Personally, I can't believe we are still talking about this film. I made a comment because I was so disapointed in it. But, now it has taken on a life of its own. Please let it die! It was a great special effects film and nothing more!

Woah, Mike. Is this about you or the film now?

Another film has already taken over at the box office, and WOTWs will never regain the lead.

I could care less about the box office. I'm mostly into indie films, anyway. So this horse race mentality belongs with the industry nerds.


Everyone seems to be a Spielberg fan and trying to make excuses for him! Don't do it, let the film stand or fall on its own three legs! Be intelectually honest here, the film as presented to the movie audiance-------sucked!

Or maybe, everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

How about you keep on going trying to convice the people who liked the film that they didn't really like the film, they were brainwashed.

Personally, I can't believe we are still talking about this film. I made a comment because I was so disapointed in it. But, now it has taken on a life of its own. Please let it die! It was a great special effects film and nothing more!

I'm not a huge Spielberg fan - I like a few of his films a lot, and I'm indifferent on more. But, as far as War of the Worlds goes, I don't think it was a special effects film at all. It was a film that had some very good special effects in it (though not as many as people remember upon leaving the theater - there's an entire act with almost no Tripods at all), but it wasn't a special effects film. It was a very stripped down character piece, though he was looking at really only one side of a character, but doing so very, very intently. The special effects are nothing for the movie though. If you never see the Tripods at all, just see people reacting to them (which is actually mostly what is going on in the movie), the story still plays out the same, because that's what it's about. How the character's react to what they're seeing, not what they're seeing. Personally, I thought the ending should have been drawn out to it's logical conclusion, but that wasn't a dealbreaker for me. The first half of the film is a gripping as anything I've seen recently.

the reason i used m night&fincher is that not only are the stories and characters strong, there are humane elements that protrude from each of their films, something that has been lacking in the spielberg films as of late.

in 6th sense, you really dug deep into the mother and son relationship despite all the supernatural stuff. in the village, there no supernatural stuff but you really felt the love story between the two main characters despite the ending. it is a very warm and humanistic approach to filmmaking. ironically, the student has become the master. m night was the learner of spielberg but has now mastered the art of compassionate storytelling. spielberg was the trailblazer with humane character relationships like et & the boy, the divorced family in close encounter, the friends on the boat in jaws, father and son in indy last crusade, and so forth. but lately, catch me if you can, minority report, ai, terminal and the latest war of the worlds lack the compassionate view of the human characters in the film. instead, it is dry, cold and calculated "craftsmen" as you said.

as for craftsmanship, i prefer fincher's over spielberg. there is something ineluctably unexplainable about how aesthetically pleasing his camera angles are. there is a consistency, but we already know that. what is interesting beyond his craft is his stories, which are always rich in morality ping pong, yin yang balance. as dark as his films are, they are always "about something" (as gene roddenberry would say). 7 was about several things but i think it was primarily about excess through the 7 deadly sins. it is about how life should be balanced instead of having too many "TOO" experiences. beyond that i loved the humane view of the pitt+gwen couple relationship and the tragedy behind it. i loved the morgan+brad relationship of two partners, each on spectrums ends of their lives (young&old). i also liked how the killer and pitt's relationship is... but i won't spoil it for those of you that haven't seen it =). in my mind, 7 is a few cuts above many films released in that same year. the game was quieter but it was about how you should break free from the mold/grind of life. i think several of his films have this theme but this one nails it home. this is a classic like 7 cause it is teaching the viewer about a lesson, so that by the end, the viewer doesn't walk away feeling just entertained, they feel that it could have changed their lives. just as fight club changed many people's lives, i believe 7, the game also have that same power, taht's why i consider them classics. panic room is about greed, remember the scene at the end when the money flies in a funnel upward? that hits the message home.

as for flaws, i don't think you listed any flaws for me to see =). all you said was the story fell apart in the later half of 7 without any reasons why. i think fincher's films are flawless.

i think tim burton is pretty consistent and if a story happens to match his visual style well, then it's a pretty good film like big fish or batman. he has said in interviews that he can't spot a good story if it hit tim in the face. look at all of his works, no matter how "bad" you think the film itself is, the visuals are always signature burton. that's the one thing he does best. i think he should become a set designer or a production designer instead of a director =).

i don't agree with your assessment about track record. have you seen peter jackson's heavenly creatures? before LOTR came out, when i saw the fantasy sequence in that film or the frighteners, i knew he could do LOTR justice. but as good as LOTR is, it's still lacking in many respects =). i think PJ had great material and he let that material shine through when necessary but still put his big stamp on it in a big way. for example, when he zooms into gandalf's face in fellowship ("is it secret? is it safe?") THAT was classic PJ style. last i heard, he was going back to direct a small picture after king kong.

Shyamalan and Fincher
...

tim burton

but lately, catch me if you can, minority report, ai, terminal and the latest war of the worlds lack the compassionate view of the human characters in the film. instead, it is dry, cold and calculated "craftsmen" as you said.

It's all subjective, I suppose. I find Catch Me if You Can to be laced with very real humanity, especially in all of Walken's scenes and towards the end when Di Caprio is finally captured. War of the Worlds is very much about the dark side of humanity, but it too has some very nice moments between Cruise and Fanning. Some films - like say A Clockwork Orange - just won't a fit a compassionate view of humanity, but that's not the only view of humanity possible, unfortunately.

this is a classic like 7 cause it is teaching the viewer about a lesson, so that by the end, the viewer doesn't walk away feeling just entertained, they feel that it could have changed their lives. just as fight club changed many people's lives, i believe 7, the game also have that same power, taht's why i consider them classics. panic room is about greed, remember the scene at the end when the money flies in a funnel upward? that hits the message home.

There's lots of movies that are about a lesson. Life as a House is teaching the viewer about a lesson. It takes more than that to create a classic - it requires a certain ephemeral quality. Seven and The Game are okay, but they don't have the quality like Fight Club, there's nothing in them that has a feeling of something important having been talked about. Panic Room is too, too hamhanded. I felt like I was being hit over the head with it.

as for flaws, i don't think you listed any flaws for me to see =). all you said was the story fell apart in the later half of 7 without any reasons why. i think fincher's films are flawless.

John Doe only works as long as he remains John Doe. As soon as he becomes a person he loses power. Up until the chase in the rain, each murder feels like a logical progression of the story. After the chase in the rain it feels rushed, perfunctary. 7 deadly sins, so we know we've got to get through them all. And then once Doe does turn up, he creates such a build up to what he's going to do and how it's going to change everything for everyone, it seemed like he was talking about killing the world or proving God was dead or something. What he did do was terrible enough for Freeman and Pitt's characters, but that was all, there wasn't anything beyond that. It was a letdown - it seemed like Fincher and Walker didn't really know where they were going.

i think tim burton is pretty consistent and if a story happens to match his visual style well, then it's a pretty good film like big fish or batman. he has said in interviews that he can't spot a good story if it hit tim in the face. look at all of his works, no matter how "bad" you think the film itself is, the visuals are always signature burton. that's the one thing he does best. i think he should become a set designer or a production designer instead of a director =).

Style is all well good - any director's particular visual and storytelling style is going to remain consistent from film to film. There are certainly any number of director's out there who make consistently good looking bad movies, and any number of director's who make mediocre looking good movies, etc. But that's not someones track record. Their track record is whether they made good movies or bad movies and why. Like Fincher, if Burton comes across a good story he'll make a good movie - they're good storyteller's but not particularly good authors - and if he doesn't he won't. And the inability of being able to tell whether a story is good or not is part of their style as well.

i don't agree with your assessment about track record. have you seen peter jackson's heavenly creatures? before LOTR came out, when i saw the fantasy sequence in that film or the frighteners, i knew he could do LOTR justice. but as good as LOTR is, it's still lacking in many respects =). i think PJ had great material and he let that material shine through when necessary but still put his big stamp on it in a big way. for example, when he zooms into gandalf's face in fellowship ("is it secret? is it safe?") THAT was classic PJ style. last i heard, he was going back to direct a small picture after king kong.

I have seen Heavenly Creatures, and it's a good movie, but there's nothing in it to suggest what he was able to come up with in LOTR, and the same with the Frighteners. I was fairly certain he could deal with the psychological elements, but often his and Walsh's work on characterization can go into goofy areas - Jackson in particular has a love of silly over-the-top characterization that has been a staple of his style until now - and there was nothing to suggest that he could really reach the epic levels he needed to for the film - the same way there was nothing in THX-1138 and American Graffiti to suggest that Lucas could write and direct Star Wars. There are of course connections of style between Rings and his earlier films because they were made, but he really made a leap in storytelling style and his ability to direct actors (though certainly some of the broad Jackson still peaks through, especially through Gimli).

He's scheduled to do a small film, The Lovely Bones, after Kong, then we'll see what he does. But, at certain levels, even your small movies stop being small movies because the media won't let them be. Even when Spielberg makes little stuff like The Terminal it becomes a Spielberg movie and lots of stuff (on the part of the viewer) is attached to it before it's ever seen, and the same will probably be the same for Jackson, who has of course realized it. When Bones does come out, 3/4 or more of every article and review about it will take the 'It's not Lord of the Rings anymore' tack because most writers and audiences can't help themselves.

I just saw it, the "Human Evaporation Laser" is very disturbing! And the alien ship horn sounds like a million ferry horns mixed together! If Jak 3's Dark Precursors were instead the martians in this movie and the terraformer was the alien ship in the movie, the game would be rated M.

P.S: I saw the full-rez version of the King Kong Trailer as well! and a news feature on the war between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray used a part of the movie as well! will upload the news feature if anyone wants to see it. (I still need someone to host the file, I don't trust the free services.)

I just saw it, the "Human Evaporation Laser" is very disturbing! And the alien ship horn sounds like a million ferry horns mixed together! If Jak 3's Dark Precursors were instead the martians in this movie and the terraformer was the alien ship in the movie, the game would be rated M.

P.S: I saw the full-rez version of the King Kong Trailer as well! and a news feature on the war between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray used a part of the movie as well! will upload the news feature if anyone wants to see it. (I still need someone to host the file, I don't trust the free services.)

Jack,

Wasn't that alien ship horn sound effect awesome? Like I said in my previous posts, the sound design in that movie stands out so much. It's a very high quality mix.

Also the minivan shot was mentioned briefly before, and if there was any doubt still, it was definitely an effect shot. I'd love to see the breakdown for it. I think the whole idea of digital storyboarding really helped with this horrificly short shoot schedule. Supposedly the minivan shot was completed exactly how it was storyboarded.

It must be very advantageous to see how a shot will look before the director even calls action...