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Originally Posted by Jives Yeah, Curt. I have to agree with you on Tom. He detracts from the movie because it becomes very difficult to suspend disbelief. I never forgot I was watching a movie because every time I saw Tom, it drew me right back to Earth.
The two kids worked, though.
Honestly I thought that casting an unknown for the protagonist would've worked better. (Although I thought the cop played by Tim Robbins was well done.
I had the advantage of just rereading the book before the movie and I was glad that Speilburg stuck as close as he could to the actual plot. The ferry scene was one of the best in the book, as was the "blood-sucking" scene. (Which was even more brutal in the book.)
Unfortunately, like the book, the ending was a complete letdown. Pfft.  |
Hi Jives:
Yeah, I always get this overwhelming impression watching Cruise perform that he's trying to desperately overcompensate for some deep personal flaw (I mean, other than toxic-level narcissicism, of course). And in the process of overcompensating he overacts and calls too much attention to his own presence in the movie. Maybe if his sisters bought him one of those three-way, full-length mirrors you find in tailor shops he would become so engaged with his own image he would quit plagueing the lives of movie-goers and beautiful, but dimwitted, starlets forever.
Wells' ending was a double-edged sword, now wasn't it? Altogether brilliant, witty and, yet, an anti-climax. To place everything within context, consider the alternative options available to Wells: have a large (and predictable) battle set piece where humanity wins or a nihlistic one where Martians assert themselves as the dominant lifeform on our planet.
As you can see, following the logic of his own construct to its inevitable conclusion, Wells painted himself into a corner on this issue. Wells had too much integrity as a man and writer to fall back on a cheesy
Deus ex machina strategem and so micro-organisms conquering an advanced race it was. It's also pretty clear that Wells got his rocks off submitting mankind to the humiliation of seeing all his most precious, arrogant illusions go up in flames.