For the last two or

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For the last two or three days there's been a ripple effect coming off that press-junket screening of War of the Worlds (Paramount, 6.29),and specifically one cutting remark in particular about the conclusion being underwhelming or otherwise not cutting it because it doesn't deliver a big crescendo-ish blowout but ends rather quietly and internally...in a bacterial realm. I won't be seeing the film until Monday night but this is the ending that H.G. Wells used in his original novel and more or less the same one used in the 1953 George Pal movie with Gene Barry. Wells intended WOTW was a metaphor about British militarism and colonial takeovers, and how the invader will always be defeated by natural organic elements. You can interpret the Spielberg film as a metaphor about U.S. occupation of Iraq, or, as screenwriter David Koepp has explained, as primarily being about Tom Cruise's character evolving from a state of distracted selfishness to one of unqualified readiness to do anything to save his children...but there is certainly nothing wrong with an alien-invasion film looking to avoid the cliche of a big wham-bam finale and deciding to end it on a quiet note, for God's sake. Whether this ending works or not is another matter, but the concept behind it is completely valid and sounds, if you ask me, refreshing for its avoidance of the usual-usual.

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