Entertainment
Steven Spielberg’s Most Divisive Sci-Fi Film Deserves Its Positive Rotten Tomatoes Score
Even with all the crowd-pleasers to his name, few contemporary blockbuster filmmakers have a catalog as frequently debated as Steven Spielberg. Two decades on, his adaptation of War of the Worlds continues to divide audiences more than most. Released in 2005 and starring Tom Cruise, the film holds one of the lowest audience scores of Spielberg’s career on Rotten Tomatoes, and it’s often left out of the top 10 in rankings of his greatest works. But War of the Worlds doesn’t deserve such a middling reputation. Revisiting it today, you’ll find something far more special than its legacy would suggest.
Coming from such iconic source material, you probably already know the basic setup: An alien invasion threatens humanity, and an ordinary man must fight for his family as society collapses. But, unlike the H. G. Wells book, Spielberg takes the book’s Victorian England setting and drops us in New Jersey instead. Cruise plays Ray Ferrier, a dockworker and flawed father to Rachel (Dakota Fanning) and Robbie (Justin Chatwin). When aliens invade, the family’s going to need a hero if they’re going to make it through alive. But is Ray really up to the task?
‘War of the Worlds’ Replaces the Traditional Action Hero With a Panicked Everyman
Spielberg isn’t interested in depicting heroism in the traditional sense. Ray isn’t a savior, and he sure isn’t a leader either. Unlike the action hero you’d expect at the center of all great sci-fi thrillers, he’s highly reactive, incredibly overwhelmed, and just barely holding it together. It locks the film in on a character other post-apocalyptic thrillers would do away with in act one. The ambition of this choice is clear from the film’s first major set piece: the invasion.
In his more than 50 years of filmmaking, Spielberg’s never directed something more terrifying. In films past, the director would put us in the hands of someone who knows what they’re doing. But when the ground cracks open and the first tripod emerges, the audience isn’t left in the hands of a level-headed and unwavering lead. Like his kids, we’re stuck with Ray… and all the uncertainty and panic and chaos that comes from him as our guide.
‘War of the Worlds’ Channels Post-9/11 Fear Into One of Spielberg’s Boldest Sci-Fi Visions
The film is innovative for more than just its main character. Beneath the surface, War of the Worlds is a different kind of spectacle — one more concerned with uniquely 21st-century themes. The imagery is clearly born of post-9/11 anxieties: a morning attack, dust swallowing crowds, people running in fear, a sickening sense that things will never be the same … War of the Worlds channels the fear and disorientation that was still so fresh in American minds after 2001. Rather than offering escapism as usual, Spielberg confronts that reality head-on.a 76% critics’ score at Rotten Tomatoes
Plenty of critics liked War of the Worlds — it does hold a modest 76% critics’ score at Rotten Tomatoes — but top voices like Roger Ebert and Jonathan Rosenbaum called it hokey and uninteresting. Its 42% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes’ Popcornmeter is also less than enthusiastic. They’ve got it wrong, though. Viewed today, the film’s unconventional Cruise role and its willingness to explore the darkest corners of the collective unconscious make for one of Spielberg’s boldest projects ever. It’s a film that challenges its audience, sidestepping the easy answers or comforting resolutions we expect from Spielberg. It might not fit neatly alongside some of his most entertaining works, but that’s precisely what makes it so ambitious … and one of his most underrated, too.
- Release Date
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June 29, 2005
- Runtime
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116 Minutes
- Writers
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Josh Friedman, David Koepp, H.G. Wells
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