Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

Last night my husband and I watched again Steven Speilberg's "War of the Worlds".  We both love the one from the 1950's, but this version is a lot of fun, and keeps the basic premise and moral structure of the first, with Morgan Freeman voicing over, instead of Sir Cedric Hardwicke.  Instead of the main character being a elite scientist (from Cal Tech) in this one he's a dock worker, an ordinary guy, and instead of a romance, he has the chance to bond with his two kids from his previous marriage, who are now living an upper middle class life, and look down upon him as a loser.  The class angle is nice, and after all, who, these days would listen to a scientist?  In congress, anything that smacks of scientific thought is considered subversive.

Tom Cruise as Ray is in his element here, and Dakota Fanning is terrific as his ten year old daughter.  I have problems with the son, Robbie, who doesn't have any back story for why he's so hostile, but more importantly, why he wants to join the army and get himself killed.  That he survives stretches our credulity.  If you think about some of what the alien machines do, it makes no sense, but Speilberg keeps us on the edge of our seats and not overthinking the plot.  Tim Robbins is great as a guy gone psycho, a kind of amped up variation of Robbie.  But the movie belongs to Cruise and Fanning, and they make us really feel for them and need them to survive.

The music by John Williams is perfect and the sets and people's faces are as well.  In the end, it is Ray's mechanical expertise that saves him, his daughter and a lot of people caught up in a machine.  So the working class guy is what's needed in this version, and he wins over his kids by his tenacity.  He is going to keep his promise to get them to their mother, and he does.  A Speilberg theme throughout his oeuvre, and the right one for our fractured, divorced times.  The world is saved by nature, not science, and that echoes H.G. Wells to a tee.  This is not a movie for kids, and it is disturbing.  But I found myself thinking of what I would do if a big earthquake hit, or flooding or some natural disaster.  Could I remain human and compassionate in the face of my fear, as Ray does?