That movie was terrifying. All of my fears and nightmares in two hours of film.
Now I'm not sure how much I could possibly spoil this movie seeing the book has been on shelves since 1898...
Tom Cruise was a great reluctant hero. Dakota Fanning played her usual brillant self; her facial expressions throughout the movie resembled mine while sitting in the theater gripping Xavier's arm.
A little off the topic but, has anyone ever read the Tripods Trilogy by John Christopher?
Overall, I give this movie 3 stars and I'd love to see it again!
Parental Advisory: SCARY Not for little ones! Lots of violence!
Posted by Tante Shvester (Member # 8202) on :
quote: I give this movie 3 stars and I'd love to see it again!
Out of how many stars?
Posted by Valentine014 (Member # 5981) on :
4
Posted by aragorn64 (Member # 4204) on :
Tripods Trilogy...I think I remember reading that. Is it the one where the Tripods took over Earth or something, and some people try and stop them? I seem to remember something about people going into them and coming out bald...0.o It's kind of hazy, and I may be thinking about another series.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Normally when the ending of a movie wraps up that quickly I get pissed, I hate it when something so convenient happens. But I was awed at the end of this movie.
I think it was a movie that was for once, far more about the characters than the events around them. Dakota Fanning and Tom Cruise did a fantastic job. I'd give it 3 and half stars out of four. It's temporarily #1 on my list of movies I've seen this year (30 movies seen in the theater thus far), though that may change later after I've had time to digest it.
Posted by just-a-min (Member # 7308) on :
quote:A little off the topic but, has anyone ever read the Tripods Trilogy by John Christopher?
I loved the the Tripods Trilogy when I was young! How does a conquering Alien race deal with the existing humans? Destroy their cities and technology and fit tweens with mesh helmets to turn them into docile adults. I was so excited to read these books to my son. He's a good kid and humored me even though he didn't share my enthusiasm for the series.
Posted by ill malkier (Member # 8244) on :
I loved the TRIPOD Trilogy. My favorite books growing up. I turned to my brother after finishing WotW and mentioned how AWESOME it would be if they turned those books into movies now.... I was even thinking about posting something about them-- but you beat me to it. Thanks!
Posted by TL (Member # 8124) on :
Man, I hated this movie. I'd give it 1 star and a vow never to watch another Steven Speilberg film. Lately they just make me mad.
This movie is 'Signs' but without the brains, humor, or suspense. And with Tripods.
Brief review: (SPOILERS)
Like Signs before it, the new version of The War of the Worlds attempts to show the effects a world-wide alien invasion by dealing with it on the smallest possible scale: Through the eyes of a small family.
Once again, we follow a father and his attempts to rescue his two children from evil alien invaders. The main difference between this and Signs is that in this film, the family leaves the house.
This allows for the audience to see a lot of nonsense about people running around senselessly in crowds and getting killed by tripods.
Virtually nothing that happens makes any sense whatsoever. The motives of the alien invaders are never even hinted at. (They were here millions of years ago to bury thousands of tripods underneath the earth? Um, excuse me, but why hasn't mankind discovered, oh, at least one of them? These things are right below the surface of major metropolitan streets, and nobody caught a glimpse of one whilst building sewers or subway systems? Okay, let's pretend that's even remotely possible. Second point: How did the aliens know millions of years ago where these major metropolitan centers would be located? Third point: If they were here millions of years ago burying these tripods all over the globe, why didn't they get sick THEN? You'd think during a project of that magnitude they might, maybe, notice that this planet was FATAL to them. Another point: What the hell sense does it make that the purpose of the alien invasion of earth [apparently] was to terraform the earth using HUMAN BLOOD as the key agent in the transformation? Excuse me, but how likely is it that these creatures are from a planet where the key component of life is HUMAN BLOOD? I'd say not bloody likely.)
Ugh. I'd say don't get me started but I just got started.
I think, out of disgust, I will now stop. Speilberg has totally lost touch with reality. I thought it couldn't get any dumber than Minority Report. I was painfully, woefully wrong.
Posted by TL (Member # 8124) on :
And for the record the Tripods Trilogy is great. Much better than this crap. (The movie, I mean; my negativity is not meant to reflect on the work of H.G. Wells)
Posted by Exploding Monkey (Member # 7612) on :
The reviews on this are so mixed. I'm hearing people loving it and others going off about it.
I might have to put this one on my "to watch" DVD list. I'm kinda bummed it's being met like this. I was really, really excited to see it.
Posted by Telperion the Silver (Member # 6074) on :
quote:A little off the topic but, has anyone ever read the Tripods Trilogy by John Christopher?
YES!!! I love those books! Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
I myself had mixed feelings. The first thirty minutes or so I loved, but it seemed to go gradually down hill from there. I think one reason is that I was never scared like Niki was.
*SPOILERS*
The first thing that annoyed me was the whole Tom Cruise running around while people directly in front, in back, on the left, and on the right got zapped. Tom Cruise wasn't dying, because the script said he wasn't. No logic involved.
Which started one of my main problems of the movie: too many close calls. Every ten seconds or so, there's a situation where the main characters should have died, but they didn't get so much as a scratch. They didn't escape death because of skill or intelligence, but just blind luck.
But I was still quite enjoying the movie when the whole "tentacle in the basement" thing happened. It had just shown the alien machine tearing apart the neighbor buildings down to the foundations, but on this house they decided to send a tentacle down to explore for TWENTY MINUTES. I wasn't scared in this scene, I was bored out of my mind. So there's only like 50 of these big machine things in the whole world, but this one is taking a 20 minute break to explore a friggen farm house? And then the aliens came into the basement, to extend my torture I guess. These aliens must be the dumbest forms of life on the planet for three of them to miss three people in a basement the size of a living room. It also annoyed me that they looked just like the ID4 aliens. Then Tom Cruise stops Tim Robbins from killing one of them . Did he plan on living the rest of his life in the basement? He killed a guy to shut him up, and then goes to sleep right out in the open, when he knows that the aliens are highly interested in this house...
Well lets just stop there and say I really didn't like that scene. And it was about a half hour of the movie.
Then when the two get back to Boston, the kids' mom is living in a building that never even got touched. In the wide view you can see that the whole neighborhood was peachy. The windows weren't even broken. I thought it odd that the aliens would take hours out of their time with one single farm house, but then leave that whole part of the city untouched. Especially when there was like 7 of those things in Boston.
Nitpick: I laughed when I saw that an airplane (a jumbo-jet at that) had fallen right on their house, with mass destruction all around, and yet the van was completely untouched .
Posted by Puffy Treat (Member # 7210) on :
quote:Originally posted by Xavier: Tom Cruise wasn't dying, because the script said he wasn't. No logic involved.
Flashbacks to The Last Samurai's climax and coda! Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
I loved the tripods trilogy in fifth or sixth grade. I was so excited to find them again as an adult, I bought them all last year.
And I was so disgusted with the blatant (though I think unconscious) sexism that runs all through them that I will get rid of them before my children (assuming we have any) are old enough to read.
Posted by Kayla (Member # 2403) on :
quote: And I was so disgusted with the blatant (though I think unconscious) sexism that runs all through them
And they were originally published in 1967. Scary, isn't it?
Posted by Puffy Treat (Member # 7210) on :
Having read a lot of science short stories from the late 60s, I have to say that other than those written by actual women, unconscious sexism was rampant more often than not. (And even the women had their own little biases and axes to grind.)
Of course, the stuff being written today will probably seem disgusting and ridiculous to readers 30-40 years down the road.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
I also have read a lot of sci-fi from the sixties (and earlier). Mostly I can take the gender-relations as a product of the time they were written and not worry too much about it. These are exceptionally awful.
Posted by Lara (Member # 132) on :
At least there wasn't a talking teddy bear
Posted by Puffy Treat (Member # 7210) on :
Spielberg gets blamed for Teddy, yet...the bear was a character in the original short story. A.I. was still awful, but it had an excuse for the bear.
Posted by James Tiberius Kirk (Member # 2832) on :
quote:A little off the topic but, has anyone ever read the Tripods Trilogy by John Christopher?
Yes. They rocked. We read The White Mountains in school, so I went and read the others. I'll have to find them again.
There was a fourth book, wasn't there? A prequel?
--j_k
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
I read those, they are classics! I really loved them as a kid, adn look forward to sharing them with my kids someday.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
My favorite part of the movie is when the tentacle head checked itself out in the mirror for a minute.
That was a damn sexy tentacle.
Posted by Rudolph (Member # 3236) on :
**SPOILER**
i liked the movie, despite its unrealistic-ness, until the very end, when robbie was alive. that was the last straw for me.
also, i love the tripod trilogy, and immediately thought of it every time i saw one of the tripods walking around in war of the worlds.
Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
Yeah, I forgot to add that to the list...
*SPOILERS*
I hated that they made the son live. How did he live without running and hiding (which he was totally opposed to doing)? All the army guys he went off with got burned alive. Not only that, but the Mom and the Grandparents were alive too! They must all have some sort of deal with the aliens. Or God.
Posted by ElJay (Member # 6358) on :
I loved the Tripod trilogy... but since dkw and I think a lot alike I shall not reread them and spoil the memory.
I have no intention of seeing this movie. The trailers looked remarkably stupid to me, plus I don't particularly like beign scared, plus I don't particularly like Tom Cruise.
Posted by ShadowPuppet (Member # 8239) on :
well I haven't seen WotW or read the books...I'll probably see the movie
sometime...
but the tripod books...
although I only got ot read the first one (stupid school library not carrying the whole trilogy)
I loved 'em great reads wouldn't mind finding them again...
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
I think this may help at least some of those who thought it was unrealistic because we never knew why the aliens were coming:
H. G. Wells wrote this book to show the British what their extermination of the Tasmanians might feel like, from the Tasmanian perspective. They had their world, then one day, strange-looking people came, riding ships and using technology the Tasmanians had never dreamed of, settled in, and started wiping out the natives. I don't think the British ever explained to the Tasmanians why they had to die. The invading aliens' motives weren't incomprehensible to me; they were all too familiar. It's happened many times in history. The sadism was a new twist -- or was it? Consider what the Vikings did to their victims. Or the Assyrians.
The fact that Cruise's character survived the initial onslaught didn't stretch credibility to me. The aliens were killing lots of people, but there were so many people around they couldn't shoot them all. Our camera followed somebody who got lucky. We'd see other survivors going past, too. Randomness exists in wartime.
(I'd agree that the teenage son's survival was not credible. And it would have been more poignant if he'd died.)
When I saw the guy's chest explode in Alien, I wasn't that scared, because I know aliens like that don't exist. Invading aliens on tripods don't exist, either, but invaders do, and they skewer entire villages on swords, or rape women to death, or round people up and spray them with nerve gas. The reassuring thing is that to make the realities of being helpless before an invading force seems plausible, with American victims, you have to make the invaders super-high-tech space aliens -- there's nobody on Earth that can do it. I am tremendously grateful for this, and really interested in keeping it this way. I don't ever want to be in the situation of Lithuania before Stalin, or Afghanistan before Genghis Khan -- or Tasmanians before British settlers.
5 stars out of 4 (by film convention). I was emotionally destroyed this afternoon, and it was worth it. I hope the child actress doesn't have nightmares.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
I too agree that the son should not have lived.
I sighed in annoyance when he was found alive.
Also, I had these annoying people sitting behind me talking so loud I had to also talk really loud so my friend next to me could hear me =)
SORTA SPOILER
But near the end, when Morgan Freeman (the narrator) was like "destroyed by the smallest creature on earth," the lady behind me yelled "Ants?!"
Posted by TheDisgruntledPostman (Member # 7200) on :
haha lyrhawn, but morgan freeman is one of my favorite actors, i was suprised to hear his voice. The movie was great, action packed, but i just didn't like the end when everything was perfect.
-SPOILER-
Son lives, ex-wife and her husband and there parents and the house! Great remake of a movie though.
Posted by TheDisgruntledPostman (Member # 7200) on :
O and rudolph, i thought the same exact thing, especcially the grenade part. Great books.
Posted by TL (Member # 8124) on :
Will, they did hint at possible motives for the alien invasion in this movie. I think we were meant to infer that the aliens were attempting to terra-form the Earth using human blood. Maybe their planet was dying, who knows. All we are told is that they regarded our planet with envious eyes.
What really was incomprehensible is how utterly stupid that is.
I don't ask much from movies, but I do ask that they make *some* kind of sense.
This movie had exactly one thing in common with the H.G. Wells novel. Tripods.
I actually hate Speilberg now. This was the last straw for me.
Anyone remember when he was good? Close Encounters? Raiders of the Lost Ark? Man, he used to be good, didn't he? Oh, well.
Posted by AC (Member # 7909) on :
In Wells' version, human blood was the reason the martians invaded, but not to terraform, to drink it.
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
Fresh meat. They had their own bipedal livestock, already, and their digestive systems were set up to make them vampires.
I don't think the red rooty stuff was necessily terraforming (Mars-forming?). It could have just been some garden plants. Or weeds. I was afraid it was going to be some form of baby alien, like in X Files, and that you could get infected by touching it, and then I was going to be annoyed.
I think the blood thing might have been just playing -- like the way they were playing with the human artifacts. Like a food fight, maybe. The fact that we don't know makes perfect sense. When the British or French moved into Oz or parts of Africa, I'm sure there were locals that couldn't figure out for the life of them why these new people liked to inhale smoke, or wear clothes to cover the entire body, or (I remember this from anthropology) swim in the ocean. If I thought there was no plausible reason, though, I'd be annoyed.
Posted by Lord Solar Macharius (Member # 7775) on :
*in the novel* They only drank human blood because their own food stores (blood) had run out on the ride over from mars. They invaded because the red planet kinda' sucked and they wanted a new one.
Posted by Occasional (Member # 5860) on :
To compare this version with the "Tripod" series of books (good as they might be) is a mistake. Its like comparing apples and oranges.
Most of the criticism that I have read from this, although not all, were directly from the original H.G. Wells "War of the Worlds." Has anyone actually read that book? The same stupid things that happened in Spielburg's version happened in the original tale. Likewise, the same cool and disturbing things happened as well. Frankly, I was surprised the faithfulness of Speilburg's film. Just watch the 1950s version to see what I am talking about what could have gone wrong.
By the way, even in the novel the explanations for the Alien's behavior was often the author's cheat.
Posted by Occasional (Member # 5860) on :
*Spoiler Alert* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
These are the same things that happened in both Spielburg's version and the H.G. Wells book, with explanations of a few differences:
1: Aliens came down from the sky (although from Mars and not underground).
2: The hero goes to the crashsite and sees the thing rise. He also sees several people burned to a crisp (obviously in a forest rather than a city), and is miraculously unscathed.
3: The hero goes off to find his wife (of course, without any kids in tow).
4: He hides out in the basement of a house with a freaked out man who, if I remember right, he has to clobber.
5: He sees a man get his blood sucked out. Another thing is that the loud noises in the film were also from the book.
6: The military continually tries to destroy the tripods without success; and in fact with great slaughter. (I am actually surprised Spielburg didn't use the germ warfare. On the other hand, maybe i am not surprised).
6: Dead human bodies are everywhere. When the hero finally reaches the city he finds the tripods losing power and finally dying.
7: At the end of the book he finally finds his wife alive, and the house almost untouched.
Posted by JaimeBenlevy (Member # 6222) on :
I didn't like this movie, I thought it was really stupid for reasons other people already mentioned. I haven't read the book yet, but the only part I thought was cool was how the tripods were kind of modeled after the aliens (3 legs and all), like how robots look like humans. Random observation.
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
It was pretty good.
It was also sorta creepy when we walked out of the theatre and it was lightning outside. o_O
Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
Thats odd mack, it was lightning here too!
Posted by Chreese Sroup (Member # 8248) on :
I enjoyed it, while the Technical Director (TD) in me screamed at every turn.
It was far more enjoyable than signs, but I don't remember if I watched signs in TD mode or not.
Posted by Occasional (Member # 5860) on :
I guess I never left my personal impressions. I loved this movie, although for sick and twisted reasons. It was a thriller that really thrilled. The monster machines were awsome to watch as they did their dirty work. Finally, for once (even unlike Orson Wells' radio program) the book was more or less followed. As a fan of the book that immpressed me the most. Apparently, there is a movie getting made by an independant production company that is placing the story in its 1898 time period.
Posted by T_Smith (Member # 3734) on :
I don't get how people can not like this movie for what it is: an action movie. Too many close calls? Action movie. Unclear motives of aliens? Action. Movie. Really, what did you expect when you went to go see it?
Morgan Freeman: Our world was being watched like we watch creatures through microscopes, and our world was envied by them.
Crazy Dude in Basement: They've been here for millions of years, planning this.
Cut to: aliens terraforming desolated area. They do this by shooting out spores in a dust cloud, draining humans, and then spraying the spores with blood.
Yeah, so logic doesn't exactly exist in this realm. So what? To me, it's like someone saying "When I was riding the madahorn, the bobsled I was in was headed in an upward direction, thereby proving to me that it was not real, and from that point on, I could not enjoy myself." It's a ride. Enjoy it.
As an action movie, this was awesome. Constant action, close calls, edge of the seat hollywood goodness.
Posted by Lucky4 (Member # 1420) on :
My biggest complaint about the movie was the loud noises. They made it harder to sleep peacefully.
Posted by Blackthorne (Member # 8295) on :
I thought the movie was great, even with Tom Cruise (who did suprisingly well). The end was a little weird, but done well (makes more sense than Independence Day (Hey that's today (TRIPLE BRACKETS!!!))).
Posted by Carl Conrad Coreander (Member # 7851) on :
"A little off the topic but, has anyone ever read the Tripods Trilogy by John Christopher? "
As I was watching the movie I was thinking exactly that. They even called the robots tripods. [SPOILER]In fact, in the Tripod trilogy, at the end they killed a tripod with a grenade...like at the end of the War of the Worlds movie. [END SPOILER]
It was like they were copying the tripod books while making the movie. >:-(
Posted by Carl Conrad Coreander (Member # 7851) on :
By the way, I think you made one to many closing brackets, Blackthorne. :-P
Posted by Valentine014 (Member # 5981) on :
quote:It was like they were copying the tripod books while making the movie. >:-(
No, no, no. Christopher directly ripped off the book, WOTW.
Now, I am the biggest fan of the Tripods books that exists, but even I have to admit the truth.
Although, I was waiting for Tom Cruise to call the grenades, "metal eggs". Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
While you guys were stroking your beards intellectually, I was enjoying an action movie.
"So repeat to yourself it's just a show I should really just relax"
Now I'm waiting for the sequel.
"We've studied their technology. We've whipped up a big batch of bugs. It's time to kick some Martian Butt! WAR OF THE WORLDS 2: PAYBACK!" ^^;;
Pix
(edit: typo)
[ July 04, 2005, 08:50 PM: Message edited by: The Pixiest ]
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
I *like* to stroke my beard intellectually (which, given who I am, is the only way I can do it ). And I also enjoyed this action movie!
Posted by Earendil18 (Member # 3180) on :
I remember watching the part when they're driving down the interstate and there just happens to be space for them to navigate through in their Caravan. I said to myself "how conveeeenient" and moved on.
Seriously folks, there are vehicles, and there are STORY vehicles.
Been here millions of years? That was all speculation by emotionally high humans that didn't have a fargin' clue what the hell was really going on. They could've put them in in the 1950's and brought the drivers when it was time for the invasion to be executed. This could be conjectured forever and ever, but that's not the point.
This film isn't trying to bring to the table a dead-on accurate representation of terraforming techniques (maybe they needed "native planetological components"), or accurate alien invasion "technique" (maybe after all the looking they actually wanted to WALK around, but scoped out the place before they went down, another infinitely debatable point). It's the alien, the unknown, and the unpredictable that makes us scared. Once you start spelling out details you lose that.
What is most interesting is what the humans are doing while this is happening.
Yah the aliens are scary but how is the family holding up? What are they doing? How are they responding to this horrible situation?
When people fight desperately over a 6-7 seating Dodge Caravan that says something about us.
When a man loses his family and becomes so unhinged he endangers himself and everyone around him, THAT says something.
It's not because Tom Cruise is himself that he is able to survive. It's because he's the cotton-pickin' HERO CHARACTER. You knew he had a 90% probability of surviving the minute you discovered he was cast.
Why the sudden surprise?
That's like going to see a new action packed Vin Diesel movie and gasping because he whooops so much ashtray and mayhem, but survives! I'm shocked!
5 out of 5 stars for telling a gosh darn good story.
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
Besides, if Tom Cruise HADN'T survived, you know people would've been saying, "What, did GRRM write this!?"
Posted by Valentine014 (Member # 5981) on :
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
Seriously: suppose for a moment aliens had really attacked Earth, and we survived, and the movie were a historical record.
Much of humanity survived. Even in the NJ-NY area (as we saw, when the tripod was stumbling because the alien inside was dying), there were survivors. Would it be better to chronicle the story of someone who got killed in the initial assault? Short movie. Why wouldn't we pick one of the survivors, and chronicle _his_ story? If nothing else, we get to see a lot more.
Posted by SC Carver (Member # 8173) on :
The movie was worth watching, but that’s about it.
Of Course Tom Cruise survives through impossible odds, Nobody watches the story about the guy who gets killed in 5 mins.
The boy surviving really ticked me off also. As soon as he went over the hill thought if he shows up again I'm going to be pissed.
I thought it was OK the aliens looked like the ones from Ind. Day. ID stole the whole idea of giving the aliens a "virus" from WotWs. Seemed like a fair trade.
H.G. Well's story is amazing considering it was written in 1895.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
quote:When the British or French moved into Oz
Was this before or after the wizard?
Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
Surviving against impossible odds is fine, as long as there was some skill or intelligence involved. Not just because the character was super-naturally lucky. The initial running scene and the swimming away from the boat scene are good examples of this. In the running scene, the only logic to who would be zapped seemed to be "whoever is closest to Tom Cruise". Seriously, everyone who was running next to him, be they in front, behind, left or right got zapped. The aliens zapped the guy hanging onto his car, but then didn't bother to blow up the car.
Then in the boat scene, I think everyone but Tom and his kids made it. The aliens let them swim away, while killing everyone else. Seems like as helpless as the swimmers were, the aliens could have focused especially on those trying to escape their circle of death.
Add to that every time there was a near death experience which Tom survived because of luck. The alien machine stepping on the car he hid behind for one, that car falling off the boat and nearly hitting him for two. There were many, many more.
By a fourth of the way through the movie, you realize he's not in any real danger. The only thing he was ever in real danger of was getting a cramp with all the running he was doing. Hence I lost my suspension of disbelief.
Its great that you guys didn't, and there were also many things I LIKED about the movie.
Posted by Carl Conrad Coreander (Member # 7851) on :
"there just happens to be space for them to navigate through in their Caravan."
I was thinking along the same lines.
"What is most interesting is what the humans are doing while this is happening."
Yeah I thought that was scarier than, say, the aliens.
BTW, if it really was an extermination, then how could they have put the tripods underground years ago? Wouldn't people have noticed? Unless maybe it was the stone age or something...but if it was then wouldn't it have been easier to wipe us out then?
At the beginning they say that the aliens look at earth with jealousy, so why didn't they take it back when it would have been easier? DUH! :-P
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
The fact that the hero survived by blind luck goes along with the theme that there was nothing humanity could do to stop the martians.
Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
That may be Pix, but that didn't make for compelling cinema, at least for me.
Edit: I would contrast this with Jurassic Park, where the heroes all made actual decisions and smart choices, which led to their survival (the ones who did survive)
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
Well, there'd be those in WotW who saw the lightning storms and HID, or those who saw the earth cracking and RAN the moment it started, all instead of looking at it in awe and saying "Oh, COOL." Sorta like staring death in the face as it takes you or making it work for the reaping.
Posted by The Silverblue Sun (Member # 1630) on :
I just saw it.
I liked it.
The part where I was scaredest was when they were in the mini-van and their enemies were human. heh. that gave me the hee bee jee bees.
I too thought it was LAMe the boy survived, come on that WHOLE hill was on fire. oh well, it is spielberg. overall a good suspense movie.
Posted by Narnia (Member # 1071) on :
I liked it too. I think this movie will win one Oscar this year: Sound editing. The sound was terrifying and kept me involved, even when I had to roll my eyes (at all of the above mentioned ridiculous points).
*spoilers below*
My biggest pet peeve is that they arrive at this lovely little street in Boston where everything seems to be fine. I know the aliens hadn't gotten there yet, but if people beat the crap out of Tom Cruise for a minivan, don't you think there would have been some serious looting/pillaging of the places that were still standing?
Oh wait. I almost forgot. Tom Cruise was the ONLY one that made it to Boston. (That is where they were all going, wasn't it?)
I also wanted to shout at Miranda Otto at the end of the film. She seemed so selfish and pampered after what they had just been through. I thought "the aliens didn't get to your house and you didn't even have any NEWS, so you couldn't possibly know what they've been through, ya wench." Don't know why I had that reaction, I guess she wasn't emotional enough for me.
But, aside from that, and the irritating men in my row that talked through the entire movie, I really enjoyed it. It was tense, and I loved that.
Posted by Janger (Member # 4719) on :
My pet peeves about the movie: 1) Son doesn't die 2) An alien race so technologically advanced still don't have equipment capable of detecting heat signals as Tom, daughter, and crazy man run around in basement. 3) The electro magentic pulse renders all electrical equipment useless, except the video camera held by the man who ends up getting zapped. 4) The scene where the tripod first comes out of the ground. Electrical workers are still on one of those ladder things attached to those trucks used for maintenance of electrical wires. The fact that those workers remained on these ladders for the extent of a violent lightening storm is highly unlikely.
![[Angst]](graemlins/angst.gif)
Not for little ones! Lots of violence!
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Thanks!
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
. Did he plan on living the rest of his life in the basement? He killed a guy to shut him up, and then goes to sleep right out in the open, when he knows that the aliens are highly interested in this house...![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
and moved on. ![[ROFL]](graemlins/rofl.gif)