POTENTIAL SPOILER: WAR OF THE WORLDS
[consider yourself warned, bitch]
Maybe this is old news to everyone else, but to me, it’s brand spanking new: last night a friend fed me some very disturbing dish about the upcoming Steven Spielberg/Tom Cruise lovefest otherwise known as War of the Worlds. Said friend–who works in the media and who, in less than 24 hours, was able to find and burn a copy of Patty Duke’s gruesome, ill-conceived Valley of the Dolls album, so you know he’s well-connected–informed me that la Spielberg had taken certain liberties with the story’s conclusion. Specifically, the whole aliens vs. mankind, battle-to-the-death thing is gone, replaced by a dark comedy of miscommunication that reminds me of that episode of Three’s Company where Jack overhears half of a telephone conversation in which Chrissy seems to be planning the extinction of mankind, but in reality she’s just asking Janet if she’ll help pull together a bake sale for the local leper colony.
So anyway, near the end of the film, the aliens apparently start communicating with the humans, and they’re all, like, “Omigod! We are, like, so totally sorry about all that noise and destruction and death and stuff. It’s just that, you know, your atmosphere is different than what we’re used to, and we got a little freaked out. Kinda like, high, you know….” They go on to explain that they were recently booted off their home planet, and they’re really just looking for somewhere else to settle. Then, everyone walks off, hand-in-hand (or whatever kind of extremities these outer space varmints have), toward the battle-scarred-but-rebuildable horizon. So, basically, it’s an hour and 56 minutes worth of Dakota Fanning, Tom Cruise, and endless rounds of “Kum-By-freaking-Ya.”
If my friend’s right, I’m starting a collection to take out a hit on Stevie. (PayPal can handle that, right?) I mean, Schindler’s List was bad enough, but stoned alien retirees…?
sturtle [dot] com 