So I went and saw War of the Worlds and peeked into another theater where Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was starting so watched that as well.
WotW:
A creepy movie but it was only so-so.. hell, in some ways ID4 was better, even with Will Smith.
The good:
- The movie was centered around Ray's (Cruise) family, and didn't show what was going on from other points of view. It was a lot like Signs in that case, but Signs was a better movie overall. In some ways this worked, but it also sucked.
- The tripods actually looked kinda cool and were more faithful to the book.
- It was pretty creepy. Dead bodies floating down a river, giant tripods striding through a town, people being ripped in half or blown to pieces or being sucked dry. A 747 that crashes in a neighborhood. A flaming bullet train that flies past. Alien parasites covering a yard, farmland burning and charred, fields of bodies.
- Some of the city battles with the tripods reminded me of the giant Spiders in HL2.
The bad:
- The fact the movie was set in a limited third-person view (rather than a godly view) was annoying for those who expect this to be like ID4. You don't see what's going on around the rest of the world.
- The battles are extremely limited. this is a WAR of the worlds, I demand huge battlefields with thousands of combatants and explosions all over!
- The entire story revolves around a plot of "Run, hide, run, hide, run, hide, run, hide." Oh shit, they've copied off of ROD TV's plot!
- I miss the stalk eye.
- The worst part was the purpose of the alien tripods. Supposedly they had been underground for thousands of years until now, so this begs several questions. First, why didn't the aliens take over Earth back then? Two, why didn't we notice the tripods while laying pipe/wires/subway? Three, if they had visited back then why didn't they know about our germs? Four, why did they bury the damn things in the first place?
- Also, we assume the aliens want our planet for their own. They start terraforming it by using human blood to create a kind of alien terraforming fungus. If they needed humans to harvest, why did they vaporize humans in the first half of the movie? That would be like me shooting cows. And why didn't they harvest animals as well?
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory:
I have no complaints... really. Well, except maybe that the jokes were't really that funny to me, but they got kids giggling so I guess they worked. Depp played a great eccentric inventor, and I like the fact that they explained Willy Wonka's past and made him into a true 3D character unlike the 2D brats and their generic parents.
