The War of the Worlds

I guess I am better off than most of the people who commented on this film. I checked mine out from the local library, so I haven't lost $8.00.

I really wanted to see a version of the movie that was faithful to the book. While this version is faithful, it is so badly made that I could not continue watching it.

What is with the frame rate? At points it looks like they shot it at 24fps and then deleted every third or forth frame! There are a few shots were the characters skitter about so fast that I expected to here the music from the Benny Hill chase scenes.

The worst Dr. Who episode looks better than this. My friend in high school made better films with just a Super8 camera.

Very Disappointing.

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.

Nu Image, UFO and others produce films for the SCI FI channel that come in with budgets of roughly $2 million. Some feature extensive effects work, others feature recognizable casts and still others feature both -- for $2 million.

Mr. Hines initially claimed that this film was budgeted at $20 million dollars but it's painfully obvious that this was probably produced for $750,000 if not considerably less than that. Few sets are utilized, a number of scenes are shot against green screen and most effects seem incomplete and amateurish.

It's painful to watch. Not so much because it is poorly directed, poorly executed and misguided but because many of us have been following the progress of this production for quite some time and had high hopes for this film despite its relatively modest budget.

Those of us who believed in this movie when it was originally announced have joined the legions of those spoken of by P.T. Barnum.

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 am currently sitting here, forcing myself to finish this. I figure I blew 6 bux on the VHS, might as well suffer for it. I remember about 4 or 5 years ago doing a search on the internet for "War of the Worlds" cause of the rumors of the Spielberg movie at the time, and I missed the old TV series from the early 90's. The website make it out that this was a multi-million dollar budget rendition of the classic book. It was going to be a "perfect translation". Perfect CRAP is more in tune with this film.

First off, the video on this movie was glitched! It looked as if I was watching the Full Motion Video from an old mid-90's PC or Playstation CD-Rom video game. Sadly enough, the color quality was similar. The acting made Shatners classic "dramatic pause" look damn near Shakespearean in quality. The CG rendering of various scenes was horrendous, and green screen sequences were worse than those seen in old Dukes of Hazardd scenes.

Secondly, it is slow and terribly drawn out. I sat thru 45 minutes of the video (no promo's at the beginning) before the cylinder actually Opened to reveal the first alien. After that, the alien was a terribly constructed CG squid. I am now an hour into it and the most of the alien weaponry I have seen is a spinning silver disk (crappy down even) attached to a mechanical arm. The dramatic scenes are murdered with overly done instrumental's. The last thing on that, for an alien invasion in the turn of the century 1900's NO ONE is concerned for their life. It's like they have no concept. Even though media was slow, word of mouth spreads fast and people would have known. The "illusion" of day and night was shoddy at best. Simply changing the color around the people to purple, blue or green does not signify NIGHT TIME. Perhaps some lighting and actual night time shoots would have given a MUCH better illusion. THere is a lot of wasted sequences throughout the film of just watching the "hero" gallop around or walk down silly roads. Get on with the film. I know how people get around, you do NOT need to be so in-depth.

Now, finally an hour and 5 minutes into the film and they show the alien machines. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers had better looking effects. Even the skeletons of vaporized humans looked as if animated by a freshman high school computer app class student. The animations do NOT match up to the scenery at all.

In closing folks, if you want "The War of the Worlds", do one of four things. 1) Watch the 1953 original, 2) watch the early 90's TV series, 3) wait for Spielberg's rendition to be released shortly, OR 4) Read the frikkin book (something we all probably did in elementary English class). AVOID THIS MOVIE. IT IS A WASTE OF YOUR MONEY.