I wasn’t really sure what to expect with War of the Worlds . . . usually Tom Cruise big budget films are well worth seeing . . . full of action and dynamic plotlines that captivate . . . while I may not seem to be much of a fan of Cruise, given some of his . . . eccentric and closeted . . . behaviors and beliefs . . . but, I am a fan of his acting . . . he is an example of someone who starts out young with a lot of promise, an actor who because of box office constraints is transformed into a movie star and not allowed to act anymore.

Dakota Fanning is a wonderful child actress. She has not disappointed yet. It will be interesting to see how she turns out . . . will the bright child be able to blossom into an adult worthy of her promise or will success squash her spirit or will she be led down paths that are twisted and dark and self-destructive like so many youngster celebrities have been torn into before?

Neither here nor there though.

I anticipated and dreaded the coming of War of the Worlds . . . I love the novel . . . big time. I have been teaching The Time Machine by H.G. Wells to undergraduate and graduate students of my various Science Fiction and Fantasy courses and seminars for years and will continue doing so. It is pretty much the first novel to sit squarely within the genre of science fiction, the benchmark from which all else comes. Now, it looks like I can add War of the Worlds to my course. Happily.

When novels are adapted to film, there are three possible levels of adaptation . . . literal in which everything in the film is exactly the same as the novel, faithful in which most things are the same but some have been changed but the film is pretty much an attempt to capture the spirit and content of the novel, and loose in which very little from the original survives to the screen.

When the publicity for War of the Worlds began coming out, it looked like it was going to be a very loose adaptation that only had an idea and a name in common with the original.

Not the case . . . the film . . . while very loose . . . captures the concepts and spirit of the novel . . . an average man and his experience . . . by taking the story into our contemporary age, much has been changed but the spirit is there and some of the original story can still be recognized with interesting twists . . . the brother is mentioned but the character is pretty much changed into the role of the son. The guy in the cellar is a composite of two characters. Actually, much of what reviewers have complained about the film . . . the deus ex machina ending that seems to come out of nowhere and leaves us a little disappointed at the lack of action on the part of man comes from the novel albeit one can’t help but wonder if it could have been presented a bit less abruptly with perhaps a few more signs to go on.

In any case . . . it is truly a wonderful film. Scary . . . very much so . . . albeit, I didn’t feel as engrossed in the reality of the machines as some reviewers have said, felt a bit bluescreenish to me but still very very good bluescreenish.

My daughter . . . a fifth grader . . . was engrossed, she found it scary as well, very scary . . . but not in a bad way . . . more of in the on-the-edge-of-my-seat way . . . it was truly an exhilirating experience well worth the time.