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Movie Review:  War of the Worlds

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Snore of the Worlds
(Make Snore, Not War)

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Don't forget your NoDoz!

War of the Worlds or Snore of the Worlds movie?



War of the Worlds or Snore of the Worlds movie?



Keywords:

War of the Worlds, Snore of the Worlds, movie review, movie, review, snore, billboard photo, billboard, photo, sleep, bore, boring, NoDoz, Hollywood, movies, theater, screen, entertainment, Tom Cruise, Orson Welles, Byron Haskin, Gene Barry, Ann Robinson, propaganda, left, Hollywood left, leftist, liberal, socialist, marxist, war, military, anti-war, anti-military, anti-American, politics, FraudFactor, Fraud Factor, Fraud, Factor, Michael D. Robbins, Michael Robbins, Mike Robbins


War of the Worlds or Snore of the Worlds?

By Michael D. Robbins, July 10, 2005, FraudFactor.com

By producing a re-make of the War of the Worlds movie, the pacifist anti-war Hollywood elitists have contributed yet another cure for insomnia, as well as a "war" movie where the Americans fight but cannot kill the enemy. Instead, the Americans suffer heavy civilian casualties and significant property damage. Then, in an anti-climax ending, the alien enemy is killed off by an acceptable "nonviolent" means - disease due to lack of immunity to the common bacteria on earth for which humans had developed immunity over time. Thus, Mother Nature killed off the aliens for the people, and the people did not need to fight or have military weapons after all. Changes made to the plot and characters from the original 1953 movie to conform to inserted political propaganda and rhetoric damaged the movie. The special effects are not all special and do not rescue the movie. Save your time and money on this one, and listen to the original Orson Welles radio broadcast or see the original 1953 movie.

War of the Worlds fails the FraudFactor.com Movie Test

The "FraudFactor.com Movie Test" is simple yet effective. It consists of a few basic questions:

  1. Was the movie worth the time and money spent to see it the first time?
  2. Would you spend the money and time to see the movie a second time?
  3. Would you spend the time to see the movie again for free?
  4. How many minutes of the movie could have been cut out without detracting from the movie (i.e., wasted filler footage)?

War of the Worlds fails the FraudFactor.com Movie Test because it was not worth the money or time to see it again or even the first time, and too much footage could have been cut without detracting from the movie. May I please have my money and my time back?

Much of the time was spent showing Tom Cruise driving in a car to get away from the alien war machines, or hiding out in a building or a basement. Footage that should have been included was missing. There were too few military battle scenes to keep the movie interesting, and the very few battle scenes showed the military making no progress. There should have been considerably more battle scenes, showing brave soldiers fighting against evil to the best of their ability, and making at least some progress even if less than ideal.

War of the Worlds suffers from numerous logical holes and contradictions that distract from the movie. It is polluted with the typical trashy "in your face" leftist political propaganda and rhetoric, which further detracts from what little movie material actually exists. The acting was at times poor, with obvious unnatural over-acting and other annoying behaviors, including Cruises' screaming panic-stricken daughter who would not shut up. Some of the special effects appeared jerky and artificial. Other special effects were interesting, and at times, actually exciting. However, the better special effects do not rescue the movie. If you cut out the wasted filler footage, political propaganda and rhetoric, and bad special effects, there is not much left to call a movie.

The movie tickets and food are overpriced, the movie quality is poor, and to add insult to injury, the theater subjected the audience to a full twenty minutes of paid commercial advertisements after the official movie start time, in addition to the paid commercials before the start time.

Save your money and time, and listen to the War of the Worlds radio broadcast (1938, adapted and broadcast by Orson Welles), or see the original The War of the Worlds movie (1953, directed by Byron Haskin, starring Gene Barry and Ann Robinson). The special effects in the original movie are outstanding, even by modern standards.


Numerous Logical Holes and Contradictions

It is very difficult to engage in "voluntary suspension of disbelief" during many scenes in the movie. There are too many obvious logical holes and contradictions that distract you as you ponder them while the movie has moved on to the next scene. Here is a list of some of the more obvious examples:

  1. Although the roads are cluttered with cars and trucks disabled by an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), Tom Cruise manages to have the only operational civilian motor vehicle. He manages to weave and maneuver for mile after mile between and around all those disabled vehicles that are densely packed, littering the roadways, as though an artificial clear path was created just for him by the movie makers.

  2. The car that Tom Cruise stole is operational because the mechanic replaced the solenoid on the starting motor after all civilian motor vehicles were disabled by an EMP. However, an EMP is unlikely to affect a solenoid, which contains no semiconductor components, and is significantly more likely to affect other critical parts such as the semiconductor engine control computer. Also, if an EMP would damage a solenoid part on the car, which is shielded by the metallic fenders, hood, radiator, and grill, we would expect that the replacement part in the adjacent building would also be damaged by the same EMP. This is almost as foolish as making the car operational by changing a burned out headlight or a hubcap. An EMP can cause irreparable damage to semiconductor integrated circuit chips commonly used in embedded control microprocessors and other digital electronics. However, an EMP is less likely to damage electronic equipment that contains no semiconductors or that is turned off or protected by metallic shielding.

  3. Another scene shows Tom Cruise and his children successfully swimming a substantial distance from a capsized ferry boat to the shore in minimal time with minimal effort or difficulty.

  4. In another scene, a large passenger jet falls out of the sky and crashes into the house in which Tom Cruise and his two children are hiding, which is highly unlikely in itself, and they survive the crash, which is even more unlikely. It is unlikely the jet would crash into their house rather than somewhere else, given the large area of land relative to the size of the jet.

  5. Military jets are shown flying, but they do not appear to attack the alien war machines.

  6. In one scene, Tom Cruise inflicts significant damage to part of a war machine with an axe, and in another he destroys a war machine using two hand grenades placed inside an opening. Yet the incredibly more powerful military weapons including armored tanks, rockets, and jets appear to be useless against the war machines.

  7. According to the plot, the aliens buried their war machines underground millions of years before humans were present on Earth, and waited for when they would be used against the humans. One wonders how those aliens correctly predicted where cities would develop millions of years later so they would know where to bury their war machines.

  8. The movie ends with the aliens dying due to disease. If the aliens were so technologically advanced, it is obvious they would have taken precautions against contamination and infection by bacteria or viruses, as was done by the technologically inferior U.S. Apollo space program to explore the moon. This aspect was retained from the original story, which pre-dated the Apollo program of the late 1960s and 1970s. However, the movie deviated from the original story and movie in frivolous and damaging ways, and would have benefited from a slight yet useful modification to this part of the plot. For example, the aliens could have taken precautions which failed due to unexpected tactics used by the Americans, such as biological warfare. Or, to keep it really simple, for simple minded pacifist producers and script writers, there could have been a bacteria or virus mutation that was not anticipated by the aliens.

  9. At the end of the movie, Cruise arrives with his daughter at their destination, presumably the grandparents' home, where his ex-wife is waiting, and his teenage son had mysteriously arrived earlier. The son had separated from Cruise and the daughter to watch the battle, and was not seen again until the end of the movie.

  10. Even though a large majority of Americans believe in God, there are no scenes showing Americans in church or even out on the street praying to God for help when the world is coming to an end. There are a few scenes showing Americans helping others, but these are overpowered by the scenes showing violent Americans fighting each other for whatever small advantage they may gain.

Leftist Propaganda and Rhetoric

As expected, War of the Worlds contains the typical Hollywood-left obligatory anti-gun scenes, dysfunctional broken family, distasteful "red neck" character (represented as a crazy shotgun-wielding suspected child molester), and out of place, awkwardly inserted anti-President Bush rhetoric with anti-Iraq war statements criticizing military occupation. The movie even starts off with unnecessary labor union rhetoric. Tom Cruise, a dock worker who operates a crane, is confronted by his boss who tells him to come back to work another shift without enough time to sleep. Cruise grins as he tells his boss that would violate the union rules.

The changes made to the plot and characters from the original 1953 movie to conform to the inserted political propaganda and rhetoric damaged the movie. For example, the main characters in the original movie included the more interesting Pacific Tech scientist Gene Barry and Ann Robinson, the niece of local minister Lewis Martin. The main characters in the poor re-make are Tom Cruise, a dull and irresponsible union dock worker and divorced father, his rebellious teenage son, and his young daughter.

This reminds us of the movie, The Sum of All Fears (2002), AKA The Sum of All Failures, based on the 1991 Tom Clancy novel. The Hollywood-left twisted the characters and plot so much to conform to their leftist view of the world that they ruined the movie and made it unrecognizable from the book. See the sidebar for more information on the propaganda changes that ruined the Sum of All Fears.

The anti-gun scenes conveyed the dangerously inaccurate and irresponsible message that you are worse off having a gun than not having one. And that even if you do have one, you will not be able to use it effectively for self-defense, and it will only fall into the wrong hands and be used for criminal purposes. The lack of military battle scenes helps to reinforce the primary theme of the movie, that pacifism is just as effective as fighting against evil with military weapons and personnel.

In one anti-gun scene, Tom Cruise has driven a long distance to escape the aliens, but is stopped by a large impassable mob of people who want a ride or want to steal his car. The mob is banging their fists on the car windows in a threatening manner. Cruise tries to push some of these people out of the way by driving forward. The mob then attacks the car, breaking the windows and trying to pull Cruise and his two children (or was it just his daughter?) out of the car. Cruise stands outside the car, and fires two warning shots into the air with his revolver handgun. The crowd stops attacking him and steps back. But a man with his own handgun steps forward on the left side of Cruise, points his gun at Cruise's head, and orders Cruise to drop his gun. Cruise complies and the man steals Cruise's car. But before the car thief drives off, another man grabs Cruise's revolver from the ground, runs up to the car, and shoots the car thief several times. He gets in the car, pushes the car thief out of the car, and drives off, stealing the car himself.

In another anti-gun scene, Cruise uses an axe rather than an available shotgun to attack the alien war machine's probe tentacle. This scene was constructed in a way to make an axe attack seem more feasible than a shotgun attack.

The political propaganda message here is that guns are evil and of no use to good people. Also, as usual in Hollywood-left movies, firearms are shown in irresponsible and criminal misuse, rather than responsible and safe use which are significantly more common in real life. The last twenty-five years of scientific criminological research has shown that gun control increases violent crime, costing thousands of lives each year, and endangering everyone including those who choose not to own firearms. Defense with a firearm is significantly safer and more effective than any other method. And firearms are used at least five times more often for self defense than they are misused in all crimes, suicides, and accidents combined, usually without having to shoot the attacker. Mere possession and display of a firearm is almost always an adequate defense. Yet the Hollywood-left wants everyone to believe the opposite.

The Hollywood-left eradicated God, church, religion, and prayer from the movie even though it is unrealistic to have an absence of prayer when the world is coming to an end. Compare this with the original 1938 movie, where one of the main characters, Ann Robinson, is the niece of a local minister, Lewis Martin. When the military is called in, Ann's minister uncle hoped to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the resulting standoff with the Martians. However, the Martians demonstrated their evil ruthlessness by "zapping" the minister.

They also continue their attack on the traditional family by changing the characters and plot to make the main characters members of a dysfunctional broken family. The broken family consists of Tom Cruise, an irresponsible divorced husband, his ex-wife who has another man in her life, and his teenage son and young daughter who normally live with their mother but stay with him on rare occasion for baby-sitting purposes.


Some Special Effects Not So Special

The special effects were interesting, sometimes lacking, and other times actually exciting. The special effects where the alien war machines start their attack appeared jerky and artificial. The special effects where a war machine sent a probe tentacle into the basement to search for humans looked realistic and provided some temporary edge of your seat suspense. However, this was one of the tainted anti-gun scenes. The special effects could not possibly rescue the movie, and without the special effects, there is not much left to call a movie.

Twenty Minutes of Paid Commercials After Official Movie Start Time

To add insult to injury, the Pacific Theaters in El Segundo, California ("Pacific Beach Cities All Stadium 16") harassed the audience with a full twenty minutes of paid commercial advertising (yes, I timed it) after the advertised start time of the movie. These ads included product ads and movie ads, referred to as "trailers" even though they play them before the movie in an attempt to force you to watch them. Then, finally, after the twenty minutes of ads, the theater introduced the movie by euphemistically referring to it as the "feature presentation", implying that the ads were also worthwhile presentations! If you came before the advertised start time of the movie, you were also annoyed with the slide show ads that preceded the video ads.

One of the promises of seeing movies in a theater was that in return for paying for admission, you would not be subjected to advertisements as with free broadcast television. This promise has been broken, as it has with subscription cable television service. Another promise was that you would see the movie on a big screen. This promise has also been mostly broken with the introduction of multiple screen theaters where the screens are substantially smaller than those in single screen theaters that were common in the 1960s and 1970s. The screen size gets worse as the audience size becomes smaller. Many multi-screen theaters have different screen sizes and different quality sound systems in different parts of the theater. As the audience size for a movie becomes smaller, the movie is shown on smaller screens with cheaper lower quality sound systems.

The Hollywood-Left Movie Makers Just Don't Get It!

The movie industry complains their profits are down and they don't understand why, or they try to use movie downloading and copying as an excuse.

However, the movie industry charges too much money for theater tickets ($10 USD each) and theater food (another $8 or $10 USD each) if you make the mistake of arriving hungry. They make you throw out any food or drinks they catch you trying to bring into the theater. Many theaters charge extra for parking.

They make you watch twenty minutes of obnoxious paid commercial ads after the advertised movie start time in addition to the ads shown before the start time. In addition, they add obvious and distracting paid "product placements" prominently featuring the product with its brand name clearly visible in the actual movies.

They produce low quality movies with much wasted filler footage, bad scripts, and bad acting that you pay for in advance before you know what you are getting (and what you are not getting). They often lack creativity and new ideas, and resort to re-making old movies into mostly lower quality products. After producing a rare good movie, they often exploit their customers by producing additional "Part 2", "Part 3", etc. follow-on movies of extremely poor quality (e.g., the second and third Matrix movies had so much wasted filler footage, they should have been combined into one movie by editing out half the footage of each movie). There are too few of the rare exceptions, such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy, where all three movies were of excellent quality and well worth the time and money.

Many of their movies feature highly offensive themes, including anti-Christian and homo-centric themes, historical revisionism, and extreme gratuitous violence and vulgarity, while promoting anti-social values to new generations of society. While homosexuals, lesbians, and other deviants are entitled to the same individual rights recognized by the Constitution, including the right to marry one adult of the opposite sex at a time, these deviant behaviors should not be mainstreamed and promoted to other people's children by the Hollywood-left in movies, television, and music.

Many of their "critics" in the news and entertainment industry give misleading and inaccurate reviews of the movies, for whatever reasons, political motivations, or compensation considerations they may have, leading to increased disappointment and feelings of being exploited and manipulated. In many cases, including the reviews of the movies "The Crying Game" and "Election", their "critics" gave high ratings to incredibly bad movies while concealing the homo-centric themes and characters, resulting in an in-your-face "audience ambush" intended to promote the normalization and elevation of deviant and dysfunctional sexual behavior and lifestyles.

And they spit in the face of more than half of Americans who vote or consider themselves traditional conservative by polluting already bad movies with leftist, anti-conservative, anti-American, and anti-military political propaganda and hate rhetoric.

Need I say more?

A Pattern of Hollywood-Left Propaganda in Movies

The movie, The Sum of All Fears (2002), AKA The Sum of All Failures, was based on the 1991 Tom Clancy novel, with outspoken Hollywood leftist Ben Affleck poorly portraying the CIA agent Jack Ryan character from the previous Clancy novels and movies. The Hollywood-left twisted the characters and plot so much to conform to their leftist view of the world that they ruined the movie and made it unrecognizable from the book.

They changed the Islamo-fascist terrorists into right-wing neo-Nazis, requiring major re-working of the plot and script. They nearly completely sanitized out all the Islamic terrorist themes from the book. Based on Amazon.com reviews by customers who read the book and watched the movie, the following significant changes were made: nearly all of the Arab characters, the communist East German scientists, and the native Indian radical were deleted. A great ending with peace in the Middle East was also deleted. And the familiar married Jack Ryan character was changed into an unmarried man, and his CIA co-workers were portrayed as immature young kids.

When Tom Clancy was asked about these changes in a talk radio show interview, he said, "In Hollywood, there is no such thing as a bad communist. There are only bad Nazis." This movie was another waste of money and time. Ben Affleck's poor acting further damaged the movie.

This ridiculous attempt to cover up the reality that most of the world's terrorism is committed by Arab Islamo-fascists is also supported by the major print and broadcast news organizations, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and the television networks. They consistently use the terms "militants" and "political activists" when referring to Arab Islamo-fascist terrorists who have committed pre-meditated mass murders of civilian men, women, and children.

The leftists in the U.S. and other western nations represent an unparalleled evil, because they want to bring down the U.S. and the other western nations, and they support the Islamo-fascist terrorists to promote this agenda. If the Islamo-fascist terrorists prevail, they will kill and destroy everything the leftists claim they value and believe in, including homosexuality and other deviant sexual behavior (GLBTQ - "gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and questioning"), pornography, religious freedom including atheism and cult religions, women's rights, minority rights, free speech and freedom of the press, voting rights, and the leftists themselves. This makes the western leftists extremely evil and/or suicidal ignorant idiots.

There is a long list of movies containing leftist, anti-American Hollywood propaganda, as well as movies that were made as complete propaganda films. These include movies by Michael Moore, Oliver Stone, Rob Reiner, Robert Altman, and producer/actor Steven Seagal. Here are a few examples of complete propaganda films:

  1. Michael Moore claimed in his fraudulent documentary, Bowling for Columbine, that the National Rifle Association was founded by racist Ku Klux Klan members, when in fact the NRA was founded in 1871 by Union Army Generals who successfully fought the Civil War to end slavery. The NRA was founded for the purpose of promoting firearm safety and proficiency based on experience gained from the Civil War.

  2. Steven Seagal produced and acted in the rabid anti-gun and anti-conservative movie, The Patriot (1998), and the rabid anti-business environmentalist movie, Fire Down Below (1997).

  3. The American President (1995) was made as a political propaganda film to benefit then Democrat president Bill Clinton, to provide cover for his political scandals and to promote his political agenda including firearm prohibition. Young children are also targeted by the Hollywood-left.

More information on the Hollywood-left can be found at http://www.celiberal.com/theWhineRack.php.
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Original and modified War of the Worlds billboard photo
copyright ©2005 by FraudFactor.com.
First Posted: Monday, July 11, 2005 - 10:00 p.m. Pacific Time
Last updated: Saturday, July 16, 2005 - 10:30 p.m. Pacific Time
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