War of the Worlds Essay

“It is argued that films reflect the time in which they are made” How true is this of War of the Worlds (2005)?

The film, War of the Worlds is accurate in terms of how its narrative is projected to reflect post 9/11. This film is accurate in terms of reflecting the time it was made as in the film from the very beginning, the music in the opening sequence creates the tone that the film is firstly going to be bleak and dark as it is a piercing non-diegetic sound, which the 9/11 tragedy was, however it also reflects upon the world that the film came into. Another thing is the narrator’s part (Morgan Freeman) in the opening sequence, who gives quite a particular brief of what to expect in the film as he begins by saying “No one would’ve believed that in the early 21^st that our world was being watched by intelligences greater than our own” which creates a tense tone as apart of post 9/11, due to this quote connoting the use of terrorism and the way that terrorists planned this attack prior actually commencing in committing it and drawing their plans against us of pre-attack. Another part in the narrators part in the opening sequence was when Morgan Freeman says, “With infinite complacency, men went to and throw throughout the globe” which has connotations of how global the news of the 9/11 disaster went-with people being paranoid and frightened where the terrorists would strike next, or whether this was a sign of World War Three. Another thing about the opening sequence in this film is the use of montage of cityscapes which is gives an ideology of paranoia and being watched, which links with the terrorists that committed 9/11. Finally in the opening sequence, there is a graphic (match-cut) which shows the Earth turning red which shows connotations that we are vulnerable to attack even though we were complacent due to us as a society arrogantly thought that we were the same from the attack, which has links with social attitudes to pre-9/11 as we were confident with our empire.

A way in which this film reflects the time in which it was made is the actual use of characters. Tom Cruise as Ray was perfect casting in this case as in his usual films he’d be the type to run towards what was happening, however Spielberg in this has made Tom Cruise be a totally opposite character, with his actually running away from the situation, which we see throughout the whole film and links to post 9/11 by how people actually ran away from the disaster on the streets of New York. Ray’s personality in this film is that he is extremely arrogant despite having a broken family, however he has to look after his two children Robbie and Rachel that is allegorical in the way that they stick together throughout the film, even when Robbie leaves Ray and Rachel at a point in the film. In the film we have a wide shot of a skyline of New York without the World Trade Centre which is establishes a very unfamiliar representation of America, this also shows that Ray was alive during the disaster. Another thing about this was that the social order of the globe was shaken up and shows that post 9/11 is unfamiliar to us. The setting in this scene of the film is important to us as an audience because it implies to us that New York as a city was mostly affected by the disaster.

Ray’s job shows the audience that he is just the average “normal” blue coat worker, which is known to be insignificant in the world, which has connotations of the workers in the World Trade Centre that they were just normal workers, like Ray.