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From a technical standpoint, Spielberg is one of the slickest filmmakers around, and he has a knack for making special effects look easy and natural; he also has a healthier appreciation for the human and the absurd than many other directors in this genre. (Take George Lucas—please!) In one scene in War of the Worlds, the camera starts outside Ray's van as it speeds down the highway, and then it passes through the inside, before coming back outside and lifting up into the sky as the van heads off into the distance. The shot must have been a doozy to plan and execute, but the camera moves with ease, and throughout it, Spielberg keeps his focus on the relationship between Ray and his children. He also leavens the sheer grimness of the story with small, believable doses of humor; when Robbie asks if the attack came from terrorists, Ray says, "It came from somewhere else," and Robbie replies, to his father's exasperation, "You mean, like, Europe?"

Still, however warm Spielberg may feel toward individual persons, War of the Worlds just may represent the bleakest view of humanity as a whole that has ever come through in one of his films. In one of the more disturbing scenes, a mob surrounds Ray's mini-van as individuals try to get inside; windows are smashed, guns are drawn, and lives are taken. Ray also comes to the point where he feels he must murder an insane man in order to shut him up before he draws unwanted attention. In Wells's book, this homicide is almost accidental, a crime of passion that our protagonist tries not to feel too guilty about because he did not plan it beforehand; but Ray's action is premeditated, and you wonder if it would seem as justified if he were protecting only himself and not his little girl as well.

As with so many other Spielberg films, it is impossible to watch War of the Worlds without thinking of other movies. It plays like a fusion of 1990s disaster flicks—the alien invasions of Independence Day, the dark clouds and ominous winds of Twister, the sinking vessel and panicked passengers of Titanic—and those foreboding nuclear-war films that were all the rage in the 1980s. A scene in which an alien probe searches a basement for human prey perfectly mirrors a scene in Spielberg and Cruise's earlier collaboration, Minority Report. The cages in which the humans are stored as food under the heads of the "tripods" recall similar devices in A.I. Artificial Intelligence. And the giant sphincter that sucks human victims out of those cages brings to mind, uh, Ivan Reitman's Evolution.

Disaster movies and apocalyptic movies usually invite some sort of religious reflection, and Spielberg has not been shy about exploring faith issues in his films; Minority Report even cast Colin Farrell as an alumnus of Fuller Theological Seminary! But War of the Worlds is a more solidly secular affair. In Wells's novel, religion is depicted mainly as a force that drives people insane—the man that the protagonist kills is, in fact, a clergyman—while Pal's 1953 film reflected the heightened religiosity of its time. Spielberg, working from a script by Josh Friedman (Chain Reaction) and David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Spider-Man), avoids both the negative and positive extremes—the man Ray considers killing is no man of the cloth this time—but in doing so, he leaves an unfilled void at the heart of his movie.

A church is one of the first buildings to be destroyed, and, given the chaos that follows, this may signify how society is lost without faith; then again, given how none of the characters ever consider the possible religious dimensions of their plight, it may also signify that religion is a luxury that society cannot afford when it must struggle simply to survive. Like disasters in real life, the film hits you in the gut with a vision of catastrophe, and leaves you to sort out what it all means. It's a daring approach for a would-be summer blockbuster—so daring it's almost admirable—but some viewers might want a little more guidance.

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Top Ten Alien Invasion Movies	Printer view
With War of the Worlds opening this week, we decided to take a look back at some of the best films in which extraterrestrials decide to pay a visit to our planet—with the intent to do us harm.