One of the more surprising slices of cinematic excellence from Steven Spielberg has arrived on 4K Blu-Ray and it is nothing short of a visual and sonic boom.
Tom Cruise (his third 4K this week, joining Days of Thunder and Top Gun) stars in War of the Worlds as a single father of two kids, one a teen boy named Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and one, Rachel (Dakota Fanning) who is on the younger side. Lucky for those kids, they get to stay at their dad’s house in Manhattan just as aliens strike … from below! Well, let’s not knock good old dad just yet. From what we glean early on, Cruise’s working-class Ray is working as hard as he can and there is no way he can compete with his yuppy ex-wife Mary Ann (Miranda Otto) and her new husband Tim, (David Alan Basche).
When War of the Worlds hit theaters in 2005, it seemed like a usual choice for the iconic director. It is a tale that is most often associated with two enormous names in pop culture—Orson Welles and HG Wells. The story first appeared as a novel from Wells that was made globally powerful when Orson Welles took to the radio airwaves during the 80s for a radio play that played like breaking news to hundreds of thousands of terrified listeners across the country.
Here comes Spielberg, with his long record of excellence. He has triumphed with his War of the Worlds and it belongs firmly in the lexicon of great chapters in the pop culture story that is this notorious tale. The way he brings tension is unmatched, as his previous work has shown. But this time out it is different. It is soft. It comes hard. It is patient and simultaneously immediate. There are so many moments through his WOW that it would be hard to pick one to salute.
That ferry scene. Yeah, that was some nail-chewing tension. When Robbie takes off running as the sound of alien invaders permeates the night, terrifying. When Tim Robbins’ Harlan Ogilvy takes Cruise and his kids in, that builds to something utterly horrifying now doesn’t it? There are countless moments in Spielberg’s War of the Worlds that will go down in history as effective and perhaps even more so on some levels, as the classics that born this Wellsian story. Spielberg firmly showed his breadth of talent and expanding scope.
When those aliens first appear in Cruise’s New York neighborhood, it is to-the-bone scary. The combination of the innate nature of this story, coupled with a stellar cast and Spielberg’s pitch-perfect helming makes 2005’s War of the Worlds as much an important piece of storytelling as the original story and radio play.
The flick banked over $600 million at the worldwide box office and we could not recommend more grabbing this 4K upgrade to have forever. The way the 4K has been adapted to Spielberg’s specifications makes this 15th-anniversary edition a must-own.
When it comes to the transfer, it is top-notch. The effort that went into the visual adjustment to 4K and the sonic improvement as well is nothing short of brilliance incarnate. With Spielberg overseeing the transfer, one can be sure that not one moment of the film didn’t get the improvement to wholly revolutionize the sights and sounds of the Wells’ classic.
This release comes with over an hour of previously released bonus content, the same extras that came with the Blu-Ray release of 2010. Look for multiple behind-the-scenes featurettes, production diaries, a look at the characters, and so much more.
They are as follows:
- Revisiting the Invasion
- The H.G. Wells Legacy
- Steven Spielberg and the Original War of the Worlds
- Characters: The Family Unit
- Previsualization
- Production Diaries
- Designing the Enemy: Tripods and Aliens
- Scoring War of the Worlds
- We Are Not Alone
- Galleries
- Theatrical Teaser Trailer
4K Film Grade: A