10 Ridiculously Underrated Movie Remakes Everyone Must Watch
3. War Of The Worlds (2005)
One of the earliest blockbusters to wholesale bomb a city on screen after the advent of September 11 (sorry, The Day After Tomorrow's Roland Emmerich, freezing the entire world doesn't count), 2005's The War of the Worlds doesn't get much love from film fans.
Jaws helmer / cinema icon Steven Spielberg's disaster remake was vilified for its dark tone, but is it secretly genius?
After all, the movie moves from the huge scale destruction revelled in by earlier blockbusters (hello again, Independence Day's Roland Emmerich), to a microscopic emotionally intimate focus on one family torn asunder by the invasion.
Is it tasteless to focus on an all American family's turmoil at a time when the US themselves were turning Baghdad into this film's New York? Sure, but the movie is more challenging than most mainstream blockbusters in its persistent focus on the futility of conflict and the human cost it inevitably entails.