Bore of the Worlds

As is evident by the above title, I was far from pleased with the new Steven Spielberg/Tom Cruise alien vehicle. I must admit that, going in, I didn’t give the movie much of a chance. Having read the original novel by H.G. Wells, I saw from the movie previews that the story had been changed significantly.
The first problem with the liberal translation of the book is the way that the Martians come down to earth. In the novel, the alien creatures have been watching earth and planning an attack. They send an army of aliens and machinery to our planet in what looks like a meteor shower. The aliens are encased in metal spheres that crash into the earth. From there they emerge, slow and heavy under the stress of earth’s heavy gravity. They are slightly awkward and slow-moving, but are able to build about a dozen huge fighting machines that tear through England (the only place where the creatures land). In the movie, which is set in northern Jersey, the aliens come to earth riding bolts of lightning. The lightning shoots them into the ground where lie, apparently unobserved by humanity, the large fighting machines. I had a big problem with this change and saw no reason for it, other than a chance to show something bursting out of the street.
Ignoring the method of arrival for a while, let’s focus on what happens when the aliens get there. The destruction of small English countryside towns is matched by the destruction of New Jersey suburbs, expect for the way in which the aliens destroy things. In the book they are armed with two distinct weapons: a Heat Ray and Black Smoke. The latter is a toxic gas that kills people immediately. It is the main reason why the aliens in the book are able to kill as many as they do. It doesn’t appear at all in the movie. The Heat Ray is a powerful gun that burns anything and everything in its path. It seems like an ultra powerful flame-thrower. The narrator of the book describes the damage the Heat Ray does, from burnt trees and houses on fire to blackened and charred bodies. In the movie, however, the Heat Ray is replaced by an odd laser that seems to disintegrate anything it touches. People don’t burn and melt when struck, they burst into clouds of whitish gray dust. This dust, which is clearly supposed to echo the odd hanging dust over NYC after 9/11 falls all over Tom Cruise’s character. He looks at himself in a mirror, covered by the human powder, and freaks out (understandably). But do we really need a 9/11 homage here? Another related thing is when Tom and his kids are running from the aliens his daughter (played hauntingly by Dakota Fanning) asks “Is it the terrorists?”.
Speaking of Tom and his kids, his character is very different from the narrator of the book. Tom is a divorced father of two kids who hate him. He works on the harbor as a crane operator. The character in the book is married, has no children, and is a philosopher who writes and researches for a living. Not even remotely connected. I hate that films feel that they have to justify emotional characters by giving them kids. The narrator of the book is very emotional and doesn’t need children to get there.
Moving past the differences with the book (they don’t end there but I’m boring even myself), I’ll share my problems with the movie itself. In classic disaster movie turn of events, everything seems to go right with Tom and his family. They are able to find the only car that still runs in the neighborhood, they are able to drive through mountains of debris and jagged metal in a minivan without getting a flat tire or breaking down. They are able to drive from Jersey to Connecticut without stopping for gas. These things I hate, but will allow because they are somewhat necessary for the progress of the plot.
The aliens themselves are very odd looking and not anything like Wells describes them. They are also in mass numbers while the book suggests that only a handful of spheres crashed onto earth. The aliens in the movies, meanwhile, seem to have obtained some of the characteristics of Velociraptors. They walk and move similar to dinosaurs, but have fully functional arms and hands. Tom encounters them in the basement of a house owned by a very creepy, very overweight Tim Robbins. Robbins’ character is a meshing of two characters from the book (a brave artilleryman and an insane curate). He plays the part perfectly and is, by far, the best thing about the movie. Sadly he is only onscreen for about 15 minutes.
My last complaint is the lack of explanation of a lot of the alien activities in the film. When the lightning bolts (all 26 of them according to Tom’s astute son) deliver the aliens to earth, Tom investigates the sight. He picks up a piece of asphalt or rock and holds it gingerly in his hands. “Is it hot?” someone asks. “No, it’s freezing,” replies Tom. He then slips the rock into his jacket pocket. That is the last we see or hear about it. What was it? Why was it cold? Why did he keep it? Where did it go?
Also, had I not originally read the book, I would have had no clue what the long, red-vined plants that appear after the aliens land were. They are spreading rapidly all around Tom in Tim Robbins’ basement. He picks one up and his hand is covered in a red liquid, blood I would assume if I knew no better. Nothing is ever said about the plants, except when they are dying and Tom picks one up and it crumbles underneath his fingers. There were some other continuity problems that I had trouble with but I won’t mention them here because it would give the ending away. Needless to say, as you can tell from this (overly) long post, I was very disappointed with the movie. Go see it if you must, but I’d recommend reading the book instead.