Steven Spielberg’s 2005 War of The Worlds is difficult to recommend strictly on the merits. Like to say that’s “good” is a bit of a stretch: Tom Cruise’s character Ray isn’t likable, his kids are fucking annoying, the part with Tim Robbins drags on far too long and is narratively incoherent, the cage dropping off the tripod onto the tree should’ve been pretty gory, and the aliens are boring.

AND there’s a freaking absolute travesty in the version of the movie in the YouTube embed above. At about 50:39 the family driving through the backroads of Rockland County, New York. The shooting script says “The radio is broadcasting the emergency alert test,” but it’s cut from the version above.

Which is a goddamned shame, because THAT’s what makes Spielberg’s War of the Worlds truly feel much more like a quasi-remake of Orson Welles’ 1938 radio play than the 1953 version or even an adaptation of HG Wells’ (no relation, only one “e”) novel. Ray’s stuck in a cataclysmic situation with misinformation, bad information, or no information. So much of everything he hears from other people is rumor, bullshit, nonsense, a stupid question from his dumb son asking if the alien killing machines came from Europe. And the malfunctioning emergency alert broadcast running the test on repeat during an actual emergency was such a brilliant touch and, whether intended or not, a freaking clever inversion of the real-life situation surrounding the 1930 radio drama.

And that is what makes this film so interesting – we’re two days short of twenty years exactly since its release – that it said maybe more than it intended to about what it means to just not really know what the fuck is going on in the moment during a rapidly evolving situation. In lieu of any traditional exposition there’s heavy-handed inference and the audience being led down a well-beaten path of how the invasion ends because the aliens got COVID or whatever – which somehow infects the shields on their tripods, don’t think too much on it. And it’s hard to not come away thinking Stevie wasn’t in kind of a dark, depressing place when he made this messy, ugly, but still fascinating movie.

Don’t go passing that around though. It’s just a rumor. Or inference.

What is verifiably true is that is NOT Boston in the final shot when the family reunites. It’s actually Brooklyn. A certain very reliable source used to live right around the corner from that street.

Also verifiably true is that Ray’s ex-in-laws standing at the doorway in that final scene are Ann Robinson and Gene Barry, who played Sylvia van Buren and Clayton Forrester in the 1953 film.

And if you want to see a faithful remake of this one then check out Independence Day.