Hatrack River Writers Workshop   
my profile login | search | faq | forum home

  next oldest topic   next newest topic
» Hatrack River Writers Workshop » Forums » Open Discussions About Writing » War of the Worlds (spoilers)

   
Author Topic: War of the Worlds (spoilers)
wbriggs
Member
Member # 2267

 - posted      Profile for wbriggs   Email wbriggs         Edit/Delete Post 
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.


Posts: 2830 | Registered: Dec 2004  | Report this post to a Moderator
Minister
Member
Member # 2213

 - posted      Profile for Minister   Email Minister         Edit/Delete Post 
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.
Posts: 491 | Registered: Oct 2004  | Report this post to a Moderator
Elan
Member
Member # 2442

 - posted      Profile for Elan           Edit/Delete Post 
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)
Posts: 2026 | Registered: Mar 2005  | Report this post to a Moderator
hopekeeper
Member
Member # 2701

 - posted      Profile for hopekeeper   Email hopekeeper         Edit/Delete Post 
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...
Posts: 73 | Registered: Jul 2005  | Report this post to a Moderator
EricJamesStone
Member
Member # 1681

 - posted      Profile for EricJamesStone   Email EricJamesStone         Edit/Delete Post 
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.
Posts: 1517 | Registered: Jul 2003  | Report this post to a Moderator
wbriggs
Member
Member # 2267

 - posted      Profile for wbriggs   Email wbriggs         Edit/Delete Post 
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).]


Posts: 2830 | Registered: Dec 2004  | Report this post to a Moderator
EricJamesStone
Member
Member # 1681

 - posted      Profile for EricJamesStone   Email EricJamesStone         Edit/Delete Post 
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.


Posts: 1517 | Registered: Jul 2003  | Report this post to a Moderator
Minister
Member
Member # 2213

 - posted      Profile for Minister   Email Minister         Edit/Delete Post 
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.
Posts: 491 | Registered: Oct 2004  | Report this post to a Moderator
wbriggs
Member
Member # 2267

 - posted      Profile for wbriggs   Email wbriggs         Edit/Delete Post 
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.


Posts: 2830 | Registered: Dec 2004  | Report this post to a Moderator
Jeraliey
Member
Member # 2147

 - posted      Profile for Jeraliey   Email Jeraliey         Edit/Delete Post 
I, for one, was amused at how quickly the Independence Day aliens managed to regroup. *Cough*

Ah, Spielberg.


Posts: 1041 | Registered: Aug 2004  | Report this post to a Moderator
hopekeeper
Member
Member # 2701

 - posted      Profile for hopekeeper   Email hopekeeper         Edit/Delete Post 
I think they were terraforming the planet... with the weeds... then again that might just be me.
Posts: 73 | Registered: Jul 2005  | Report this post to a Moderator
Troy
Member
Member # 2640

 - posted      Profile for Troy   Email Troy         Edit/Delete Post 
Dude this movie sucked SO baaaaad.

</pained voice>


Posts: 214 | Registered: Jun 2005  | Report this post to a Moderator
Spaceman
New Member
Member # 9240

 - posted      Profile for Spaceman           Edit/Delete Post 
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.
Posts: 2 | Registered: Aug 2010  | Report this post to a Moderator
Survivor
Member
Member # 213

 - posted      Profile for Survivor   Email Survivor         Edit/Delete Post 
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!"


Posts: 8322 | Registered: Aug 1999  | Report this post to a Moderator
EricJamesStone
Member
Member # 1681

 - posted      Profile for EricJamesStone   Email EricJamesStone         Edit/Delete Post 
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.
Posts: 1517 | Registered: Jul 2003  | Report this post to a Moderator
Survivor
Member
Member # 213

 - posted      Profile for Survivor   Email Survivor         Edit/Delete Post 
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.


Posts: 8322 | Registered: Aug 1999  | Report this post to a Moderator
Silver3
Member
Member # 2174

 - posted      Profile for Silver3   Email Silver3         Edit/Delete Post 
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.
Posts: 1075 | Registered: Sep 2004  | Report this post to a Moderator
iamfetch
Member
Member # 2684

 - posted      Profile for iamfetch   Email iamfetch         Edit/Delete Post 
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


Posts: 14 | Registered: Jun 2005  | Report this post to a Moderator
NewsBys
Member
Member # 1950

 - posted      Profile for NewsBys   Email NewsBys         Edit/Delete Post 
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).]


Posts: 579 | Registered: Mar 2004  | Report this post to a Moderator
wbriggs
Member
Member # 2267

 - posted      Profile for wbriggs   Email wbriggs         Edit/Delete Post 
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.
Posts: 2830 | Registered: Dec 2004  | Report this post to a Moderator
NewsBys
Member
Member # 1950

 - posted      Profile for NewsBys   Email NewsBys         Edit/Delete Post 
I forgot to mention that I really liked the movie. Lots of suspense and intense visuals. The flaming train part was really spooky.
Posts: 579 | Registered: Mar 2004  | Report this post to a Moderator
   

   Close Topic   Feature Topic   Move Topic   Delete Topic next oldest topic   next newest topic
 - Printer-friendly view of this topic
Hop To:


Contact Us | Hatrack River Home Page

Copyright © 2008 Hatrack River Enterprises Inc. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.


Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classic™ 6.7.2