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We need the Duke in the war of the worlds

By Barry Bright  

This ‘right wing extremist’ rarely goes to opening day movies. But I’m enough of a sci-fi fan, plus I read “War of the Worlds” as a teenager, and to top it all I was curious about why they were pushing this movie so hard that I felt a need to catch Spielberg’s new flick Wednesday, matinee price of course.

Between Hollyweird’s probably arranged ‘relationship’ between Tom Cruise and what’s her name who always looks like a teenager, oh yeah, Katie Holmes, and Cruise’s weak attack on psychiatric drugs on NBC’s Propaganda Today show they’ve been pounding on the sheeple to go see this intense rendition of the early sci-fi book.

And as always, it makes me wonder why they’re so determined we see their propaganda, besides their need to make money at it.

Spielberg’s version is missing one scene that has always stuck with me from H.G. Wells’ classic. When a group of sheeple are caught in a river, the invading Martians use their ‘death rays’ or whatever to heat the water and boil them alive.

Instead Spielberg includes an encounter with a river ferry that leaves Cruise’s character and his kids more wet and cold than boiled. Darn.

Updated in a few ways, the basic premise doesn’t change, so I’m giving no ending away when I ask if ‘aliens’ advanced enough to come here from where ever and destroy our military in two days wouldn’t have known enough to get vaccinations. Oh well.

The intro is good, though slightly reworded from Wells’ book, to the ‘21^st’ century of course, and mentioning the sheeple’s ‘infinite complacency.’

Around me in the theater, the sheeple seemed complacent when Cruise took out a box and opened it in his bedroom on the opening day of the invasion. He hesitated a moment or two, like ‘do I really want to resort to this’ before he stuffed the revolver in the back of his pants, with no hint of an effort to procure more ammo for it.

This takes us back to the river and the ferry. After stealing the only running car in his neighborhood, Cruise and his kids end up driving into a crowd of sheeple on foot. This is one of several things the panicked blue collar Cruise does that proves not to be so smart.

Of course the tired, hungry and panicked sheeple try to commandeer the car, actually a minivan. After a few minutes of broken glass and slugfest, Cruise finally whips out the revolver and fires it into the air. While he stands there, the only other guy in the crowd of hundreds with a handgun(yeah right) puts a semi-auto to Cruise’s head.

The guy with the semi-auto gets the mini van, another guy picks up the revolver Cruise was forced to drop, and in a few minutes a handful more shots ring out, with no clear idea of who did what. The idea obviously is to show the futility of being armed in the first place.

Next on the propaganda list of course is the nut hiding out in the basement, played by Tim Robbins, with a pump shotgun that proves to not be loaded until it comes time to rack the slide for effect. The slide racking is done quietly to be fair, lest the aliens hear.

Of course the ‘crazy guy who’s going to fight the advanced aliens with a shotgun’ is endangering our intrepid hero and heroine with his imbalanced attitude and has to be dealt with. I’ll leave it at that.

And, not to give anything away, but when Cruise and his daughter arrive at their destination, they walk by a Minuteman statue, encrusted with the strange root system that grows on everything the aliens contact.

More subtle propaganda I felt, or rather an alien boot in the face to us poor demented gun owners who think we can stand against the system with our pitiful small arms when the Army or Guard guys couldn’t pierce the tripod’s shields with tanks and fighter planes.

Or maybe I’ve just watched too many John Wayne movies. You know, the ones where the little guy had a chance, and took it, even against the odds?

Then there’s the scene where Cruise throws a hand grenade against a tripod shield, well within shrapnel range, and stands there unhurt while the thing turns as he hoped it would.

Spielberg’s flick over all is entertaining, even disturbing, and often edge of the seat almost from the beginning. But I wouldn’t, being the cheap skate I am, pay full price. A Sunday matinee will do. It does play on the ‘family’ theme quite strongly, which makes me think the powers who want to always be still want us to breed for some reason. More worker bees I guess. Or maybe they just know what the simple-minded sheeple respond to.

What it will take for Hollyweird to stop these little bumps against our most basic right I don’t know. No one seems to be able to get to them. Yes, I know, we can stay home.

Well, I’d prefer to dream that the Duke didn’t do all those great scenes where he stood against the bad guys so us 21^st century belligerents could sit home and say nothing while the sheeple around us go get indoctrinated in the idea that there’s nothing you can do but run like lemmings from the behemoth. 

This theme does have shades of “The Forgotten” released last year, where an all-powerful alien civilization treats us like lab rats, and of course most of the sheeple don’t have a clue and don’t want one.

Makes me wonder what they’re really up to…. No matter, I’ll be in the basement with my shotgun, and I won’t wait for Cruise to get brave.

Life is short. Leave memories. Willowtown Photography:

http://www.willowtown.com

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Barry Bright

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