War Of The Worlds – The Extinctive Cut

Review by spelledaren — August 4, 2009 @ 1:51 pm

Thanks, great work on this one.

Not too fond of every change of scene, but then, how often does that happen? Really liked most that was done.
The movie, for some reason, doesn’t feel really -complete- to me, as if something’s a bit off. Wonder why.

8/10 for me, improving upon the original.

Added ratings for the categories. Entertainment down to 7.

Review by Daewa — October 2, 2009 @ 1:00 pm

*This rating was given before reviews were required*

October 15, 2010 @ 10:01 pm

This has been my first encounter with Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (FE.org rules only stipulate one has to *own* the original DVD, not *watch* it), and I can’t begin to imagine the total and absolute horror that must dwell in the theatrical version, as despite Boon’s work being clearly excellent as usual, I had to force myself to keep watching it. Problem is, I didn’t give a rat’s ass about that badly written stock TV movie family, about Tom Cruise being totally unable to be even remotely believable as a working class Joe (that opening sequence of him operating machinery got me thinking of Jennifer Beals’ steel worker at the beginning of Flashdance!) or about uncle Steven’s usual and tiresome parenthood obsession. I kept waiting for them to get vaporized or eaten or whatever by the aliens, and in a movie that depends entirely on the audience caring about the characters that’s not exactly a good thing. Of the elements from the original, only Dakota Fanning’s performance was worth it. That kid is amazing. Her dialogue is not.

This said, on a purely fanediting level, it was amazing! Boon delivers again. I don’t know how big Tim Robbins’ role was in the original, since his part does not appear in the deleted scenes section, but one would never guess there was an extra character there. Boon went a long way to delete him from individual shots, and did so masterfully. Be sure to check out the comparative featurette on the subject! We’re also presented with two different endings to choose from, and I must say I vastly preferred the totally original and much darker Exctinctive one, warts and all. Kudos as well to the special guest President of the USA, great voice and delivery. Yet I, once again, thought that some extra bits should have been excised, particularly that baseball sequence in the first act. Enough with the fatherhood thing, Steven! It’s not meaningful as character development, we’ll get plenty of the same estrangement cliché later from the son, and just slows things down. Not a fan of the peanut butter sequence either, at least half of it should have gone.

Overall I’m giving this a 7/10. Not Boon’s fault at all, it’s just the movie is not for me. I greatly *admired* this fanedit, I wish I could say I *enjoyed* it as well.

I watched this one a while ago but never wrote a review. Definitely not the best CBB edit. While I liked some of the changes (a lot of the minor cuts worked well for me) the big changes left me confused and irritated. Note, I watched the Extinctive ending, not the Purist ending. Purist ending might have been more up my alley but I never felt like rewatching the edit.

Editing was kind of a mixed bag. The removal of Oglivy (or whatever) was really well done but simple scene transitions felt awkward and other scenes were choppy.