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Friday, July 1, 2005 - 1:13amSanction this postReply
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Disclaimer: I know next to nothing about H.G. Wells's original novel by this title, or of the old radio broadcast and film. This is simply a commentary on Spielberg's version, released Wednesday.

If your friends or acquaintances try to get you to see this movie, *don't.* A horrid, nihilist sense of life permeates the entire film.

As many critics have pointed out, this latest release by Spielberg is a sort of "anti-Close Encounters of the Third Kind." Instead of coming to Earth in a spirit of benevolence and goodwill, the aliens in War of the Worlds are here to kill every last human alive, by either vaporizing us or turning us into fertilizer. And they basically succeed, except during the movie's pathetic 15-minute deus ex machina conclusion, probably tacked on to prevent the audience from stepping outside and committing mass suicide. The film has no real heroes. Its main characters stumble blindly through 2 hours of utter hopelessness and despair, as invincible machines destroy human civilization like a boy stepping on an anthill.

Spielberg also intentionally and crassly inserts imagery and events meant to evoke the attacks of September 11. I don't think 9/11 should be off limits to filmmakers, but the way it is used here -- to soften up the audience for 90 minutes of sheer terror -- is simply unconscionable.

Will Thomas once remarked to me that he thinks horror movies are a sign of cultural decay. If you had asked me to write the most thorough, consistent depiction of horror possible, I could not have conceived a script that conveyed half this film's level of sick, hopeless despair, or its reveling in bloodshed. The movie forces upon you the feeling of kneeling before evil. I wanted to puke.


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Post 1

Friday, July 1, 2005 - 2:29amSanction this postReply
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Andrew Bissell writes:
>Disclaimer: I know next to nothing about H.G. Wells's original novel by this title, or of the old radio broadcast and film.

Ah, that explains a great deal then.

- Daniel

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Post 2

Friday, July 1, 2005 - 6:20amSanction this postReply
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Andrew Bissell wrote: "Will Thomas once remarked to me that he thinks horror movies are a sign of cultural decay."

Well, I don't know about that. I see the point being made, but really, by that standard humans _always_ have been culturally decayed. Herakles versus the hydra, Herakles versus the Stymphalian birds, Herakles versus ... Herakles versus... Orion killed by the Scorpion ... Arachne changed into a spider for sassing Athena... Tithones forever aging into a grasshopper... Terrible monsters are only extensions of the fact that we can be eaten by lions and bears. Stories of terrible consequences scare us with metaphysical horror. Certainly, Medea was a horror story of that touched on both of those aspects, if not something deeper still. On only the thin surface, what could be more horrible to the rational men of Athens, than an insanely jealous woman?

Frankenstein and Dracula are 19th century classics, one from the opening and other from the close of the great capitalist era.

Again, I agree with the overall sentiment. I think that people who devour Stephen King books are a little wierd -- but that would include Barbara Branden, so perhaps our judgements should be tempered.


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Post 3

Friday, July 1, 2005 - 6:41amSanction this postReply
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Andrew Bissell wrote: " ... the aliens in War of the Worlds are here to kill every last human alive, by either vaporizing us or turning us into fertilizer. And they basically succeed, except during the movie's pathetic 15-minute deus ex machina conclusion..."

Well, in the first place, that is how the original story played out. Nothing we could do could stop them. Every defense and offense failed. Hope was gone. And then, they died. We accept the germ theory of disease today, but in Wells's time, it was not firmly established in the popular mind and was a deus ex machina. (Otherwise, the Martians would have taken steps to prevent that, just as we would today.)

On the other hand, INDEPENDENCE DAY was the same story, but we were saved when hackers crashed the aliens' software operating systems. So, improbable -- ok impossible -- as that might have been, we saved ourselves.

All monster movies have this formula. Godzilla was "killed" by a horrible new weapon, but then Godzilla came back again and again, sometimes as an amoral force, accidentally protective of those who would destroy him. So, it gets morally grey pretty quick.

This same ambiguity appears in other 1950s monster movies. The monster is misunderstood -- and that is a reflection into the minds of the teenage audiences for whom these films were created. In some movies (Bradbury's IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE and Raymond Jones' THIS ISLAND EARTH), the aliens are themselves caught in tough circumstances and we are accidentally part of that -- which creates a special tension for the viewer who empathsizes with the aliens and accepts (or denies) responsibilty for compounding their predicaments.

In a sense, all fiction stems from the campfire mythology of monsters and heroes. We sublimate the giant spider living in a forest into a collectivist newspaper columnist who uses architecture to enslave the minds of his readers. However, along comes Roark ...



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Post 4

Friday, July 1, 2005 - 7:07amSanction this postReply
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I read a review of the film today - and the critic didn't like it. Not for it's sense of life, but just because of Spielberg's directing style.

I have read the original book. It is not particularly inspiring type of story. The only good thing it's got going for it, is the love the hero shares with his wife and child and his heroic attempts to save them.

Humanity does not defeat the aliens, but plain and simple bacteria does.

Don't you just hate it when intelligent Aliens always forget about bacteria, viruses, water and common garden slugs that are abundant on earth when they come and invade? I don't know. No one ever gave them that well-known boy scout advice..."be prepared."

A bit silly from the point of view that the book starts by telling us the Martians had been observing us for long time now, drawing up their plans for invasion. Unfortunately, too stupid to bother finding out if the planet has infectious microbes before invading though ;-)


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Friday, July 1, 2005 - 7:27amSanction this postReply
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Sense of life aside, the movie just bored me. It didn't feel substantial at all. It was just 'eh'.

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Post 6

Friday, July 1, 2005 - 7:50amSanction this postReply
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I watched it yesterday, I'm a sucker for good CGI.

For once I can tell people, read the book! This movie is more like it then the 50's version. I knew the premise going in, no matter what we did we were going to lose. This movie started off just like ID4 in many ways.

Andrew I agree with Micheal, thats how the story goes. A friend of mine wrote this about each version:



War of the Worlds I (book)- 1898 - Martian invasion strikes England. Ends in human victory after Martians die from Earth germs.

War of the Worlds II (radio)- 1938 - Initial Martian invasion begins at Grover's Mill, New Jersey. Ends in human victory after Martians die from Earth germs.

War of the Worlds III (movie)- 1953 - Initial Martian invasion begins near Los Angeles, California. Ends in human victory after Martians die from Earth germs.

War of the Worlds IV (movie)- 2005 - World-wide Martian invasion. Ends in human victory after Martians die from Earth germs.



See a pattern here? Whats important though is at the end of the movie the narrater, Morgan Freeman, states that humans paid for their right to live on Earth through a billion deaths over the centuries due to disease. The Martians, or whoever they were, did not.


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Friday, July 1, 2005 - 2:17pmSanction this postReply
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My uncle woke up in the 1930s to the sound of HG Wells doing his famous War of the Worlds broadcast. "What guff," he said, turned the radio off and went back to sleep.:-)

--Brant


Post 8

Friday, July 1, 2005 - 2:20pmSanction this postReply
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I don't think children should see this movie, btw.

--Brant


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Post 9

Friday, July 1, 2005 - 2:31pmSanction this postReply
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Andrew's response is interesting from a number of points of view, and is worth breaking down further.

He raises a two basic criticisms. The first is *aesthetic*: that Spielberg has made a nihilistic movie, that makes illegitmate use of horrific images and revels in bloodshed. The second criticism is *cultural*: what kind of director might produce such a monstrosity, and what kind of audience might appreciate it?

To answer the second question first, I thought about the reasons 'War of the Worlds' moved me personally. Primarily, it made me flashback to the tiny apocalypses of my own life, which, like the movie, came out of nowhere on a very ordinary day. Like coming home in the middle of the day to find my father lying dead on the floor, or seeing my 9 month old daughter beneath the wheel of a truck driven by a partly blind man (she survived, like the characters in the movie, rather miraculously). These experiences, as Spielberg seems to know, suddenly make reality seem unreal - you literally *cannot believe* they are happening. You are face to face with the unthinkable. And war is the ultimate unthinkable reality. By imaginative empathy, I could see how these small, reality-shredding horrors must translate into the unimaginable experiences of having your co-workers suddenly merged with the glass, steel, and aviation fuel of a burning jet airliner, or to having to clutch your family, confused, bleeding and dying, as a helicopter gunship that razed your dwelling circles impassively overhead. In other words, via his art, Spielberg is plugging me into a profound human experience, making me sympathise with what it was like to have been those other people, and making me thankful beyond measure I am not. In this sense, it is about as 'malevolent' in intent as a Holocaust museum, and we might therefore make the same reasonable assumptions about its audience. While I suppose there might be people who might get a perverse, unintended pleasure from visiting such a museum, most others are likely to find it, as I personally found this film, startling and deeply moving.

So much for the implied cultural criticism. Now to the aesthetic criticism: that the movie is nihilistic. The reason I thought Andrew's disclaimer important is not so much to do with the original Wells/Welles versions - although the fact Spielberg placed the film within Orson's elipses suggests that your active, empathic imagination will be as central to the film experience as it is to Welles' radio production - but it simply indicated the rather narrow aesthetic base he is attempting to build his offhand yet simultaneously large-scale critique on ('...horror movies are a sign of cultural decay' indeed! Fortunately others have saved me the trouble of debunking this notion). After all, one would not want to come across like the fresh faced young Adventist who stumbles out of Hooters believing he has discovered the first sign of the The End Times....;-). For if he does not know of the famous radio broadcast, or the original book (Wells being, incidentally, one of history's most famous optimists), it is only reasonable to assume he does not know many of literature's or the cinema's famous nihilists either. If he did, he would realise how unlikely we would be to find an ending like that of Spielberg's 'War of the Worlds' in their work. To recap, the film ends with the menace gone, the separated family reunited and intact, and in a long tracking shot above the ruined city that travels over a blasted, leafless tree, along one bare branch to find a single green shoot re-emerging - a classic symbol of hope re-emergent that Spielberg nicely reinvents. Now the very thought that we might find such an ending for say, Sam Peckinpah's 'The Killer Elite' or 'The Wild Bunch', or Roeg and Cammell's 'Performance', or more recently the unconscionable 'The Way Of The Gun' or their literary equivalents is enough to make me burst out laughing. So clearly, he either missed the end, or isn't familiar enough with the nihilistic genre in the first place. It's simply a mistaken categorisation.

The ending aside - which traditionally emphasises the maker's attitude to what has gone before - we can only wonder how, if Spielberg wishes to make a movie about the horrors of war for an innocent civilian population (to contrast with his 'Saving Private Ryan') he could do so *without* laying himself open to at least *some* charges of nihilism? After all, war is the ultimate nihilism, the ultimate destruction of human realities. An apocalypse where everyone survives? I don't really think so....;-) Perhaps he could have populated his film with more traditional Hollywood heroes, and made the moral dilemmas they face a lot more one-dimensional, just as he could have made his GIs in 'Private Ryan' walk magically unscathed through the blender of German lead instead of pissing their pants in the face of it. But frankly, given the comprehensive apocalypse the humans in both movies dwell in, mere survival is heroic enough - just like real people in a *real* war zone. And this is precisely the empathic understanding Spielberg is trying to achieve.

In sum, Andrew's reaction seems to have little actual basis, and his attempted cultural criticism even less. As he is usually a sharp kid, and newly installed as Editor of Solo, it's probably just a rush of blood to the head. I'd just hate to see the return of the critical levels typified by a certain G. Stolyarov, and his Herculean attempts to ascertain the Decline Of Western Civilisation in his own misunderstanding of a Beatles song. To me, if Solo is about anything, it is an attempt to confront just this sort of philistinism, both in the wider world and within Objectivism itself.

- Daniel






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Post 10

Friday, July 1, 2005 - 9:30amSanction this postReply
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What I remember of the book (and it has been a while) was another more subtle (and more malevolent?) message delivered by Wells: The aliens died from terrestrial bacteria _because_ of their superior medical technology. It turns out the aliens used to get infections just like us, but had managed to completely eradicate microbes from the martian atmosphere centuries or millennia ago. Because their bodies didn't need them anymore the aliens' immune systems atrophied to uselessness due to evolution (I think Wells also had a slight misunderstanding of evolution here, or maybe I am mis-remembering) . Now, being that they eradicated bacteria on their own world so long ago, they simply forgot about their existence and didn't prepare for them.

So, along with Well's well known anti-colonialism message he also sneaks in that subtle luddite/Frankenstien dig at technology. Now, I could be reading too much into this, but I have always had issues with this kind of anti-tech thinking and can't let it pass unmolested. I don't want to hijack this thread so I won't go into my rant about how much I HATE Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. I'll bless you all with that one later :)


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Post 11

Saturday, July 2, 2005 - 2:58amSanction this postReply
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Daniel wrote:

In sum, Andrew's reaction seems to have little actual basis, and his attempted cultural criticism even less. As he is usually a sharp kid, and newly installed as Editor of Solo, it's probably just a rush of blood to the head. I'd just hate to see the return of the critical levels typified by a certain G. Stolyarov, and his Herculean attempts to ascertain the Decline Of Western Civilisation in his own misunderstanding of a Beatles song. To me, if Solo is about anything, it is an attempt to confront just this sort of philistinism, both in the wider world and within Objectivism itself.

I haven't seen this movie, but the snippets I've seen in the various reviews on television have dissuaded me from bothering, since the overpowering gory nihilism of it has been obvious. And one thing I want to add, Daniel: invoking traumas from your own life to justify that gory-ness won't wash here, at least with me. It comes across as an attempt to close down the argument by emotional blackmail. Equating Andrew's review with Stolyarovism is absurd on its face. "Kid"? "Rush of blood to the head"? Stick your clever-dick smart-ass pomo condescension where the sun don't shine, Daniel. There are those on other threads masochistic enough to rise to your hair-splitting word-game bait; attack my editor for his decency & idealism on this thread or any other & you're toast. Just so you know.

Linz











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Saturday, July 2, 2005 - 4:46amSanction this postReply
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Michael,

Fine posts.

Daniel,

Thanks for your last post. It seems that for some reason, the fact that art can stimulate drives and simulate experiences that sometimes prepare us for negative experiences is often decried by Randian Romanticists.

I like old-fashioned Errol Flynn-type heroism, but I also like to watch the importance of family in the Godfather, or the workings of a psychopathic mind in the Hannibal Lecter movies.  To deny that we can expand our experiences with art that is tragic or even sometimes revolting seems to be a denial of human nature.

However, Daniel, please remember the memo on SOLO bashing.  You're engaging in the obvious type that leads to pomowankers getting moderated.  I'd hate to lose your wisdom on this site over avoidable stuff.

Cheers,

Laj.


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Post 13

Saturday, July 2, 2005 - 5:29amSanction this postReply
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Daniel: I'm with Linz here. In fact, it was obvious to me from your first post that you were out to get Andrew:

Andrew Bissell writes:
>Disclaimer: I know next to nothing about H.G. Wells's original novel by this title, or of the old radio broadcast and film.

Ah, that explains a great deal then.

- Daniel

Actually, it explains nothing. Andrew made it clear from the outset that he was discussing Spielberg's movie - not the novel on which it was based. Since a movie either stands or falls on its own merits, the book is irrelevant here - as I'm sure you knew when you wrote this implied putdown.

You also surely knew that Andrew is not required to be an expert on the nihilists of cinema and literature before he can be permitted to express his views on this film. That's as preposterous as your equating his writing with the grim offerings of Stolyarov - a man whose joylessness is light years removed from Andrew's sunny optimism. Are we to assume, then, that no one may be deemed qualified to express an opinion on any film until they have viewed a predetermined number of movies of the same genre? ("Predetermined," of course, by "experts" such as yourself.) 

Your attempt to intimidate Andrew with pseudo-intellectual one-upmanship is a pathetic excuse for an argument.  


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Post 14

Saturday, July 2, 2005 - 10:17amSanction this postReply
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Daniel,

Please, do not give in to the Dark Side of the Force if you decide to respond.  There are many intelligent readers on SOLO who can make up their own minds as to whether your post was mean-spirited or not.

Cheers,

Laj.


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Post 15

Saturday, July 2, 2005 - 10:37amSanction this postReply
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Linz writes,
"I haven't seen this movie, but the snippets I've seen in the various reviews on television have dissuaded me from bothering, since the overpowering gory nihilism of it has been obvious."

I agree. I haven't seen the movie or the snippets, but the 2 x 1-inch strip ad that I saw on the internet convinced me that the movie is indeed evil nihilism.

Linz continued,
"And one thing I want to add, Daniel: invoking traumas from your own life to justify that gory-ness won't wash here, at least with me."

Neither, apparently, will the substantive arguments of the rest of Daniel's post. You did read his arguments, didn't you, Linz? Or did you just read snippets of his post?

Linz went into his standard Temper Tantrum Toddler mode,
"Stick your clever-dick smart-ass pomo condescension where the sun don't shine, Daniel."

I wonder, how does one go about sticking something into Linz's sense of life?

Linz bellowed,
"There are those on other threads masochistic enough to rise to your hair-splitting word-game bait; attack my editor for his decency & idealism on this thread or any other & you're toast. Just so you know."

I wonder what Daniel should do now. Should he take Luke Seltzer's advice and terminate his relationship with a certain irascible malefactor so as to not continue to injest his psychological poison? If so, won't he then be accused of childishly "taking his ball and refusing to play"? Tough call, Daniel.

J

PS - I haven't read We The Living, but the comments on it that I've seen in various Objectivist forums have dissuaded me from bothering, since the overpowering misery and nihilism of it has been obvious. I mean, given that Rand was ~allowed to leave~ Russia, her killing off "heroes" who can't even manage to ~escape~ the "tyranny" reveals a sense of life worse than Speilberg's. Disgusting.

(Edited by Jonathan on 7/02, 11:01am)


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Saturday, July 2, 2005 - 11:28amSanction this postReply
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This is my next to last post. 

--Brant

(Edited by Brant Gaede on 7/02, 2:34pm)


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Post 17

Saturday, July 2, 2005 - 11:44amSanction this postReply
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Daniel, Laj and Jonathan,

What the fuck are you guys doing?

I thought this thread was about the Spielberg movie, and off we go again on people. Do you guys like Linz baiting? Is that what gets your jollies?

To tell the truth, Daniel, I believe that the artistic experience is very complex many times and I would love to be able to explore some of the avenues you opened up. But I can't anymore. You were not content to stay on the film. You had to end your post with a snide remark about Andrew and about Solo.

If your interest was in discussing art, what the hell was that tacked on for? All of your seemingly intelligent thought was mere pretext for being in the the service of that? People and not ideas?

To be clear, you might disagree with a person. But implying that his new position as editor went to his head as a reason for that disagreement is no argument at all. Merely baiting.

And don't tell me that you didn't know that there would be such a reaction to your bait. Not after recent events. You are not that stupid.

Well bait if you must. Go for it. I will find others to discuss some of these points with. I am an artist and they interest me tremendously. (I even did a horror film once in Brazil, trying to break into the field.) Well hell, anyway.

I had more respect for you.

Michael


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Saturday, July 2, 2005 - 12:34pmSanction this postReply
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Art is not about experiences as such - that is post-modernistic clap... Art is about showing what is of importance, according to the artist... if there is to be misery and ugliness and horror, then - properly - there need be methods of overcoming such, otherwise the sense of life is an anti-human one... even the horror tales of F. Paul Wilson entailed success after harrowing experiences, not thru chance of some germ or the like, but thru the use of one's intelligence and the acting on that rational capacity...

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Post 19

Saturday, July 2, 2005 - 12:34pmSanction this postReply
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Michael wrote,
"To be clear, you might disagree with a person. But implying that his new position as editor went to his head as a reason for that disagreement is no argument at all."

Give Linz a few months, Michael, and he'll probably say the same thing that Daniel said about Andrew (only with much more anger). It's a pretty safe bet that once Andrew politely questions one of Linz's future abusive tirades, he will be personally mocked, accused of having all sorts of evil intentions, and thrown on the growing scrap heap of Linz's destroyed relationships.

J


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