Between April and June, Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing three Steven Spielberg movies on Blu-ray, one each month. On June 1, the studio will release War of the Worlds, the modern retelling of H.G. Wells's science-fiction novella starring Tom Cruise. Technical specifications have not been released yet. The BD carries over all the contents from the two-disc limited edition DVD.
Special features include:
Revisiting the Invasion
The H.G. Wells Legacy
Steven Spielberg and the Original War of the Worlds
Booyah! Minority Report, Private Ryan, and now War of the Worlds. It seems with every announcement that I'll be buying more catalog titles than new releases.
Never mind all these more modern Spielberg films, I'd rather have Jaws and The Indy Trilogy (I say trilogy not that excrement that calls itself an Indianna Jones film)
I can't get too excited about these films coming out, I will buy Munich but that's the only film of late he's done that I've been impressed with.
Jaws, Close Encounters & Raiders is the beard working in his prime and he's never topped this period, Jaws leave JP 1 & 2 standing, that rubber shark has more tension in the opening sequence than in the entire JP series. I do like JP 1 & 2 and would go Blu on them but WOTW was ok, I'm still waiting for a proper H.G Wells period set version, none this messing with elements, I want my proper walking machines in a time when this would have been a real terror, Speilberg's Post 9/11 setting just doesn't cut it.
As for Minority Report, should have ended when Cruise is locked away or on more of a downer than the happy happy ending the Beard just can't resist.
I was really hoping the George Pal version would get really decent HD transfer and come out at the same time as a double feature...... I still hope to see it real soon, perhaps with the attention that "The Wizard of Oz" and so on got?
Sorry, but even though War of the Worlds is going to be amazing to look at and listen to, the movie itself sucked. I wish Paramount would give in already and release the Indiana Jones trilogy, Jaws, et al.
I've been waiting for this one to hit the shelves for awhile, so this is great news! Seeing people getting zapped to dust on blu is going to be cool...
Been waiting for this one. Agree it is not the best, but what a movie for LFE fans.
I would like to thank the whiners for winning me a free BD. I bet a friend that the next Story about a SS release couldn't be posted without title whining, specifically title whining about titles not even from the studio the news item was about, appearing on the first comment page. Oh, and as usual in addition to the usual pointing out of how foolish it is to complain about why Paramount isn't releasing all those Universal titles, that for the Paramount titles the facts that more than one title gets worked on at a time, that studios do and have always liked to spread out big titles, most especially franchises, that different films from different eras sometimes require more work than others and that it is better to get a release when it is ready than some rushed out ugly looking, dirty sounding mess. A lot of those who whine about titles other than those mentioned in these news stories would be the first to rise up in arms if Indy came out looking like Gladiator, but Paramount is foolishly holding it back and not hard at work making sure the films come out looking and sounding their best on BD despite all indications that this is exactly what they are doing. Finally, to the oh so definitive statement that BD is doomed if certain titles don't come out this year. I would like to mention this little product called DVD. It seemed to do well in its day. Yet, the studios followed this same path, being very careful about when and how they released key titles and not flooding the market with the big guns all in one wave. It seemed to work out for them.
If the extras are the same as, or nearly the same as the ones on the DVD, it'll take you all day to watch them as well. I remember, I spent the better part of an afternoon when I watched them on DVD. And in some cases, the extras were better than the movie itself.
I think where the movie failed to live up to its hype was that "The Beard" didn't show a major battle between the aliens and the military. Sure, it could have gone the way of Emmerich's [i]Godzilla[/i], but it would have been cool, nonetheless.
Great News...now if Universal will get Jaws and Jurassic Park out...and one can wonder with Spielberg finally embracing bluray, perhaps his buddy George will follow suit and get the entire Star Wars legecy out as well................
Wow, this should be a GREAT Bluray! Cant wait. Minority Report, Collateral, Saving Private Ryan and now this! Some great catalog titles coming from Paramount/Dreamworks. About time too. I haven't bought a Paramount Blu in the longest time. I think Paranormal Activity was the last, over 2 months ago!
This foolishly undervalued film should make for a stunning Blu-ray. Whatever misgivings one may have about the script (and some of them are justified), it is a technically brilliant piece of work. Spielberg, Kaminski, Kahn and Williams did top notch work.
To those complaining about the poor acting or comparing it to the original and how inferior the new one is...stop expecting an Oscar winning performance out of each and every movie and enjoy a good popcorn flick for what it is....eye/ear candy! WOTW is definitely that in my books.
WOTW is amazing. A pure popcorn flick that entertains to the fullest. Great to see that they are putting the teaser trailer on because they use footage in that that is not in the movie as fully intended
A great movie but the ending ruins everything for me. Its pretty much that if that what happened didn't happen we would all be dead. Sure its possible but a hell of a lucky coincidence.
The Chosen One, you do realize that this is based on a novel published in 1898 and that the ending is based on remaining true to the original story, right? The War of the Worlds has seen many adaptations over the years on film, radio and television and despite other modernizations, the ending has been one of the key parts that adapters don't generally tinker with. Perhaps it is a convenient ending, but unless one is doing a sequel or TV series where it becomes necessary for the aliens to adapt to plot their return or continuing presence, changing the ending represents a serious divergence from the original material and would turn such a version from an adaptation to something more like a 'loosely inspired by' kind of thing. The ending serves a dual purpose in intimating that our own planet/ecosystem can protect us in its own way and shows the hubris of believing that technological superiority reigns supreme. The Martians saw themselves as being so superior and advanced that they didn't even consider that they might have to protect themselves from anything on Earth and they pay for that by not falling to the highest form of life on the planet, but to some of the lowest.
To each their own, but it really isn't fair to blame the filmmakers for the ending if you don't like it, their only other option was to make a fundemental change to a classic and move from modernizing and adapting H.G. Wells' work to completely altering one of the great works of early science fiction.
I'm kind of surprised that so many people here like the film. I personally rank it at or near the bottom of Spielberg's filmography. To each his own, I guess.
I was worried that I would have to import it from the UK, simply cause I had a feeling it'd be Region Free...and I wanted it. But this makes it that much more easier. But I just hope they use a good cover.
I really liked this version of WOTW, but the sale price would have to go quite low for me to want to trade up my 2-disc DVD set. The bonus features are big sellers for me, and I thought that the features on the DVD edition were quite light in nature. I would have been tempted to rebuy the BD version if they had added some new featurettes to the mix.
Despite the Scientology-aliens-were-already-here-spin, this was my favorite flick of 2005. Hope the transfer does it justice, because parts of this movie were about as visually stunning as it gets.
