War of the Worlds

IMHO the fact that the aliens all due to bacterial infection is pretty clear, especially with the zooming in on the bacteria on the leaf. But I do think it's not very plausible that an advanced race would not know about that possibility (it's actually not a possibility, but almost a certainty (in earth's history, whenever an isolated population was being discovered, diseases were transmitted with often catastrophic results)

Also, Dakota Fanning is the best child actor of her generation. She was very convincing in Hide and Seek, Man on fire & Taken.
 
Gliderboy said:
SPOILER READ ON IF YOU HAVE YET TO READ BOOK/SEE MOVIE!!!
I hope I'm not being to nit picky here, but how can you not like the ending? The Martians had no concept of bacteria, there wasn't any on Mars. How could we have any concept of the affects of an entirely different kingdom of life on another world. The book explains this ending very well in my opinion, but I will agree with you that the movies don't do a great job of it, especially this new special effects monster.
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It's exactly because we don't know what sort of conditions exist on other planets that we don't go around drinking the air, smelling the water and so on. Since the very beginning of our history in space, we've been careful to avoid unknown contamination of all kinds. It's further silly by the implication that the aliens had been studying the planet for millions of years, possibly visited it earlier, and still didn't know. Further concepts such as an alien race that evolved without lower life forms such as bacteria in its environment are in and of themselves somewhat unbelievable given a more fleshed out understanding of evolution than they might've had a hundred years ago. It just starts to break the suspension of disbelief on several levels for me, since it's such a critical point in the movie. The ending stuff about his son miraculously being alive and beating him to the house is pretty overly cheerful. It was retarded that his son left in the first place, and then there's no consequences for it.
 
i know it says bactiria in the book and everything but ive always just assumed it was things like the common cold that kills them in the end i mean how would u know about it till u caught it???? and by that time it would b to late and i know if it did happen they would more then likely have N.B.C equipment but that wouldnt serve the stoy much
 
Youngblood said:
i know it says bactiria in the book and everything but ive always just assumed it was things like the common cold that kills them in the end i mean how would u know about it till u caught it????
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I think I addressed all that in my previous post. It doesn't matter if it's a virus, bacteria or any other microorganism. They're all the same as far as this situation is concerned. I said an advanced race supposedly studying us for many years would have some idea about what's going on at least through observation.

Youngblood said:
and by that time it would b to late and i know if it did happen they would more then likely have N.B.C equipment but that wouldnt serve the stoy much
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If you can somehow travel interstellar distances, you should atleast have airtight ships and food supplies to last you more than a few days. As far as the story's concerned, the entire alien assault fleet being taken down by the common cold ranks up there with uploading a virus via your mac powerbook or being allergic to water and invading a planet covered by it.
 
I like the movie. Except for the end. My friend, who read the book, explained it to me. His son though, what an emo kid.
 
It's odd that people just plain don't understand the ending... what with the little girl explaining it at the start of the movie, Tom Cruise picking up the dead red weeds and saying they're sick and then, you know, the movie ending with the narration literally telling you what's going on. Spielberg is pretty far from subtle, people.

Just the fact that there are people out there who don't already know how War of the Worlds ends seems impossible to me, though -- it's just one of those fundamental things that you'd think everyone would have grown up knowing, and it's formed the basis for a zillion similar modern stories.

I'm personally glad they didn't try anything hip and new in terms of the ending -- I'm willing to bet that a different ending would have ended up recieving a lot more criticism.

The 'but the book is in London!' thing is kind of silly, too -- the movie clearly owes both its actual framing (one crazy guy instead of commenting on various aspects with different encounters) and its 'purpose' (as a commentary on how people react in such a situation) to the radio show, which was set in New Jersey. With all the blatant playing-of-9/11 that the movie did, New York was pretty much the only choice. Again, Steven Spielberg is not subtle.

Overall I really liked the movie. The thing I absolutely loved the most was the fact that they introduced Tom Cruise at the very start of the movie as some kind of incredibly exceptional giant crane operator... and it *never came up again*. That's either really, really clever or they just never cleaned up a draft of the movie where he captured a tripod.

Various issues:

* The 'tripods were underground all along' thing was pretty darned stupid. The martians put them there millions of years ago just in case someday humans evolved and made a civilization that could then be taken over in a war? Then the movie heavily implies that the war machines themselves are partially organic -- they have giant alien genetalia and they're full of orange blood... and they get sick and lose their shields. Bacteria didn't effect them when they were undeground for millions of years?

* Why didn't they ever call them martians? You could easily do that ironically without actually suggesting that they were from Mars (though there was a neat scene shift early on to imply this).

* Boston. Poor, poor Boston. My brother likes to point out that people in Boston are genuinely jealous that terrorists attacked New York instead of their city... and apparently the same goes for aliens. You imagine that Cruise is trying to placate his children by promising them that he'll take them to their mother in Boston... but no, it turns out that that's actually the plan. AND THEN IT WORKS! Apparently the aliens left Boston alone.

* The 'blowing up a tripod' scene was a waste -- for a movie that really really strives to have a very classic military-is-good message, it missed a huge opportunity to have the marine sacrafice himself to bring the grenades into the maw of the machine. Having the group that was unable to save anyone else suddenly magically able to pull Cruise out seemed awkward.

* The kid surviving made me really hate the ending the first time I watched it. I realize that this is literally how the book ends - with a paragraph where the narrator comments about how lucky it was that he didn't lose his wife while lots of other people lost their families... but it did not make for compelling drama. The fact that we get kind of drawn out shots to reveal that *all* the family (up to and including previously unseen grandparents) survived just seemed too sugary.

* Also, the whole 'aliens investigate the hole' scene. Aliens that play with bikes and look at family photos do not mesh properly with the idea that humans are to them what bacteria is to humans -- and why did they flatten whole cities at maximum speed only to spend some pretty slow minutes looking through Tom Cruises hole? They shouldn't have revealed them at all until the very end when they were sick - but I guess that'd make generic people even more confused instead of impressed.

* The reporter! Hey, here's the exposition van, complete with video footage to explain what's going on (plus a pretty generic slam on the modern media). Why were the airplanes still around to crash near New York the *next morning*, anyway? And while I know that EMP doesn't *actually* disable all electronics, that was certainly the implication of the movie... so why did we have people filming immediately after the alien attacks? Just for the sake of having that oh-so-arty shot where the guy drops the camera and we pan down to watch what's going on in its viewfinder?

I'm not sure what the problem with the son and the problem with Ogilvy that people in this thread seemed to have had was, though. The son wanting to join up with the troops is very much the only 'modern' message the movie had - that's how we all felt after the terrorist attacks, and this movies message was that it wasn't wrong. It doesn't jive well dramatically with the kid surviving, but maybe Spielberg really believes that. Ogilvy was kind of a waste in that they lost any sort of positive aspects to what he was saying... he was *just* a crazy lunatic with creepy overtones -- but the fact that Cruise has to kill him made for a good story.
 
the movie was bad. I expected the way too much. Firt part is alright though... just cause of the action and all those effects. And that's all.
 
What? There's no snakes on the plane in WOW? that's it, I'm not watching it. :) I haven't seen the movie yet but I am glad to hear they stuck to the book's ending. I always thought it was a rather neat way of saying, "the human race is completely helpless...they would have wiped us all off the face of the planet and we couldn't have done a single thing about it." Hearing that the tripods are in the ground seems really nonsensical to me? I'm guessing Spielberg really really wanted to avoid the cliche of his movie being compared to cheesy Mars invasion movies. However my take on it is: This is THE mars invasion movie...the book that started it all, why not take advantage of that? Oh well...still sounds good, I'll watch it when it comes out on DVD.
 
Oh, please... There wasn't a single moment in the movie when I didn't think it just started... The thing is, there was no character development. Even at the end of it, I still didn't know the name of the guy Tom Cruise played... Still, the FX were pretty nice (eye-candy all the way :) )... All in all, it just wasn't "up to par", as they say...
 
Ragnar said:
Even at the end of it, I still didn't know the name of the guy Tom Cruise played... Still, the FX were pretty nice (eye-candy all the way :) )... All in all, it just wasn't "up to par", as they say...
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I think that might have more to do with people seeing Tom Cruise rather than seeing a regular guy in his situation. When we hear a character name, it pretty much bounces off because all we have to know is that Tom Cruise is there. Again, I think it wasn't up to people's jacked up expectations, which is pretty sad. If you just watched it without any preview hype, nobody would be saying it "wasn't up to par."
 
Actually, in Romania, the movie's hype was almost non-existent... except for, like, a day or two before they aired it! I was comparing it to the old (1970-something) version of the movie...
And I don't really like Tom Cruise... I was just saying that, usually, after watching a guy escape from near-death sittuations or other impressing things like that, for about an hour or so, you'd think he'd had left an impression on you... You could at least catch his name :)...
Then again, that's just my oppinion...
 
Hehe, it's sort of funny because my War of the Worlds going group was complaining that we *did* know his name (the narrator in the book, like most of its characters, is nameless)..
 
Just saw it, and rather liked it. I was incredibly relieved that they didn't change the ending. I was certain they would, because it's just not a movie-type ending, and it's great to see I was wrong.

About the tripods-from-the-ground thing. One review I read mentioned that Spielberg has stated that the aliens are in some ways an allegory for terrorists in the movie (which I guess is the point of all that "is it terrorists?!" stuff at the start). So, in this context it makes sense for the tripods to come from the ground, because terrorists strike from within and all that (of course, that doesn't mesh too well with the rest of the movie, but ultimately, it doesn't affect it).

Other than that, another thing that really struck me as weird was Boston (basically for the reasons LOAF has already explained). But this also didn't hurt the movie. Heck, what with the ending being done right, there really wasn't much they could have done to hurt the movie.
 
It was an interesting movie, better than I expected.

The book suggests that the aliens either didn't had bacteria, or that it was eradicated long ago by their science, which make them disregard it as a threat.

It makes sense that the aliens didn't have food or supplies, because they went into their ships basically with their own bodies, as the scene in the van shows.

If they don't understand the concept of biological threat, they can't defend from it. It's a philosophical point. Mankind was unaware of the invading alien forces, and the aliens were unaware of the bacteria.
 
Delance said:
It was an interesting movie, better than I expected.

The book suggests that the aliens either didn't had bacteria, or that it was eradicated long ago by their science, which make them disregard it as a threat.

It makes sense that the aliens didn't have food or supplies, because they went into their ships basically with their own bodies, as the scene in the van shows.

If they don't understand the concept of biological threat, they can't defend from it. It's a philosophical point. Mankind was unaware of the invading alien forces, and the aliens were unaware of the bacteria.
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That doesn't change how you have to seriously suspend your disbelief to go for it. "Eradicating bacteria" doesn't make sense. Bacteria is an important part of life. If they did somehow evolve beyond it, then they'd have to so seriously evolve that no bacteria affected them, including Earth's. It's really weird that they were observing us for millions of years and didn't understand the concept. It's really weird that they were interstellar conquerers and didn't see bacteria on other planets. It's really weird that their ships weren't air tight (chemical/biological and other weapons would've worked on them then), and it's really weird that they had no other resources: all their forces were simultaneously subdued. Any of these individual factors on their own are easy to overlook, but they all bombard you at the end.. and then the son is miraculously alive!
 
Either way, Tom Cruise is still a putz (and continues to decline) and overall the movie was fair, not the best and nothing great about it. The ending though... it sucked lollipops in my most humble opinion.
 
I actually quite liked a few of Tom Cruise's recent movies. He's just really weird now that he's a huge spokesperson for that cult of his.
 
ChrisReid said:
That doesn't change how you have to seriously suspend your disbelief to go for it.
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It's an alien invasion movie with Tom Cruise. That comes with the territory. Be happy he didn't fight the aliens as the last samurai - remember they took some tripods down on Osaka.

ChrisReid said:
"Eradicating bacteria" doesn't make sense. Bacteria is an important part of life.
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Harmful ones. And yes it makes sense, or at least it did made more sense on the original book.

Since they planet became barren, the Martians probably had to live an underground life on artificial sealed environments. After a long time, they probably just got rid of all malign bacteria, virus and such. It time enough passes, they might even forget the concept. They had to invade Earth because they were in desperate need for natural resources, what means they had to consume them. And because mankind's technology was getting advanced too fast, they’d be somewhat unprepared. On the movie, this angle is lost and it makes less sense.

ChrisReid said:
If they did somehow evolve beyond it, then they'd have to so seriously evolve that no bacteria affected them, including Earth's. It's really weird that they were observing us for millions of years and didn't understand the concept.
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As the movie states, we were the bacteria for the aliens. So the aliens wouldn't mind about the bacteria of the bacteria. If the most powerful forces on Earth couldn't harm them, they shouldn't worry about anything else.

ChrisReid said:
It's really weird that they were interstellar conquerers and didn't see bacteria on other planets.
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We really don't know if they invade or even visit other planets. It’s also too much to assume that bacteria would be the same all around the universe.

ChrisReid said:
It's really weird that their ships weren't air tight (chemical/biological and other weapons would've worked on them then), and it's really weird that they had no other resources: all their forces were simultaneously subdued.
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It doesn't matter if the ships were air tight, because they came to earth with no resoruces but themselves, and the ships were already here. They had to use Earth's supplies to live, and that's where they lost. They didn't had other resources either because they couldn't or because they thought they didn't had to. Arrogance, again.

But that’s not all. Energy shields are not the most scientific of things, there’s no such thing even in theory, I think. Tripods are not the best way to produce walking vehicles. What’s the point of preparing to destroy mankind when there was no mankind to be destroyed? And what’s the point of the blood-plant thing? A lot of things on the movie don’t make much sense.
 
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