5 stars. I was emotionally destroyed. It was worth it.
I thought this movie did better than Wells's book, because the main character was fighting for a family. It almost was too much. Kids in danger -- oh, boy, did they cross that line. I kept wondering if the child actress is going to be traumatized.
Wells wrote his book to show Brits how it felt to be on the receiving end of what they were doing to the Tasmanians. I doubt most moviegoers would get this, but that's what made it so devastating to me: stuff like this really happens, not to us, and not by space aliens, but to people the Mongol Horde or the Nazis ran over.
Such scope. I hope I can write a novel this devastating. But I can see that being difficult -- I don't want to immerse myself in that much pain, for months, so that a novel reader could get it for a few days.
I also hope there aren't any space aliens out there next year, watching this on HBO, getting ideas.
Posted by Minister (Member # 2213) on :
Yeah, that was pretty intense. A little too tense, and a little too grotesque for the taste of my wife. And there were gaping plausibility holes in the plot (well, at least one). But those were easy to forget, because you were following and caring about a person. I agree that this definitely had more emotional impact on me than the book did, but that may be because I am at least partly a product of my time.
Posted by Elan (Member # 2442) on :
It's easier to sit through a scary movie when you know the ending of the story - at least I assume we know the ending? Glad to have some positive reviews on the movie - these were the first I've heard. Thanks, guys. I may actually go see it in the theater. (And I suspect I am going to like Johnny Depp in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)
Posted by hopekeeper (Member # 2701) on :
While I liked this movie, I found it overly predictable and not very "scary" at all... I think it was because throughout the entire movie, I was relating the invaders to the ones in my novel... tsk tsk naughty me. Though, there was something there--not fear or confusion... almost frustration or something. It was a feeling that I would very much like to get down on paper, but I doubt I could pull it off without visuals...
Posted by EricJamesStone (Member # 1681) on :
I thought it was well done, but I was annoyed by unnecessary plot holes. I mean, for example, if the tripods were buried long before human civilization began, why didn't the aliens invade at that time? And please don't say it was because they wanted to wait until they could harvest human blood, because that's just another blatantly ridiculous plot point.
Posted by wbriggs (Member # 2267) on :
Did we get in the movie that the machines were buried long ago? Please say it ain't so!
(I didn't hear that; or that there was any explanation of how they got there. I would presume it was some magic-technology thing -- maybe nanotech -- the aliens had, done so recently that it would be possible that nobody anywhere in the world had tried to build a subway through one yet.)
In the book, the aliens lived on blood from their own kind of livestock, for which we were a new alternative. Egg Beaters for Martians?
[This message has been edited by wbriggs (edited July 04, 2005).]
Posted by EricJamesStone (Member # 1681) on :
Well, the only person who I recall actually said that they must have been buried long ago was crazy, but it's the only explanation given in the movie as to how these huge machines were underneath the cities.
I would have avoided all that just by having the tripods come down from the sky, leaving a bigger hole where they hit, before they rise up from the ground.
And if you're going to update a story written over 100 years ago, get rid of the cheesy blood-sucking and just have the aliens looking for living space. Unless the alien biology is amazingly coincidentally similar to ours, our blood's just not going to be of much use to them.
Posted by Minister (Member # 2213) on :
If the biology wasn't pretty similar it would have seemed odd for native earth organisms to have infected and killed the aliens. I was quite irritated by the notion that the machines had been here thousands or millions of years. Sloppy. I guess my summary would be that I'm glad I saw it, but feel no particular inclination to see it again or own it.
Posted by wbriggs (Member # 2267) on :
What I do, with unanswered questions in a movie, is imagine some answer that makes sense. If I can't find one, I get annoyed.
One thing that's different about this movie from most movies with aliens is that we never get to talk to any of the aliens, so we can only guess what they're up to. (With the exception of the early narration, that told us they envied us our Earth.) There were those red vines that started appearing. Weeds? Ornamentation? Crops? We never found out. I actually like this. If super-high-tech monsters came to Earth and started wiping us out, I think there would be a lot of things we wouldn't be able to explain.
Posted by Jeraliey (Member # 2147) on :
I, for one, was amused at how quickly the Independence Day aliens managed to regroup. *Cough*
Ah, Spielberg.
Posted by hopekeeper (Member # 2701) on :
I think they were terraforming the planet... with the weeds... then again that might just be me.
Posted by Troy (Member # 2640) on :
Dude this movie sucked SO baaaaad.
</pained voice>
Posted by Spaceman (Member # 9240) on :
Anymore, you know you are going to these movies to see a special effects show. I thought the movie was just fine, despite the buried for millions of years thing. I guess aliens don't like the taste of dinosaurs. Still, the only thing that really would have upset me would have been if Spielberg changed the ending. that would have set me off. Otherwise, it was fun to watch.
Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :
If they were only popping up in cities, it could just be that the aliens were exploiting our sewer systems and such. I would tend to discount the "buried for millions of years" hypothesis anyway, since we know the person who came up with that is crazy
I'm of two minds on the question of aliens using us for food/hosts/etc. On the one hand, it really is pretty unlikely. On the other, I'm afraid there isn't much else in the way of plausible motives for an invasion. I mean, the whole "living space" argument just doesn't make sense for people that have learned to live in [/i]space[/i]
Really, the thing to do would be to act all friendly and get people to board your ships voluntarily, like in that old Twilight Zone episode, To Serve Man.
"It's a cookbook!"
Posted by EricJamesStone (Member # 1681) on :
Just because a race has learned to make spaceships capable of interplanetary and/or interstellar flight doesn't mean they prefer living on a spaceship to living on a planet.
Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :
I guess that's true. They could also be doing just for fun. You know, instead of just playing Halo they hunt down ugly aliens and kill them for sport.
Like in that movie...um, Predator.
I'm just saying, if you just want to kill all humans and take their planet, invasion is exactly the wrong tactic. Extermination through use of tailored biologicals or toxins is the best bet. Unless your understanding of biochemistry is really low, like...low enough for you to attempt to invade a planet teeming with microbes lethal to your own species
Which is to say, anything can be "justified" with the "well, they're really just stupid" argument.
Including a fanatical desire to drink the blood of their enemies, where possible.
Posted by Silver3 (Member # 2174) on :
Seems the "terminally stupid" applies to all baddies, even alien ones...Although in defence of Hollywood, the ending to this one was more or less built in Wells' story.
Posted by iamfetch (Member # 2684) on :
Like wbriggs, I tend to make up answers for things that aren't clear in the movie. I don't think that the aliens were all that stupid. At the beginning of the movie, the aliens were zapping all the humans to dust, which led me to believe that they were making room for thier own species. And then all of a sudden, they abandon this and begin to take humans as prisoners, spreading thier blood all over the earth. I kept scratching my head till i remebered the end of the book and thought that maybe the aliens actually did know about the bacteria, but didn't know enough about human biology to know that even though our blood has antibodies to fight bacteria, it doesn't work when used as an antibacterial spray on the earth. This may be really far fetched, but it's just my $o.02.
~Fetch
Posted by NewsBys (Member # 1950) on :
I thought the aliens had a 3 (or more) phase plan.
Phase One: Exterminate/drive native fauna like cattle Phase Two: Research and Recon Phase Three: Terraforming (sowing & fertilizing) They never got past phase three.
I'm glad you guys warned me about the buried for millions of years thing. I would have been bothered by it, if I hadn't already known.
I do want to know what happened to the ex-wife’s baby.
I kept wondering how many disasters they could fit into one movie. I counted: storm, car accident, train wreck, plane crash, war, shipwreck, earthquake and riot. Did I miss any? Guess they couldn't figure out how to get volcanic eruption, tornado, plague and nuclear holocaust in there.
One film critic said that they wondered why the teenage son was even in the movie. I was thinking about it as I watched, and came to the decision that they were trying to pander to their target audience, teens. But I was in a group that included two teens and they both said that they thought it was corny and a cheap trick that the son survived. Also, both of them couldn’t figure out why he “had to see” the battle. Guess they dropped the ball on that one. Any thoughts?
[This message has been edited by NewsBys (edited July 11, 2005).]
Posted by wbriggs (Member # 2267) on :
I think the teenage son should have been better developed, but not removed from the movie (unless he got killed early on). He showed the result of crappy fathering; he showed how crappy the father was in regard to Rachel, too (by doing some things to calm her down while Dad was too freaked); he also showed the ignorance of youth, driving the car into a city rather than thinking, no way am I going in there. But I didn't understand him as well. Even if I were bent on fighting back, I wouldn't try joining the National Guard during a battle.
Posted by NewsBys (Member # 1950) on :
I forgot to mention that I really liked the movie. Lots of suspense and intense visuals. The flaming train part was really spooky.
