War of the Worlds (New Version)

[Taonas]

Who's seen it? What did you think?

I personally think it was great and stayed true to the concept of the original novel by H.G.Wells.

[BackStageJim]

It was good, got claps from aud when it ended. Tom did well as did the children of his 'Ray' character. However, Dakota's vocal screams were a little too loud.

[Tok'Ra Hostess]

Who's seen it? What did you think?

I personally think it was great and stayed true to the concept of the original novel by H.G.Wells.

Noticed a couple of plotholes you could drive an invasion force through, but in no way did these detract from my viewing pleasure/terror.

I sat there thinking, Wells would have been pleased. Kudos to Spielburg and company.

Suffice it to say I loved it and recommend it.

[TheObiJuan]

going to watch it now. I'll be back with my commentary.

[TheObiJuan]

Gosh I expected something different. It started well, but the movie showed that it was written in another century.
The acting was good, but, that's about it.

[FoolishPleasure]

Reviewers have been ripping apart the ending. . is it true to the book and the previous film?

[GhostPoet]

I think it is quite possibly one of the greatest movies of our era right now.

[DownFallAngel]

Movie was amazing. Th ending on the other hand....

Spoiler:

was a complete let down.

IMO.

Excellent movie though. My friend almost cried when she started seeing people

Spoiler:

being turned to ash, and then their clothes falling from the sky

.

[Tok'Ra Hostess]

Movie was amazing. Th ending on the other hand....

Spoiler:

was a complete let down.

IMO.

Uh, did you read the book? Because that's how it goes.

Actually, I thought the ending - okay, not the smarmy last five minutes ending but the ending, ending was bang-on and actually a refreshing, humbling change from - oh aren't we humans just the smartest things in the universe? And even the last few minutes was no more smarmy that HG Wells' rendition, so.

[DAL SHAKKA MEL]

Noticed a couple of plotholes you could drive an invasion force through, but in no way did these detract from my viewing pleasure/terror.

I sat there thinking, Wells would have been pleased. Kudos to Spielburg and company.

Suffice it to say I loved it and recommend it.

Yeah, the plot holes were VERY bad, especialy the whole EMP thing. First of all EMPs only knock out on electronics that are ON WHEN THE EMP BLAST HAPPENS, the film had all electronics die, and even if this was some alien EMP that knocks out electronics that are off, then how the hell did that guy's video camera work??!!

I still like the old verson better, but this was OK, and I would recomend it.

Also, I think it may have just been my eyes playing tricks on me, but did anyone else see the solder siting on the tank with what looked like the "carter special"?

[Blue Banrigh]

Also, no one else bothered to fix their cars? It seemed like a rather easy fix.

But there were some great scenes, the riot scene I thought was very effective, much more powerful that Ray's scene with the basement guy.

And the image of them running through the forest with the clothes falling out of the sky was striking, beautiful but ultimately creepy since you knew what had happened. And another great image was the one with all the helicopters in the air and the fires and explosions.

I understood what they were going for (more of surviving the invasion rather than kicking the aliens collective asses), but still felt it was a bit anti-climactic. The production values were great, I suppose they had to be with all the money they spent on it.

[Bast]

Get past the FX and a few good "flash momments" it sucked!

The writing was crap!

Spoiler:

While a Martian holocaust of Humans was heart griping to see , Especially with the shindlers list "dusting" on Tom Cruise.

While it did keep some elements from the book it certainly screwed up a few things, The biggest beef is the burried tri pods! They stated they were put there thousands or millions of years in advance, two questions why not invade then unless they are alergic to willy Mammoths and neanderthals & cavemen?

Also it destroys the plausibility of the "pathogen" issue, obviously since the aliens would have been infected by earth microbes back then as well and could have been tiped off in advance about it.

Why didnt humans use Nukes like in typical alien invasion films?

Since cruise missle didnt work but hey a Atomic warhead is worth a try i think or even a daisy cutter.

Why waisnt any warheads fired at orbiting ships or any attempt to do so?

Surely Norad in Chevene mountain could have faired better given its deep underground nature Aka Stargate, Then again burried "tripods digging themselves out".

Even without Norad the president could have lauched it with the nuclear foot ball.

*Why didnt Oneil call Thor?* LOL!

The thing with the ending is that its pretty farfetched and a typical Steven Speilberg "AI" job, Stanly Kubrick when he made the first script for AI before his death he did it to show that Robots couldnt show love and that its just hardwired programing they are not like normal humans that have the ability to adapt and move on with their lives and deal with loss of a loved one and not just obssesively cling to ever they are dessignated too.

But Steven Speilberg decided to redo the ending of that original script which original ends at the fairy god mother figurine ,Because he is to pussie to have sad tragic endings unless its shindlers list,Tossed in some aliens and screwed everything up now saying that the "mecha boy" did have real love and ressurected the mom. Tossing off the hole core purpose of Stanley Kubrick hole work making it nothing more then Pinocchio 2.0. with male whorebots clearly a remnant "Kubrick" feature *Peace be apon him*.

In war of the worlds, Speilberg does the same thing , The Son at one point was pretty well toast he run off and went on his own during a major battle between the U.S marines the air force and 5 alien tripods, The army was slaughterd and only second later so was hole mass of fleeing people behind the fallen front line ranks down the hill all vaporised by the death rays rather swiftly , Tom Cruise barely made it out with his daughter just to get into a nearby cabon that a another refugee was hiding in.

The sons odds were stacked agaist him afte the aliens rampaged Wiping out all the humans the aliens then went sweeping for survivors to collect to consume, Also began fertilizing the seed crop to terraform the region to be more suitable for them, The aliens even repeatedly raided and scaned each remaining ruined building and house for more human remnants to harvest.

If the Son miraculously made it out of their he would have had to get passed more tri pod patrols for miles and also the occupied infested area of Boston to get to his mom's place.

Given the pattern displayed in hickdom were Tom Cruise was, Its doubtful his mother place could have survived even the first purge and the days that followed inside their home in a populated city like Boston.

Even with the pathogens begining to take effect the aliens were still moving around for hours , Smacking things.

The ending was implausible and extremely stretch also distracts from H.G wells orginal theme, That human life as precious as we value it wouldnt be worth much to a vastly superior force that viewed us as "cockcroaches" or food, It was Wells message to old "Imperial Britian of the time" in regards to its treatment of primitive human cultures abroad,He also gave the idea that since like humans when they become superior technologically they think little of under developed cultures as displayed in history with "Black Slavery" and treatment of Aboriginal people, Before it was often believed "advance cultures" of aliens for instance would probaily be peaceful because they are obviously "civilized" and therefore imply primitive cultures are savages and violent in comparisson , While H.G Wells message that "civilized ideology" and savagery was in the eye of the beholder and this idea would later echoe in Nazi germany who extermination campaigns were often on "sopposedly violent or dangerous ethnic groups".

War of the worlds was not just a alien invasion novel or just classic sci fi, It was in a way a covert political commentary of the politics of the time.

Today are threat isnt "imperialism or fascism , Its terrorism fanatical religous,political or ideological violence on civilian populations after 9/11.

Be it do to Islam and especially the WAHABISM brand of it,That puts the world into two groups believers and infidels , Calls all unbelievers muhriksha "warlike beasts" desserving death that will inevitably be out to attack and destroy islam, The Muhriksha according too Wahabist are guided by Satan and his Jinni so the war is between god and the devil one side represent god the other the devil basically us according to them and pretty much any soul who has a concious or sense of ethics , The world can only gain salvation and peace untill Islam destroys and defeats the "muhriksha" nations forcing them to convert and rules with a "islamic world empire" putting into place Islamic sharia law, Some Wahabist believe the prophecied "mahadi" by Muhhamud will accomplish this some even point the finger at "Osama Bin ladin" although he haisnt claimed that position since it would give him "heretical" status but his followers could claim and sing his praises as the "Mahadi" chosen one and all Osama has to do is deny that he ever "actually claims he is the Mahadi himself".

Wahabist are more often linked with Terrorism or even the denomination of militants extremely hardline and anti west, The shoe bomber was a "wahabist" muslim.

[tsaxlady]

All in all I would say it was a good flick. Better than the last remake of War Of The Worlds. I took a friend that is not into SciFi at all and she enjoyed the movie as well.

[Tok'Ra Hostess]

Get past the FX and a few good "flash momments" it sucked!

The writing was crap!

The writing was ... different, from what Wells had the time to lay out in a good-sized novel, but I really liked Cruise's angle, his personality and how faithfully Spielburg stuck to Cruise's narrow, ground-level point of view.

Spoiler:

I didn't need to see the military ineffectively throwing everything they had at the invaders, and anyways, it would have taken them quite a while to get their machinery running due to the alien's first EMP strike (Yes, plot hole #1. And if Cruise's battery-powered watch had been stopped by the EMP blast, why was he packing batteries, later? ) Still, I liked that we didn't see much military til the later half of the movie. Remember how long it took them to react to 9/11? This would have been much worse.

As to the aliens planting their ships under our soils millenia before we even came onto the scene, eh, that was just dumb, IMO. I try to pass that off as panicky people just thinking out loud, trying to work out why the machines came up from below.

As to Boston still being... partly... intact, I'm okay with that. There were only so many tripods, and there are a lot of cities on this planet, and since the actual destruction was taking place on the ground as opposed to from orbit, even after several days there'd still be large swatches of untouched real estate.

But I totally agree that the kid should have not shown up at the end. It would have been far more poignant. His being there ruined that scene.

I'm glad they didn't go into politics or social studies with this one. Wells covered that far better than a movie could, and anyways, what did Well's moralising accomplish? We still had the holocaust and we still have colonialism.

[oragans]

i was wondering anyone has the new war of the worlds film i saw last night i loved it i will give it a 8.5/10 - Fantastic graphics but the storie has so many elements but the war scenes are the best i have ever since - the little girl and tom cruise and spielberg all deserve an oscar for this performance.