Tim Robbins's Antiwar Zone

'War of the Worlds' Is Science Fiction, But Terror Isn't An Alien Concept

NEW YORK

"War of the Worlds" is finally about to descend upon us. Or at least a chosen few here at this advance screening. Publicity for the movie has been everywhere -- well, actually, publicity for its star, Tom Cruise, and his love life, his religious practices, his interactions on the couch circuit. But the film itself? Tightly under wraps.

So cell phones, bags, even small clutches are confiscated. There is a metal detector at the theater door. Inside, audience members are ominously warned that there will be surveillance sweeps throughout the film, and should anyone be caught with electronic contraband, the screening will be halted altogether.

Finally, the screen flickers, the credits begin to roll, and then comes a whispered question:

"Tim Robbins is in this?"

He is. No, Robbins is not your usual blockbuster sci-fi, action-hero kind of guy. Even he admits that. ("I was in 'Top Gun,' though," he says, naming another big Cruise vehicle.) But "War of the Worlds" isn't your usual blockbuster sci-fi, action-hero kind of movie. Based on the 1898 H.G. Wells novel, it's about the end of the world, sure, but it's also a profound exploration of the human fear and terror that come from confronting the unfathomable and what that does to body and mind. The new movie version -- as reconfigured by director Steven Spielberg for the 21st century -- is heavily influenced by how Americans perceive fear and terror in post-9/11 America.

"It's certainly about Americans fleeing for their lives, being attacked for no reason, having no idea why they are being attacked and who is attacking them," Spielberg says during the New York stop of the press tour.

So if Cruise (and special effects) are the movie's twin superstars, then Robbins -- whose role consists of a 20-minute sequence during which he shares a basement with Cruise and his movie daughter, played by Dakota Fanning -- is the embodiment of that terror. Cruise wants to race his family to freedom. Robbins, as Ogilvy, is a tortured soul who, when confronted by terror and loss and confusion, goes insane. Spielberg called him directly about playing the part; Robbins accepted immediately after reading the script.

"I thought, what a great challenge to have to create a distillation of terror within one basement and one person after this onslaught of terror," Robbins says. "After the special effects, and after the massive scope of what you've seen, the humanity that has been lost, the madness that has ensued, then to take all of that and make it a little microcosm."

He shakes his head. His antiwar positions are well known and these are subjects that fascinate him, preoccupy him and, at times, even terrify him. The nature of war. The impetus that drives one world -- or, as he puts it, one country -- to attack another. The way terror changes human nature, perverts it.

Robbins saw the completed film only recently -- "I think [Spielberg] was working on it right up until last week," he says -- and the scene he finds most terrifying is revealing. He is not in it. Neither are the aliens. It's not a moment of massive destruction or massive death. It is, instead, a scene in which Cruise and his children find themselves the target of an out-of-control mob.

"It's terrifying, because it's exactly what happens," he says. "You lose your sense of compassion and reason, and you just try to survive. And you think about war zones, and you think about how that must happen. The inhumanity that occurs within a war zone."