Here, maybe, is the way the Hollywood world ends: not with a bang, but a stinker. Enter another bloated Spielberg epic, weighed down by $180 million in computer contrivances and syrupy strings. Stand by for one more dodgy attempt at putting H.G. Wells on screen. But this time, for this war of this world, there’s a deeper difference.What do British audiences think? Critics, as ever, are all over the place, but the 7 o’clock crowd in my local multiethnic multiplex — who whooped their way through Mr & Mrs Smith a couple of weeks ago — were torpid throughout. And you could understand why.Blood-drinking monsters from outer space who haven’t heard about HIV? Earth invasion plans a million years in the plotting that forgot to factor in microbe immunity? A US army that never panics, but just keeps shouting “Move along there” as though it were winding up a Live 8 concert? Tom Cruise singing Hushabye Mountain to Hollywood’s most irksome moppet, Dakota Fanning, as thousands die 50 yards away? This is tosh, and crass tosh at that.But America doesn’t think so, apparently. There, most voices conjoin in reverential awe. The question is: why? You don’t have to dig too far to find out. War of the Worlds is the first piece of multiplex fodder ripped straight from the rubble of 9 Its “scenes of urban destruction — chaos in the streets, collapse in communications — intentionally call to mind everyone’s worst terrorism nightmares”, the Chronicle observes.Consider Cruise’s first encounter with the alien marauders: “He comes home covered in fine, white dust, like a bystander at ground zero.” But this powder is pulverised flesh and blood, as served up by our tripod-tottering chums when they’re not feeling bloodthirsty. And that wholly gratuitous plane-crash scene? What other planes, crashing, wreaked such havoc?Excerpted from an article by Peter Preston in ‘The Guardian’, July 4
