'War of the Worlds' reprised for out time

Every generation gets the War of the Worlds that suits it. The new movie adaptation of HG Wells' 1898 novel, opening worldwide last Wednesday, had everything a modern science-fiction blockbuster should have. There were hundreds of state-of-the-art special effects, Earth's top director (Steven Spielberg) and star (Tom Cruise) running the show, and a fittingly worldwide promotional tour, complete with gossip-generating sideshows for today's ravenous entertainment news media.

But the movie itself reflects deeper concerns of our time. Echoes of the war on terrorism and concerns about family values reverberate throughout the nail-biting narrative, which was written for the screen by Spielberg's Jurassic Park adapter, David Koepp.

"I've never done anything like this before," notes Spielberg, whose work has ranged from the sheer mechanical terror of Jaws to the hopeful sci-fi of ET to the horrors of history in the likes of Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan.

"This is my first foray into looking up at the sky and not seeing beauty but, instead, seeing things that frighten me. Maybe I've been looking up in the sky, like you and other people around the world, and perceiving that there's more tension in the air. It just seems like we live in a more nervous universe; I think I'm just being reactive to my own environment. Today, in the shadow of 9/11, I think this film has found a place in society."

Yes, these aliens are totally, irredeemably nasty. And the family angle zeros in on Cruise's character, Ray Ferrier, and his two kids, 10-year-old Rachel (Dakota Fanning) and 18-year-old Robbie (Justin Chatwin). Long divorced from his pregnant ex-wife Mary Ann -- Lord of the Rings -- Ray operates a crane on the New Jersey docks, loves cars and knows hardly anything about the children he rarely sees. But when long-dormant alien tripods rise from deep in the Earth and start zapping everything in sight, he must flee with his kids, and go to extreme lengths to keep them safe while they make their way to Mary Ann in Boston.

"When Steven and I started talking about this movie, then when we sat down with David Koepp, the idea was always about family," says Cruise. "What would you do for your family? How far would you go if challenged? Will you be able to protect your family? All these questions."

"We tried to create a guy that we all know," the actor continues. "A man who is not necessarily a bad person, but he just doesn't get it. He doesn't know how to help his children. I think there are those fathers out there; they don't know what to do."

The Englishman Wells, a founding father of science fiction, was also a left-wing radical who wrote his Martian invasion book as a kind of anti-imperialism parable. Orson Welles' famous 1938 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds, coming a year before World War II began, was presented as a fake news report that convinced hundreds of thousands of Americans that we were actually under attack. The 1953 movie version (whose stars, Gene Barry and Ann Robinson, make brief appearances in the new film), like many sci-fi films of its time, referenced Cold War paranoia in the early days of the Atomic Age. But lest we put too much weight on the new film's currency, everyone involved wants to emphasize that their first order of business was to get audiences absorbed in the story. Then, just as important, to frighten them silly.