Divorced dad Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) resents being encumbered with his resentful children while his ex-wife Mary Ann (Miranda Otto) vacations with her new husband. The action begins in a New Jersey shipping yard. On one level it’s less about monsters from space than about chickens and where they roost. Our complacent and secure homeland receives a dose of the terror routinely suffered by much of the rest of the world. This version has an underlying political agenda, with a script that makes numerous references to the use of overwhelming force to impose a military occupation. That diary-like account of life under the heel of Martian invaders anticipated 20th century wars fought with ever-more terrible weaponry. Spielberg ignores gee-whiz, bigger-explosion clichés and instead pumps new energy into an established genre with this intelligent re-think of the original H.G. It’s always good news when a Hollywood sci-fi remake avoids disaster. Spielberg’s new paterfamilias is no longer an immature fanboy. In his War of the Worlds (no ‘The’) struggling to protect one’s kids and make it through another day is the REAL heroic endeavor. Becoming a father (and witnessing the new insecurities of Perpetual War politics) clearly changed Spielberg’s outlook. In a later interview Spielberg admitted that he no longer identified with the premise of CE3K: Roy Neary ditches his job, his wife and his kids for the thrill of a one-way fling into the cosmos. Wells invaders that disintegrate first and suck blood later. Instead of ethereal cereal happy-folk from beyond the stars, an American family is confronted with old-fashioned H.G. Steven Spielberg’s remake of War of the Worlds is almost a mirror image of his 1977 sci-fi Sense of Wonder epic Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Produced by Kathleen Kennedy, Paula Wagner, Colin Wilson Written by Josh Friedman, David Koepp from the book by H.G. Starring: Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Miranda Otto, Justin Chatwin, Tim Robbins.

Seen on a good Ultra-HD setup, those scares translate well to home video.Ģ005 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 116 min. Nervous audiences loved this in 2005… it actually generates some good scares.

For this reviewer it was a big surprise - a Tom Cruise movie in which he plays an appropriately terrified character instead of his annoying big star persona.

Wells’ classic reproduces thrills from the book not captured in George Pal’s 1953 atom-age update.

Skipped this one because it’s by Spielberg? The 9/11- inflected take on H.G.

High cs two steps from hell movie