Steven Spielberg is now the perfect simulacra director. His films tick all the right boxes but there is something uncannily phoney about them. In War of the Worlds there’s the smart aleck kids, becoming reconciled with their bozo father. There’s a scene featuring an alien probe scouring a basement that is virtually identical to the one in Jurassic Park where the Velociraptor stalks the kids in the kitchen. There is a boat tipping over like Titanic. It has all been done before, it is all cultural salvage that Spielberg uses for fuel. It is a wooden movie, but I quite liked it.
It was better in many ways than V for Vendetta, the pointless adaptation of Alan Moore’s entertaining comic. Apparently Moore hasn’t seen the film and asked for his name to be taken off the credits, but it is remarkably faithful to the graphic novel. If I were the Wachowski brothers, I would forget all my pretence at credibility and reveal V’s biography and show his face. There is a type of Hollywood films that appear to encourage insurrection whilst leaving viewers impotent. Fight Club was one, V for Vendetta another.
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