I agree that Spielberg's War of the Words and the original theatrical
release of Dune are both worthy of defense. I still like the original
release of Dune better than the subsequent "director's cuts". It was
clean, it was direct, it flowed well and it let people who had never
read the book understand what the heck was going on.
As for War of the Worlds... sure, it's flawed in a lot of ways, but
still one great ride and so very different from the 1953 film that they
are two completely different things. By the way, the reason Tom Cruise's
car was the only one that ran was because it was an older model that did
not have any computer chips in the ignition system or motor -- the
computer chips in all the other vehicles had been fried by the big
electro-magnetic pulse the Martians put out. A nice way to get him a car
when no one else had one, I thought, although Spielberg did a bad job of
explaining it. Some people think it was because the garage guy had fixed
the car (replaced the computer chip) after the pulse, but that doesn't
fly because the replacement computer chip would have been fried when it
was sitting on the garage shelf and so when the mechanic put in it still
wouldn't have worked.
I second the motion that Tom's idiot teenage son should have stayed
toast at the end.
-- JR
aaroncba...@fuse.net wrote:
I am enjoying this discussion.
I always feel the need to defend War of the Worlds (Spielberg's). I think it is a better and more interesting film than most people give it credit for. I firmly believe that the entire film is a dream (e.g. Invaders from Mars)- Tom Cruise's dream. He falls asleep and then everything starts happening. The entire film is an exaggerated nightmare- his worst nightmare- his parental abilities are tested to the extreme. The very beginning of the film lays out the fact that he is a questionable parent at best. Then, throughout the nightmare, he is faced with parents' worst fears realized (best e.g. is the scene where Cruise is simultaneously dealing with strangers trying to take his daughter and his son being pulled inexplicably towards the military- both primal parental fears). By film's end he proves his parental prowess and in one of the most maligned scenes in the film (the last scene) he hand delivers his children back to his wife safe with his judgmental in-laws th!
er!
e to lay witness. To me this was absolutely Spielberg's intent. Throughout, the film works more in the realm of dream logic (e.g. Cruise's car is the ONLY one that works).
If you are still reading, I also find myself defending Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut for one very specific and unique reason: I firmly believe that the film is one big cosmic joke- a black comedy -that even the critics, as far as I could tell, missed entirely. In the simplest of terms it is a story of a husband who get's so jealous about his wife having an imaginary tryst that he spends the rest of the film trying to get laid and he CAN'T! Mr.Tom-universal-sex-symbol-Cruise cannot get laid! And the most exaggerated case in point is that he ends up going to a super deluxe orgy and he STILL can't get laid. I think Kubrick threw a curve ball at us before he died. A very funny curve ball.
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