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War Of The Worlds
Tuesday, July 05, 2005   By: Mahone Dunbar

A mini-movie review

A Mini-Movie Review

Today I broke down and watched director Steven Spielburg's new movie, "War Of The Worlds." Why, you may justly ask, would I spend good money to empower that leftist creep? Fair question. I didn't. I paid to see another movie, watched it, and then watched WOTWs.

In a nutshell, this movie was about as devoid of purpose–like theme, character growth, plot and other trivialities that apparently don't concern big-effects directors - as a movie could be. The movie is ponderous and plodding. Things blow up. More things blow up. Some things burn. Then bigger things blow up. It's a wallpaper of destruction from one end to the other. The movie is about nothing but destruction. It made me yearn for the cohesiveness and coherence of a Steven King movie. In fact, WOTW's thread-bare plot made King's "Maximum Overdrive" seem like "Macbeth."

There was one bright spot in this otherwise sea of endless explosions: In what was a prime example of casting by type, Tim Robbins played a wild-eyed fanatic full of dangerous ideas. As you can imagine, the role wasn't much of a stretch for Timmy. Tom Cruise's character, and that of his screen daughter, wind up in a basement with this dangerous psycho. Once he's had enough of Robbins, Cruise goes in a small side room with him, locks the door, and presumably beats him to death. This Karl Rove fantasy wish-fulfillment moment - hey, who hasn't wanted to lock loud-mouthed Tim Robbins in a basement room and beat him insensible, if not to death? It may have been a sop thrown to conservatives in the theater.

Here again, as in "Star Wars III: Revenge Of The Sith," the word has spread through the media that Spielberg used the script to make an analogy between the Alien invasion of the earth and the American invasion of Iraq! Was the analogy there? Yes. The aliens, in addition to wanting liebenstraum, use human blood as a sort of universal nutrient–fuel. Get it? Blood for oil. Spielberg, in his usual heavy-handed way, has the aliens take the earthlings' land, and their blood. Of course it's pretty silly the way the high-tech aliens, who had the foresight to bury their armada in the earth a million years prior to their attack, collect the blood. Humans that aren't vaporized (leaving their clothes floating in the air), are collected by long tentacles and placed in a series of baskets much like the ones fishermen use. When the aliens need more blood, a large red, puckered anus above the baskets opens up and a tape-worm like tentacle descends, grabs the nearest human, and pulls him into the anus! Now, I'm no expert on psychology, or deconstructing the hidden motives of artists, but the film, which shows humans inserted into the spaceship's anus like helpless cosmic gerbils, was made by the Hollywood elite. Yipes! The dreams Spielberg must have. You figure it out.

Naturally, Cruise's character and his daughter wind up in the basket. Someone is taken into the anus and all the other humans stare helplessly and shriek. Cruise has a bag full of explosives, grenades, with him. When he is taken into the anus he pulls the pins on the grenades. He becomes, note the lack of subtly here, a suicide bomber. Of course the other humans suddenly get wise and pull Cruise back before the grenades go off. The point Spielberg seems to be pounding home here is that when fighting an invading force on your homeland there is a moral equivalency between heroism and suicide bombing.

Gee, Steve, now I understand the Middle East situation a lot better. But who knows; maybe if someone wanted to turn me into a cosmic gerbil and stick me up a spaceship's ass I'd blow myself up too.

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