I went to the drive-in again. Actually it was a different one located in Winchester. The features were quite a bit different from what I had to sit through last week. This time I got to see Willy Wonka and then War of the Worlds.
Willy Wonka is not bad and may be as good as the original. I thought the pacing was a bit slow, though. A movie like that really needs to be a bit more dynamic. Also I was confused by the scene with the oompa loompa harvesting chocolate from Chocolate Mountain. It had already been established that the oompa loompas could not tolerate the cold, and here was this little fellow going at it with a pickax in a blizzard. Of course, it may have just been a coconut storm. Also, the cow-whipping scene wasn't really necessary. Willy Wonka strikes me as a cross between Dr. Who and . . . well . . . er . . . Michael Jackson.
As for War of the Worlds, there is no way anything I write about it will do justice to Orionoir's review, so I'll just throw out a few points:
- The aliens seemed a bit overly thorough. Are we supposed to believe that they actually spend forty-five minutes conducting a search of every single basement in the world? And what was with that mirror trick? Do they not have reflective surfaces on their planet? I mean, why waste so much time examining your own reflection? And how about actually checking behind the mirror rather than just peering over it? Why aren't they equipped with infrared sensors, so they can see people in the dark? And if they can't locate the people, why not just throw in some kind of grenade and blow up the basement? Oh, they might also want to consider investing in ax-proof equipment.
- If the aliens planned the invasion a million years ago, why didn't they just invade then? It's kind of strange that, with all those deeply buried tripods, not a single one was ever discovered by humans. And wouldn't it have occurred to them after a million years of planning that germs might be a problem? Couldn't they have just sterilized the insides of the tripods and kept them hermetically sealed (and thoroughly cooked the humans before sucking on their juices)?
- I like that they went after the Ukraine first. Way too many movies have the aliens going after New York first, or even exclusively.
- I think the writers showed a lot of contempt for the masses. People couldn't possibly be that stupid. The scene with 10,000-people-fighting-over-an-SUV was a bit over the top, but it was nothing compared to the arrival of the aliens in New York. The people just had no sense of self-preservation. First everyone goes outside the watch the odd and menacing weather pattern. Then, after lightening strikes the same spot twenty-six times, they all rush over to that exact spot to have a look, even picking up the super-cooled cement pieces. Then the hole starts to get bigger. Then it gets really big and implodes. Then a car is hurled a hundred feet into the air. Now, at this point, it's perfectly understandable that people would just continue standing around watching, since there haven't yet been any indications of danger, but one would think that the emergence of a gigantic extraterrestrial tripod from the hole would cause them to flee. Nope, they have to wait around until it starts killing people with its disintegrator ray. Then they run.
- How come the tripod that got bazookaed at the end didn't have a basket of people attached to its underside?
- Now that the situation is under control, will the military be sent into Iraq as part of a full-scale assault on that country in retribution for the alien attack?