In the film, the irresponsible divorced father Ray is taking care of his children who are temporarily living in his home because their (step) parents are on errands, when aliens suddenly attack the earth. At this time, Lei showed the behavior that a father should have, disregarding his own safety and taking his children across the United States to avoid the pursuit of aliens.
Based on George Orwell's 1896 novel of the same name, it's still stressful to see the film through modern eyes 110 years later. The director uses the perspective of an ordinary family to look at people's choices and actions when the crisis comes, which makes the audience feel immersed in the scene, which is also one of the sources of fear and depression when I watched it.
What I care more about is the personal feeling this film brings to me. Although many people say that this film is "anticlimactic", I still think it is the best "Alien Invasion" series of science fiction films in the past ten years. , even surpassing the big-budget or brain-burning sci-fi movies and novels of Independence Day and The Three-Body Problem. Many of the details in the film are also intriguing now.
At the beginning of the film, the protagonist Ray's character, work, and attitude towards doing things can be seen at a glance: he is a dock worker, young, likes racing, unpunctual and sloppy. When his ex-wife left their children in his home, he showed an even more irresponsible attitude. What's more interesting is that even the stepfather is more concerned with his "natural" children than Lei, which shows how a failed man Lei is. Even when the aliens landed on Earth, Ray displayed a "fuck it, ruined my weekend" feeling. But when he saw that his son Robbie, who was in a rebellious period, was desperate to join the army to fight aliens, and his daughter Rachel showed vulnerability and fear in the war, Ray's personality also began to change. He desperately discouraged his son, comforted his young and ignorant daughter, and even nearly lost his life, which shows that he is not a "bad" man to the core.
This use of single-parent families to highlight the brilliance of humanity in times of crisis is not a new subject in the United States, but it still gives people a strange shock in "War of the Worlds". Especially at the end, when Lei escorted his daughter to the (step) parents' house in Boston at the last moment, the daughter cried and ran to her mother who was already in tears, and although Lei pretended to be calm, he was also full of emotion. When he saw his son who he thought was killed by aliens also appeared in front of him, they embraced, and Ray also burst into tears at this time. Everything he did was worth it. The children finally recognized their father. He was no longer the irresponsible thunder in the eyes of others. He was a real "father"!
This movie also made me realize that positive energy is not an eternal light, but a ray of light that slowly appears after being in darkness for a long time. Although she is very small and weak, it brings people Hope and motivation are better than all, because "the sun at dawn is always the most beautiful"!
Another point of the movie shows the essence and ending of the whole movie at the beginning. One of the clips is that after Rachel found that her hand was stabbed, Ray wanted to help her suck (pull) the stab out, but Rachel said: "When it's almost there, my body will squeeze it out!" The thorn represented the aliens that were about to invade Earth. In addition, when the ex-wife warned Ray Robbie that there was a report "French Invasion of Algeria" before writing, I felt that this war was a war of great disparity. Sure enough, the aliens manoeuvred large tripod robots to rampage across the earth, and humanity's most advanced weapons appear to have no pressure in front of them. Stealth fighter jets, heavy tanks or helicopter gunships are easily wiped out like bugs in just a few minutes. The United States, which has the world's number one military force, is completely defeated by alien heat-ray weapons. But aliens with powerful technology were not immune to the bacteria on Earth, and in the end they were defeated by bacteria invisible to the naked eye.
Although this ending has been called "unfinished" by many people, I don't think so, because the title of the film is "War of the Worlds", and the English name is "The War of The World"; and the English names of the two world wars are But it is called "World War"; this is a contrast, because the English literal translation of this film is "World War" rather than "Human World War", the film does not want to show the human race in the United States like "Independence Day" Victory over aliens under leadership, but this war is a war of the whole world and not of human beings. Almost all species on earth can participate in the war, including the tiniest bacteria.
Since its birth, human beings have fought against diseases and bacteria for millions of years, and acquired immunity, which indirectly proves that human beings are the masters of the earth. Aliens belong to alien invasion creatures. Even if they have technology that is millions of years ahead of human beings, they do not belong here, so they will naturally be eliminated by bacteria. Just like the western colonizers control the territories of the whole world, but they do not belong here, so in the end they went to all the overseas colonies after two world wars. Including the Mongols who invaded China, although they slaughtered a large number of Han Chinese and occupied one-third of the world's land surface, they returned to the grasslands to herd sheep within 90 years. These historical experiences and lessons also represent that even if human beings cannot defeat the aliens, countless creatures on the earth will silently change the aliens and make them lose the opportunity to occupy the earth.
To sum up, "War of the Worlds" is not a popcorn movie, nor is it an after-dinner diversion. She is a realistic film, whether it is human nature, life or invaders, there are no superheroes, no fearless drama protagonists, and no boring plots of generously dying and defeating the enemy. There are only real performances, the protagonist, family , Soldiers or passersby, in the film are all vivid lives, some fear, some collapse, some reckless, and some pay responsibilities. This is how we live, so close to what's going on around us.
After watching this film, I remembered a monologue from the animation "Pigeon Island" with the same theme: "The meaning of land and life is 'down to earth', what is yours will be yours. As long as you take action to protect these What you love, God will not treat you badly. Even if you paid the price of your life, or even forgotten by the people you saved. But everything has already happened and will not change. History will remember your actions for this. !"
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