The War of the Worlds

Is it possible to give a movie NO STARS? I suppose not. However many stars IMDb displays this just think zero and you'll get my drift. Director and photographer Timothy Hines didn't have much of a budget compared to Spielberg's Herculean effort with the same material (rumored to be the most expensive movie ever made), but that need not be an insurmountable handicap. I've seen some wonderful work done on a comparative shoestring ("Soldier and Saints" is a recent example). With hard work, integrity and, above all, talent it is certainly possible to realize a faithful rendition of Wells' novella -- and at fraction of what was spent by Dreamworks on its "War of the Worlds". Unfortunately, Hines failed in all these departments. Even if he had had Spielberg's budget and Tom Cruise signed for the lead his movie would have stunk just as badly as this barnyard animal he's foisted on us.

Primarily, Hines seems unable to tell a story. Thanks to digital video technology he can record images and sound, but he shows little aptitude for assembling a narrative with what he records. A guy walks down a country lane, a lot. He talks badly aped Received English to some other guy. Then he walks down the same lane, only shot from the back this time to show he's returning -- clever, eh? Walking and talking, for nearly an hour that's all that happens. OK, I'll grant that one extended excursion from the main character's house to the impact site on Horsell Common to show that it's a considerable distance from one place to the other might be useful (a first-year film student could storyboard a more economical and more aesthetical establishing sequence than this, btw), but half a dozen times? Back and forth, back and forth, et cetera, et cetera with some yakkity-yak in between. Remarkable. The only explanation for this surfeit of redundancy other than total artistic ineptitude is a desire to pad out thirty minutes of wretchedly amateurish CG works into something that could be offered as a feature-length film. Finally the Martian fighting machines appear and the walking and talking becomes running and talking, or shrieking. Later we get staggering and wailing for dessert.

Thankfully, much of the dialogue is lifted straight from H.G. Wells' text; else we'd have no idea what is going on. But is it not the whole point of cinema to illuminate a text, to realize what words alone can't convey? If a film relies on dialogue or monologue to tell us what we see or how to feel, why bother? Why not do a radio play? Orson Welles made himself a household name doing just that. However, Hines thinks he's a filmmaker, so he's content to mouth the words and swallow the meaning.

Secondly, Hines was able to buy some CG effects of a sort for his movie, but he has no idea how to use them. Now I for one have no unquenchable sweet tooth for eye candy. I believe good science fiction cinema doesn't need dazzling technical effects. Some really potent Sci-Fi's have flourished on virtually none at all. But "The War of the Worlds" as film requires a certain baseline effort. Wells tells a story that hinges on things can be seen and heard and even smelled. The effects don't need to be complex; they can even be crude (e.g. fighting machines on wires gliding over miniature streets as seen in the George Pal/Byron Haskins 1953 version), but they must be handled well. Unfortunately Hines' effects are both crude and incompetent – tripod fighting machines higher than a cathedral spire stomp around making a noise like a pogo stick bouncing on linoleum – Martian squidoids even though oppressed by four times the gravity of their native world scurry and flit about without perceptible effort – skeletons totally denuded of flesh and muscle writhe and scream -- the same damn horse and buggy greenscreens its way across the foreground a dozen times (flipped left for right occasionally in hope that we might not notice) – and on ad nauseum. Crude technique is forgivable. So you have a CG fire effect that's less than convincing? Fine, we can work around that. Just don't use it too often and only show glimpses of it. That stomped woman sequence looks more like a crushed plum? Throw it away. It's not necessary. You say your Martian flyer looks like a toy on a string? If you must use it, go ahead, but please don't show it twice! But no, Hines won't listen. We get the worst looking stuff used again and again. Gotta get those 180 minutes somehow, boy.

Next we have acting, or more precisely too much acting. Whether in a speaking role or just paid to die on queue everybody in this film is acting his little heart out. Evidently Hines thinks he's getting a bargain -- More fleeing in terror over there! You, quaking behind that tree, let's have a real conniption fit this take. You call that writhing in agony? Nonsense, my grandmother can writhe better -- Nevertheless the cast as a whole and individually stink. They aren't even good amateurs. But this needn't prove fatal. Many a good movie has been made with rancid acting. That's what directors are for. And editors. Which brings up another point… Who the hell let Tim Hines edit this cheese factory? If America's butchers were as adept at meat cutting as Hines is at film cutting your next hamburger would be all fingers and no beef. In spite of the near three-hour running time there is lots of stuff missing from this movie -- not sequences, but single frames, creating a herky-jerky effect that's nauseating to watch. Maybe Hines intention was to simulate the effect of a hand cranked cine camera of the 1890's. If he was I can say he doesn't know how to do it.

I must admit I burst out laughing when I saw one reviewer compare this to LOTR. Well yes, if you exclude the dwarfs, the cast of thousands, the great special effects, the big battles, the strong characterization, the decent plot, the good acting, the classy direction and everything else. Which leaves you with the walking. And boy, does this film do walking! If Mr Piano had his way, this would probably be an uninterrupted three hours of hardcore walking through the Wisconsin countryside, but every 40 minutes or so these pesky Martians pop up for a few seconds to interrupt him before he goes for another bit of a ramble. You've never seen so much walking in a movie. If this really had a $20m budget, most of it must have gone on Mr Piano's shoes, because he had to get through plenty of pairs with all the walking he does. Which explains why there's no money left for decent effects, a decent video camera or proper actors. Honestly, it's like watching some bizarre fetish video for people with a thing about going for long walks in period costumes. Even on fast-forward, this is a looonnnggg walk.

As for the sci-fi stuff, I think it was a mistake to put Martians in the film: they only get in the way of the walking, which is clearly much more interesting to the director than the story.

I wonder how much Mr Piano charges to walk dogs?

Normally when I write a review for a movie online, it is for one of three reasons. Either, I have found something exceptionally lacking in a film that otherwise would have been excellent, I feel that the public's perception of a film before viewing it is inaccurate for a number of reasons, or I believe that the purpose or message of a film needs to be clarified or explained with the help of other reviewers. While all of these reasons may appear to be somewhat negative, I find that writing a review that lavishes nothing but praise and statements such as, "This is one of the best films of all time!", does nothing to enlighten a potential viewer on its merits and downsides, nor does it often give reasoning as to why a movie is so good, which should be the point of the review in the first place. With that being said, War of the Worlds is nothing more than a hurried, incompetent attempt at a money grab; piggy-backing its loathsome carcass on the multi-million dollar advertising campaign of the film of the same name directed by Steven Spielberg. Many people will buy this DVD in anticipation of the summer blockbuster and many more poor souls will buy it looking for more material on the same subject. This movie is not even "so bad" that it becomes funny or endearing, rather the audience will be so unbelievably disappointed as to reach the point of anger. Now with most of the insults out of the way, allow me to give some arguments as a warning to those more fortunate than I.

Judging from the cover and the lack of any publicity for this film (I found it as SAM's Club for 8 bucks), I assumed that the cast would be no-names and that the special effects would be nothing too spectacular. Check. This is not a big deal for me, as I find a large budget and an over-reliance on big name stars and SE can diminish an otherwise decent movie. I also did not expect to be blown away by great dialog or a moving score. Check again. What I did hope for was an actual serious attempt at a classic theme and a few alien/battle scenes.

Now, as per IMDb's policy any spoilers must be announced in advance, no matter how small, so here is fair warning. The movie opens with a lot of inane small-talk, followed by a trip to an observatory to look at a red dot. Seriously, it is a pictures of a red dot in a tube. It is very hard to describe every little issue in depth, but by the end of the first ten minutes, the combination of shaky camera-work, spliced scenes, and a LOT of walking begin to frustrate the viewer. However, the costuming is surprisingly not bad and the hope that the pods will reveal something mysterious keeps you going. The next 30 minutes basically go as follows: one of the main characters walks to one of the pods, he looks at the pods and talks to another main character about looking at the pod and it may be hot. They both walk back to town. These walks aren't two seconds or added so that dialog may be exchanged. They are twenty seconds or more and are there simply to add filler to an already bloated three hour movie. In a particularly grueling scene, the main character is shown looking at a pod, then he is shown pacing and panting, then he looks at the pod, then he takes a one minute walk through a field to town, then comes in to town and walks into a building, then he has a cup of coffee and says "Thank you Mary" to a random maid that serves him coffee, then he puts down the coffee and walks out the building, then he walks a minutes through the field and back to the pod. I apologize for the extreme run-on sentence, but it is perhaps the best way to summarize this entire film. Characters speak way too long about mundane things, they walk a lot, they send other people to walk, the camera fluctuates between high speed and slow speed, but for no dramatic effect, simply the camera man is a sophomore at Tech somewhere. The editing is mind-bogglingly bad. People actions make little sense. For instance, when the professor goes to a farmer's house and says that he needs the farmer to give him a ride to town, the farmer stutters and paces around. When the professor says that there is a pod and that men might be trapped inside, the farmer locks him in a shed only to see the professor grab a pitchfork and open the weak shed a second later. Nothing of any consequence of course comes from this entire scene, as the professor runs into the main character a moment later so they can begin their afternoon walk. The entire film feels as if someone at one point had a good idea about making a film, but absolutely no idea how to put that in motion. I have seen better high school video productions. Finally, the special effects are laughable and do nothing to advance the story. I get the feeling that the director really wanted this film to become somewhat of a cult classic of campy garbage. However, it is so awful in technical aspects, and in sheer common sense that it only makes people mad. Avoid this film at all costs.

After hearing the word of mouth of just how bad this film is I took the plunge and bought the DVD. That said everything previously mentioned about this film is true. For a film that claimed to have a budget in the millions it just does not show on the screen at all. The list of problems with the film could drag on forever. Chief amongst them is the film is simply too long. It dragged on for a few minutes short of 3 hours. Nearly an hour probably could have been cut off the run time had the editor simply removed the overabundance of scenes dealing with nothing more then the main character wandering around aimlessly.

Secondly, as many had pointed out from the "trailers", the special effects are anything but special. The tripods looked OK in a few shots here and there but beyond that everything was grade-Z 1970's or 1980's quality. Probably the worst effects of all were the horses, which stiffly tottered back and forth as they moved. The heat ray effects were laughable, as people were reduced to bones that somehow were still able to flail about without any muscles. Also pitiful was the Thunderchild sequence, in which the Thunderchild, described in the book as an ironclad ram, looked nothing of the sort. Instead it resembled a World War 1 era destroyer, complete with deck guns (which fired but had no visible crew), and torpedo tubes.

The colors and backgrounds were just as bad as the effects. Most laughable of all was a scene early on in which the main character and his wife go for a nighttime stroll and he points out Mars to her in the sky. Well, the sky is black, but the views of the characters and the landscape around them is broad daylight. There is also a very sharp demarcation between the real landscape, bathed in full sunlight, and the fake black night sky with overly large fuzzy stars. To detract even further, the color of the scenes made no sense. In some they are bathed in orange light. In others green light. In still others it's blue light. In some instances the outsides are orange lit but the interiors of houses are green or blue. The frame-rate and camera is very shaky, giving everything a stuttering look.

Finally, the acting is overall sub-par. One man portrays two characters who's sole difference was one lacked a mustache. This led to some confusion at times as to who was who and where they all were. The English accents, even to American ears, are outrageous.

In summary, this movie could very well make a claim to being the worst film released in recent times. I have not seen Gigli or some of the other recent flops but this one, because of it's poor quality in every respect, must easily be worse then anything that mainstream Hollywood has put out. I would not be surprised if the movie makes it to the bottom 10 or 20 in the IMDb rankings. It's a pity that Mystery Science Theater is not still around.

I honestly believe that ANYONE considering film-making be subjected to this mind-boggling failure. Like the "films" of Edward Wood, Jr. in the '60s and '70s, this film is a shining example of why real filmmakers expend so much energy rewriting scripts, re-editing their films, and reworking their special effects until they finally look right. This movie is also a decent argument FOR the studios' pre-screening process. If Mr. Hines were forced to endure the honest reactions of an impartial audience, perhaps he would have cut 75% or the walking/running/strolling scenes and edited this movie down to a more bearable 90 minutes.

Film students should view this movie as an example of just how dangerous thinking their work is "good enough" can truly be. Every performance, every line of dialog, every digital effect, every filter effect, indeed every frame of video expresses the danger of striving for mere mediocrity. A beginning filmmaker may find himself/herself tempted from time to time to think "At least I accomplished SOMETHING" or "Just finishing this will be an accomplishment in itself". This movie will help them understand just how badly a film can turn out.

Critics might also benefit from seeing this movie before they dub the latest summer entertainment "the worst movie ever made".

Beginning writers can learn from this film just how important rewrites are, and perhaps understand the necessity for rewrites. Also, beginning directors can learn the importance of a GOOD screenplay, and some degree of respect for just how hard it is to write a script that causes the audience to feel emotionally compelled through the story. Writers and directors who watch bad made-for-cable movies of the week and think "I can do better than THAT" can see get an idea from this movie how difficult it really IS to produce even mediocre results.

I sincerely believe this movie can serve as an educational tool to beginning filmmakers. Particularly those entering the craft in this current post-Lucas and post-Spielberg environment. There is a reason filmmakers such as these are hailed for their ability with special effects. The War of the Worlds illustrates clearly that not everyone can pull it off. Some can't even come CLOSE to it.