After directing some of the most thoughtful science-fiction films of the last thirty years -- E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and A.I.: Articifical Intelligence -- Steven Spielberg has now made one of the most repugnant. Why this is the case, I don't know...maybe it's fatigue. Maybe, like fellow 70's wunderkinds Scorsese and Coppola, he's lost his mojo. Part of it may have something to do with Spielberg's artistic split persona -- he wants to be a complex and intricate artist, but can't resist the dumbed-down razzle dazzle, explosions, or scary things (sharks, dinosaurs, alien predators) that entertain the popcorn masses. WAR OF THE WORLDS is definitely a film for those summer blockbuster crowds who check their brains at the door -- an apocalyptic ghost story for those who like their plots heavy on the bombs and light on the drama.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, to a degree. I'm a sucker for world-ending science fiction (Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow, for instance). But in this case, Spielberg made a rare and ultimately fatal misstep in adapting H.G. Wells' classic tale of an alien invasion bent on the destruction of mankind...by bringing real-world tragedy into his fantasy playground.

Caveat: I'm a New Yorker, and I was here in 2001 when the towers fell. So I recognize that, when Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise), a dockworker in nearby Bayonne, N.J., starts to see the city being cataclysmically destroyed, my reaction is personal. For many of us here watching the images in WAR OF THE WORLDS, the aliens didn't take down New York, the terrorists did.

At first, I assumed I was overreacting. But then Spielberg makes the connection, too -- soon, rushing citizens are all over the screen, buzzing about whether this was a "terrorist attack." What may seem like a potent metaphor on paper becomes, in the film, an insensitive abuse of our recent past. In his escapist glee, Spielberg has egregiously decided to pimp the emotionality of the 9/11 attacks for his own purposes, turning the aliens into thinly-veiled standins for Al Qaeda. Bodies falling from buildings, being vaporized? Yeah, we've seen it. One almost wants to ask, "Have you no decency, sir?"

Even if you disagree with my interpretation, however, there is little to recommend WAR OF THE WORLDS. The characters are barely sketches on cheescloth, with little detail beyond the basics: disaffected teenage son (Justin Chatwin), screeching little girl (Dakota Fanning), and conspiracy theorist (Tim Robbins). As the divorced, distant father, Cruise seems at a complete loss how to proceed. The screenplay, written by David Koepp (Spider-Man) and Josh Friedman (Return to Paradise), depends completely on the fervent determination of Ray to keep his son and daughter safe, traveling from New York to Boston through the alien holocaust happening around them. Cruise, playing a father for maybe the first time, simply has no idea how to make those relationships work. Paternal instincts, politely put, are not his forte.

There are some fantastic special effects sequences (including a sinking ferryboat and a train completed engulfed in flames), and one scene with Cruise wandering through the wreckage of a downed airplane gives the viewer a sense of the loss that WAR OF THE WORLDS should be focused upon. But for the most part, it is two hours of extras, screaming and running to and from the camera, and sloppily edited at that.

Perhaps most dismaying, though, is this thought: that the man who gave such eloquent human dimension to the lasting effects of holocaust in Schindler's List has now prostituted the idea of human extermination for entertainment. Bread and circuses, indeed.