All reviews of War of the Worlds

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  Action packed

  by gizfarris

  • Top DVD Reviewer

  5 years ago

  This movie was excellent. It was action packed and was about a family trying to get away from the tripods and the hard times they had trying to do it.

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  The Tale Suffered for the Americanization

  by 'Nathan Burgoine

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  • Coles Employee

  7 years ago

  Although the movie has “tripods,” the “red weed,” and to some extent, the “farming,” this movie version of ‘The War of the Worlds’ has little to do with the original tale. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, the changes are typical Hollywood brush-strokes: Instead of a married man trying to get back to his wife, we have a divorced dad trying to get his two children back to the care of his ex-wife (for what almost seems like selfish reasons: he comes across as merely overwhelmed at having to take care of them); the curate has been removed, replaced by an amalgamated character based loosely upon the Artilleryman; The ‘Thunderchild’ is replaced with a ferry, and so on. The main character of the tale is a typical Tom Cruise casting – the guy so much better at what he does than everyone else (“No one can stack that many crates but you,”) - and the whole movie sort of falls a little flat. While it was a good catastrophe tale, I found myself more frustrated with than worried for the characters, and in particular, the son character made me grit my teeth hoping he’d just hurry up and get caught. All in all? A passable movie, but by no means did it capture the humility mixed with horror of the original tale.