and why are you assuming that a mothership had to be in orbit to beam them down? they rode on lightning bolts, which is basically light, which could come from millions of light years away…

the whole point of making it into a movie was to make money.

who gives a damn if the plot makes sence, it wasnt suppose to, it was to see if people would fall for it even as rediculus as the radio dipicted….and lots of people did. Just like you clowns fell for paying for the movie ticket

Then the movie would devolve into an ID4 remake, as its kinda difficult to hide ships, capsules, vehicles, etc, coming from the sky. The military woulda been aware, and mankind would have had warning time to hunker down and prepare for an assault. And as anyone who has seen CNN in the past two years
knows, a prepared and entrenched enemy makes a much fircer opponent. Just imagine for a minute the remnants of the world population becoming a global guerilla army , a la Viet Cong.Not even aliens would have an easy time against mankind in that scenario, and of course, we all know how effective brute technology is against a guerilla insurgency……….

1. Buried alien ships? Why? Why not just arrive and take over?
2. Humanity never dug them up? They were buried close to the surface. Erosion would have exposed a few, especially after thousands of years.
3. Coming down in lightning bolts? No one detected the approach of a mother ship into Earth orbit? Come on!
4. The time lag between ship arrival and alien arrival was such that their culture would have significantly changed in the interim.
5. No microbial filters on the ships? The aliens were stupid enough to lack bio-precautions and so desired to die (Darwin Award candidates-all of them).
6. Alien shields . . .Oy. They would either have had to form a bubble, preventing the tripods from walking (they’d roll instead), or fading in strength as they reached the ground where high power weapons would have destroyed the tripod legs.
7. Alien Power systems- that much power immediately available and yet undetected and requiring no recharge after thousands of years and able to expend unlimited energy in zapping people and things continually? (I shake my head in disbelief.)

I’ll stick with the George Pal version of the movie. Much more believable and entertaining.

jk3

What I loved: the tripod call scared the heck out of me, totally unexpected and a master stroke! Also liked that the tripod machines were mechanical (not perfect alien craft), they belched smoke, dropped oil, and were connected to the ground by their legs which made them very scary (Cruise peering around the building to see the tripod walk by was chilling, how would you feel if you saw this?); liked that the end of the movie was true to the book. Also very disturbing was the collective screaming of people in the river, and then the collective cry of humans as the tripods emerged over the hill, very scary to me and a Spielberg special.
Disappointments: The son lived (thought he was a totally unnecessary character anyway); Tim Robbins unnecessary character too (the basment scene could have been just as suspensful, or even more so, without his character’s annoying presence). Just Cruise & Fanning had nice chemistry, we could just have followed them thru the film.

Enough said!

Saw the movie, then read the book again. I must say that Spielberg did a pretty good (not fantastic) job of following a book that was published in 1898, bringing said book into the 21st century and compressing all that into a movie that doesn’t require you to sit down for six hours. I know a LOT of people have detailed their gripes but here my takes.

1) buried underground machines. Lets say they really used nano tech micro machines, they were assembled in about 15 minutes. That’s about the only way to make this work. I could come up with a scenerio where the first lighting blast made a cavern where the ‘pilot pods’ assembled, disembarked and with a wave of their high tech wands had super fast robots build their death machines. They climb aboard and off to the races. Spielberg should have nixed that stupid line about ‘a million years’ stuff before he even $%@% filmed it. You don’t send things a million years ahead of yourself because in that time your own technology curve will have passed those things up. It would be like the Romans burying chariots all over Europe and then the 21st century Italians being told to go dig up the war machines and conquer Europe with them. Maybe Spielberg got really drunk one night and decided to fuse another H.G. Wells book into the movie (The Time Machine).

2) why tripods? Because they are as alien as you can get to this planet. Wells knew this, he was a well schooled biologist for his day. For this I give Spielberg a big thumbs up because they are very very close to the books description of them, right up to the baskets of human goodies for a midnight snack. The tripods in this film are much better then George Pals version.

3) the look of the aliens. Well, the book has them looking like a land based octopus; blubbery, weak, panting and barely able to move. Not very intimidating. The George Pal aliens were pathetic. Spielbergs critters are alien enough to stay true to the feeling they must have had on 19th century readers when the book came out.

4) death rays. They do a pretty good job of making you feel naked and helpless against such technology, much like an invisible soundless ‘heat ray’ did to the 19th century readers. I agree with many here, leaving the clothes behind is shades of ‘neutron bomb’ stuff. I think he just liked the visual effect and said bobs your uncle to the critics.

5) character compression. I’m a little peeved that Spielberg decided to combine three characters into Tim Robbins part, thats a little much even for an accomplished actor like Robbins. For those who haven’t read the book I think he was playing the Currate, Artilleryman and by nature of his name Ogilvy the astronomer.I see this happening more and more in Hollywood, fewer actors means fewer fingers in the aftermarket pie.

That’s about enough ranting for now. I do think there is room for a WOTW2 where we take apart their machines, analyze the technology and invade THEIR planets for a nice dose of ‘it’s payback time boys’.

They probably resembled the tripods because they built them in their own likeness. The only example I can think of, is that whenever you see a giant man-made robots/machines/mechs/whatever in a movie, they almost always have two legs, and two arms, probably because we’re inclined to create things in our own likeness.

The only thing that really bothered me about the movie, was the fact that Spielberg decided to show us what the aliens looked like. I know it was in the book, but after seeing them, the tripods really didn’t seem as threatening. It was the anonymity of the things that made them frightening.

Moving away from the arguments now, here’s my take on the movie. When I went to see it, I had not read the book, after seeing it, I immediately started reading, and, after reading it, I saw the movie again with my new understanding of the story. First off, there are two major differences between the book and the movie:

1. In the book, it was common knowledge that the aliens were in fact from Mars. In Spielberg’s adaptation, any connection with Mars has been removed, which is a good thing in my mind, sure, in 1898, the idea of life on Mars was new, and intruiging, but today, the idea of Martian life has become so cliched, with all the 50′s B-movies, little green men, etc. that the film just wouldn’t have had the same effect.

2. The movie is not set in 18th century England. Again, definitely a good thing, having it in our time and in a familiar location means it hits that much closer to home.

Apart from the few logic errors, I thoroughly enjoyed myself (Both times). The CG is amazing, the sound is excellent (I’ll never forget the sound that first tripod made, got goosebumps all over.) I recommend the film to everyone. (Except someone who would pay good money to see something like “Deuce Bigolo”, or pretty much anything with Vince Vaughn or Rob Schneider…Fabre, I’m looking in your direction.)

Go see the movie, and most of all, remember, it’s just a movie!

P.S. I’m not a scientist, nor am I a microbiologist, if the “Only in human blood” thing is impossible, then just disregard it, like I said, I’m no expert.