War of the Worlds

Yesterday, Alicia and I went to watch Tom Cruise’s War of the Worlds. I wasn’t quite sure what I was expect­ing in terms of qual­ity. One reviewer said that the movie was dis­ap­point­ing and that he couldn’t come to care for the main char­ac­ters because in a time of cri­sis such as was being depicted, why should we as the view­ers care about one man and his chil­dren when entire cities were being destroyed? Another reviewer said that the movie was a “must see” and was greatly entertaining.

I’m going to have to agree with the sec­ond reviewer. War of the Worlds was every bit an action movie, but I found myself much more enjoy­ing the emo­tional aspect of it: Ray (Tom Cruise) doing every­thing he could to keep his chil­dren alive. I’m not a par­ent, but I have no doubt that those of you who are that watch the movie will be able to relate to this aspect of the movie.

In addi­tion to the emo­tional aspect, the movie was bal­anced by a healthy dose of action and spe­cial effects eye candy. And while the Tripods were out­landish (should we have expected some­thing else?), they were believ­able as every part of their design seemed to serve a func­tion as part of the alien’s ulti­mate goal: the destruc­tion of mankind.

For the aliens them­selves, though, I couldn’t help but recall the aliens from another sum­mer­time extrater­res­trial war­fare movie: Will Smith’s Independence Day.

Unfortunately, I’m not pre­pared to com­pare the movie to the book or the orig­i­nal War of the Worlds. It has been far too long since I’ve read the book, and I’ve only seen a par­tial bit of the orig­i­nal movie prob­a­bly an equally long time ago.

From the Christian Perspective

• Several exple­tives and vulgarities.
• Quite a few instances of vio­lence, most of which was “sci-​​fi vio­lence” between the aliens and humans. There was, how­ever, no graphic dis­plays of the violence.
• A big one for me that irri­tates me to no end whether it appears in enter­tain­ment or lit­er­a­ture is that the movie assumed a lifes­pan of Earth that has been at least mil­lions of years old. The aliens are described as hav­ing buried the Tripods on Earth before we showed up mil­lions of years ago. This of course destroys the foun­da­tion of all bib­li­cal truth. In an odd Yin/​Yang bal­anc­ing act, though, the movie ends in an affir­ma­tion that it was God which cre­ated. I can’t go into more detail about that, how­ever, with­out giv­ing away the ending.

All in all, I found the movie enter­tain­ing, sus­pense­ful, excit­ing, and worth­while. The end­ing was a bit too abrupt for my tastes, but it was at least plausible.

Overall score? 3.5 out of 5.