‘War of the Worlds’ at 20: Steven Spielberg made three-quarters of an apocalyptic classic
It had been less than a decade since outer space had launched a blockbuster assault on planet Earth. “Independence Day” conquered the worldwide box office in 1996, mercilessly wiping out tourist destinations around the globe before Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum teamed up to whoop E.T.’s ass. So, when Steven Spielberg announced he was going to put a contemporary spin on H. G. Wells’ novel “The War of the Worlds,” it almost felt unnecessary.
Spielberg had worked with aliens before, of course, but had tended to favor friendlier visitations in the form of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “E.T.” The invaders in “War of the Worlds” were rather less cuddly, but still provided the perfect vehicle for the director to explore his trademark themes of separated families and reluctant, everyman heroes. And even though he steered clear of the trailer-friendly set-pieces that characterized Roland Emmerich’s “Independence Day” — this is very much a film from the post-9/11 America — Spielberg embraced the opportunity to remind the world that he remains (with apologies to James Cameron) the greatest action director of all time. If only he’d nailed the final act, “War of the Worlds” might have been up there with “Jaws,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and “Jurassic Park” in his formidable hall of fame.
Originally published in serialized form in 1897, Wells’ tale of Martians invading Victorian England has proved remarkably malleable source material ever since.
Orson Welles’ famous (or should that be infamous?) 1938 radio adaptation retold the story as a series of news bulletins, and subsequently generated a media frenzy across the U.S. — though the myth that listeners believed Martians were actually invading has probably been greatly exaggerated. The 1953 Hollywood screen version, with its iconic hovering death machines, was a B-movie hit, while “Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds” has been a feature of mixtapes and playlists for nearly 50 years.
A surprising amount of the original novel makes it into Spielberg’s film (written by “Jurassic Park” scripter David Koepp), even though the definite article has been dropped, and the hostile E.T.s no longer hail from Mars. Morgan Freeman (an actor who’d already warned the world about impending death from above when he played the U.S. president in “Deep Impact”) narrates the movie’s bookends, abridged and updated from the original Wells text. Meanwhile, his “Shawshank Redemption” co-star Tim Robbins shows up towards the end of the film as an ambulance driver-turned-wannabe freedom fighter who’s effectively an amalgamation of the artilleryman and the curate in the book.
Spielberg also arms the invaders with the tripod war machines Wells had written about a century earlier. This proto-AT-AT technology had exceeded the limits of 1953 VFX capabilities, though that film does imply that the Martian flying machines are actually supported by three invisible electromagnetic “legs.”
The New Jersey setting (just outside New York City) is a sensible analogue for Wells’ Woking (just outside London) and — just as the book is told from the perspective of an individual narrator — Spielberg never loses focus on his own protagonist, Tom Cruise’s Ray Ferrier. Crucially, the viewer never knows more than Ray does. There are no glimpses into the presidential bunker, nor an overview of the aliens’ progress, just contradictory rumors that things are much worse in Europe. Or that Europe didn’t get hit at all.
That said, Ferrier is where the film really diverges from the source material. The role — Cruise’s second collaboration with Spielberg after 2002’s “Minority Report” — is a long way from the quasi-superheroes (Ethan Hunt, Pete “Maverick” Mitchel, etc.) who’ve dominated Cruise’s resumé in recent years, and arguably more interesting as a result.
When we first meet dock worker Ferrier he’s hard to like: a divorced dad who seems to resent looking after his two kids when his ex-wife goes away for a weekend break. He’s incapable of relating to teenage son Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and his standard response to 10-year-old daughter Rachel’s (Dakota Fanning) anxiety attacks is to shout. He doesn’t even know she’s allergic to peanut butter.
But, when the aliens start rising from beneath the streets of New Jersey — a neat twist on the usual death from above — Ray repeatedly turns out to be the smartest guy in the room. When the aliens have rendered every vehicle useless with an electromagnetic pulse, he makes a beeline for the one car he knows has just had a new solenoid installed. He’s the one who notices that the wind is blowing towards rather than away from the incoming storm, and — at the end of the film — recognizes that birds roosting on a tripod means its shields must be deactivated.
While Cruise is the face of “War of the Worlds,” the film belongs undeniably to Spielberg. He made it remarkably quickly. “Steven had thrown down the gauntlet and said we’re going to make this film in eight months,” concept artist Doug Chiang recalls in Disney+ documentary “Light & Magic.” “A huge film like this, which should really be about a year-and-a-half, he said let’s do it in eight months. We started shooting in December [it was actually November] to release June/July.”
Despite that tight timeframe, the visual storytelling is immaculate and the visuals are often brutal enough to push the limits of the PG-13 (U.S.)/12A (U.K.) rating. (That said, it didn’t come close to earning the X certificate awarded to the 1953 version by British censors who’d decided that many scenes were “very alarming and a number could certainly be described as ‘horrific’.”). Whether the Ferriers are on foot or in a car, the director choreographs spectacular carnage around them, a visceral cocktail of alien death rays turning their victims to dust, or city infrastructure being demolished with extreme prejudice. ILM effects legend Dennis Muren has since described it as his “favorite film” that he has worked on.
Spielberg also knows when to take a “Jaws”-style less-is-more approach. Indeed, one of “War of the Worlds”‘ most powerful moments comes when the Ferriers are hiding out in a basement, and the screen suddenly fades to black. A few background noises and Rachel whispering, “Are we still alive?” are the only proof you have that your TV isn’t broken.
For roughly 75% of its running time, “War of the Worlds” is a stone-cold, end-of-the-world classic. Sadly, the wheels (or should that be legs?) all come off in that final act, as the film limps towards its conclusion via a brief stay in Harlan Ogilvy (Robbins)’ basement.
By this point, Robbie is presumed dead, seemingly engulfed by a fireball after joining up with the military. From here, the film briefly morphs into a kind of haunted house chiller, as Ray, Rachel, and Harlan hide from a creepily prehensile alien spy-cam. It’s a wonderfully tense sequence, but also feels like it belongs in a different movie.
“War of the Worlds”‘ biggest Achilles heel, however, is its last-minute rally to cram in as many elements from Wells’ source material as possible. Without the context of the novel, the mysterious red weed and industrial harvesting of human blood make little sense, aside from highlighting the invaders’ cruel disdain for humanity. There’s also a nod to the narrator’s wife making an unexpected comeback late on, though Robbie’s miraculous/implausible (delete as appropriate) return from the dead stretches credibility way past breaking point. In this over-sentimental twist, it turns out that not only did he survive the aforementioned fireball, but somehow found his way, presumably on foot, to the Boston home of his grandparents (played, in a neat in-joke, by 1953 “WOTW” stars Ann Robinson and Gene Barry).
And of course, the invasion is cancelled, yet again, by Earth’s microbial lifeforms; an abrupt ending that — well over a century after its debut — feels like the equivalent of a school kid writing, “And then I woke up and it was all a dream…” Even Spielberg, interviewed for “James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction,” admitted that “The film doesn’t have a good ending. I never could figure out how to end that darn thing.” Though, to be fair, Cameron wasn’t sure if Wells “could figure it out” either.
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