War of the Worlds (2005)

As there are more than one productions of the original "War of the worlds" book by H. G. Wells, its probably appropriate to associate the movie with the year of production :)

< Blooper_Warning> This blog discusses the storyline in the movie and may be considered by the curious ones as a blooper. (even though the original novel was 'pen'ed back in the 19th century)< /Blooper_Warning>.

I found the story to be fundamentally flawed. The storyline seems rather short and to make it last for 2 hrs, Spielberg has introduced a whole lot of supposedly emotional scenes (wonder if someone from Bollywood was involved ;)). Vast number of tripod like creatures (similar to the ones shown above) were burried underneath the ground millions of years ago. One fine day, lightning strikes and these tripods wake up and begin exterminating earthlings. The question is, how did Aliens know the structure, shape and composition of human beings so many years ago? Even to the extent of knowing that our blood can be used as some sort of fertilizer?? The ending to the movie couldn't have been more abrupt; our microscopic friends come to our rescue and that is the aliens collapse.

I liked the first 45-60 mins and found it to be quite chilling. But then the focus was turned on to Mr. Cruise, his two misbehaving kids and the budding emotional bondage between them. That is when I couldn't take it. And those kids, Oh-My-God!...couple of times during the movie, I felt like slapping them. The younger one screams for everything and the the elder one is very annoying.

The tripod in the image (isn't from the movie), aliens, etc can be seen in the movie but images aren't shown in any of the promos (trying to keep the 100+ yr old suspense I suppose)

A generous 2/5 for the movie. My 2 pence worth opinion is that Spielberg could have focussed on trying to explain the strategy of the aliens and the aliens themselves which was comparitively clearer in the "US is the savior of the world" movie (The Independence day).