War of the Worlds: Good God Y'all

We love watching Tom Cruise on the big screen. We don't care if he believes we have alien matter clouding up our psyches or if he calls Matt Lauer "glib" for not agreeing with everything he says, or even if he divorced our beloved Nicole Kidman. We love the Tom Cruise Movie Star machine. We loved him in Eyes Wide Shut and in Legend and even in Magnolia. We really loved him in Vanilla Sky and Minority Report and, duh, Jerry Maguire. Recently we even loved him being a white haired bad guy in Collateral. Tom Cruise may not have it all together as a human being (or maybe he does and the rest of us without $250,000 to spend on enlightenment are wrong), but he sure is good at being a movie star. And in this latest version of War of the Worlds, he is one fine hero, flawed and cocky though he may be.

War of the Worlds is a popcorn movie--it's a summer disaster/sci-flick that has so far grossed $114 million, six days after its release. It is a popcorn flick, but it is also--my gosh--good, and dark, and haunting, and deep, but--my gosh--also fun and thrilling and even, yes, heartwarming. Here's where you say, now just wait a gosh darn minute, Austinist, popcorn movies can't be good. Sure, yes, of course! Unfortunately they rarely are. That's because frat boys with fast cars and too many bad opinions run Hollywood. It's because people work more often from fear than guts. It's because Michael Bay is allowed to make films.

War of the Worlds is refreshing because we don't have to see the Statue of Liberty be shot down by giant lasers to be thrilled. Instead of major bridges and famous landmarks, we see the destruction of actual people (Unheard of! there are people that actually die? Yes.) and suburban homes and ferry boats.