusual because it is not accompanied with thunder. Then all of a sudden we realize that it isn’t really lightening (rather we are being attacked by aliens).
Aliens which seem smarter, stronger and more powerful than the ones we saw in independence day. So the same old story, they have a secure shield to protect them from anything man made and they are extremely strong, big and much more technologically advanced than anything we have seen before. These aliens are so smart that they generate emp pulses and disable anything electronic. So what we have here is all the cars are not able to function and people are unable to get away from the city, except for the car which Cruise uses which miraculously is not affected by the emp (it belongs to a mechanic who repaired it). So he escapes with his kids and tries to reach some place safe. Unfortunately the aliens are attacking everywhere and the car becomes an envied and prized possession and eventually Cruise and co have to get rid of the car to save their lives. The aliens attack and finally these technologically advanced superior creatures which were buried under the earth for millions of years studying our civilizations and evolution somehow are beaten completely. I mean they really have their ### kicked. How this happens is another story and may really disappoint you as it did to me.
Cruise’s acting is good and so is that of the rest of the Cast. The aliens are disappointing from every angle and the story lacks depth. I almost fell asleep in the middle of the movie because it was so predictable. This may be Spielberg’s biggest failure or maybe its because I saw ’’Batman begins’’ a few days ago which didnt lack the depth and gave me more bang for the buck. On the other hand ’’War of the worlds’’ was some kind of hotch-potch with no punch and it really lacked the class we expect from Spielberg.