War of the Worlds

Steven Spielberg’s 2005 film was made in haste: pre-production ran three months, half what a production this size normally gets, and photography ran from November 2004 to March 2005. The speed of the ending comes partly from there. The telling is narrow by design. No scientist explains the event and no shot cuts away to world capitals; the audience never sees more than Ray does. Screenwriter David Koepp calls it the very limited point of view of someone on the periphery. Harlan, played by Tim Robbins, combines two characters from the novel under a name taken from a third. The cellar passage stops the middle of the film dead: two adults and a child in a confined space under lengthening pressure. The British classification board uses the same terms, sustained menace in confined spaces. Anyone expecting continuous spectacle should know it halts at its centre. The plane wreck is real: the production bought a retired Boeing 747, broke it up and built the houses around the pieces. The tripods were built to the scale Wells specified, and the creatures inside were shaped from jellyfish, with movement from red-eyed tree frogs. For a viewer willing to stay at Ray’s eye level and sit through that cellar. Not for one who wants the invasion explained or the world’s response shown.