WAR OF THE WORLDS: Tripod Shuffle

Every other day leading up to the release of his new movie Bridge of Spies, we will be dissecting a film in Steven Spielberg's oeuvre. I've picked ten movies spanning the length of Spielberg's career, five of which I have seen and five of which I haven't. This week War of the Worlds batters us with the frailty of humanity.

Other Reviews in this Series: Duel, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1941, Empire of the Sun, Amistad, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Catch Me If You Can, Munich, Lincoln

Other Spielberg Reviews: Jaws, Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Bridge of Spies

Director: Steven Spielberg
Writers: Josh Friedman, David Koepp
Cast: Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Justin Chatwin
Runtime: 116 mins.
2005

The coolest thing about War of the Worlds is that it's bleak as hell. Until this point Spielberg's history of representing extraterrestrials had ranged from awe-inspiring (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) to charming (ET), but with War of the Worlds old kid-friendly spielberg leans heavy into despair. The movie is punishing, as if Cormac McCarthy decided to apply himself to B-movie sci-fi. The actual scribes were Josh Friedman and David Koepp, with some key input from Spielberg. They craft a narrative that starts out mean and gets meaner, until the saccharine turn at the very end of the movie that many critics rightly thumbed their collective noses at.

The burden of modernizing the nineteenth century science fiction novel rested primarily on Koepp's shoulders, and he makes all the right choices. The narrative may be divorced from the power it held as a radio play, but there are a new set of perverse fascinations at its heart, as the screenplay sometimes awkwardly but mostly gracefully gestures to terrorism and the post-9/11 American frame of mind. Koepp claims to have avoided such associations as best he could, while Spielberg more readily admits to being inspired by them.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION: Roguish Charm

Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Writers: Christopher McQuarrie, Drew Pearce
Cast: Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner, Ving Rhames, Alec Baldwin, Sean Harris
Runtime: 131 mins.
2015

Mission: Impossible is a minor miracle of a modern action franchise. Much like the Bond films, M:I has maintained a commitment to old fashioned stuntwork. Even more impressive is Tom Cruise's manic insistence that he perform these insane stunts himself. The fifty-three year old megastar has weathered the sands of time and the fickle whims of the viewing public by maintaining a pressing desire that you and I should enjoy his movies, no matter what. It's easy for an actor to become withered and cynical after years of being churned through the Hollywood system, but Cruise has a vitality only matched by a younger Tom Cruise.

The unquenchable enthusiasm of perennial producer and lead actor Tom Cruise is certainly one of the primary forces that has transformed Mission: Impossible from a series of convoluted spy capers that exist only for the setpieces into a series of engaging spy capers that exist only for the setpieces. That doesn't sound like as much of a compliment as I intend it to be.

EDGE OF TOMORROW: Fresh Repetition

Director: Doug Liman
Writers: Christopher McQuarrie, Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth
Cast: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt
Runtime: 113 mins.
2014

What if a big budget summer blockbuster could be more than ingratiating?

What if that blockbuster didn't focus on visual effects at the expense of all else?  What if it treated every aspect of the film with respect and attention?  What if it tended to script, performance, pace, and tone in equal parts?

What if that script had a more pristine structure than some Oscar contenders?

What if this film came from a director whose filmography has been radically hit or miss?  What if it came from a team of writers who have arguably one excellent film between them--a film that came out in 1995?

What if the star was a former Grade-A man's man of a movie star, who has recently been perceived as "going off the deep end" and "box office poison"?

What if, despite the presence of said man's man movie star, the real badass of the film was the female protagonist?  What if the male protagonist was cowardly and hopelessly out of his league, and he had to learn the ropes from her?  What if the film didn't relegate her to the position of trophy girlfriend?  What if the movie didn't focus on their romance and instead allowed them to be real characters with a real, mature, and evolving relationship?

What if, in addition to all of this, the movie delivered on everything that is expected of a blockbuster action flick?  What if that delivery was a heavy dose of sci-fi and some of the haul-assed best mech action and convincing special effects this side of Avatar?

Actually I liked these effects better than Avatar's.

This is Edge of Tomorrow.