War of the Worlds

I just saw War of the Worlds the other day on HBO. I never went to see it in the theaters, because I just can’t stand Tom Cruise these days.

Frankly, I’m glad I didn’t waste money for a rental either. This movie a complete and utter garbage. I really do not understand what do people see in it.

The tripods were cool, for about 5 minutes when they were dusting the whole town with the death rays. But as soon as they started grabbing people with the tentacle like appendages they became ridiculous. Could they be less efficient at harvesting people? You want to tell me that this gargantuan walker can only grab 1-2 people at a time, and is able to store only 10-20 people in tiny cages on it’s underbelly? WTF?

Why didn’t they mount the cages in a way that would allow them to drop victims without inserting them directly inside their hull? And why was the victim extraction shaft not shielded from the inside? Don’t the aliens have suicide bombers on their world?

I know that the “aliens killed by microbes” theme had to be implemented to be true to the original, but it just came out silly. The aliens came here millions of years ago, and buried the tripods planning the invasion. This means that they were technologically advanced way before we even emerged as a sentient race. How come they didn’t get infected then? And how did they fail to predict that some of our microbes can infect them?

For god’s sake, if you invade an alien planet, you really don’t want to run around naked until you throughly test the atmosphere for possible toxins, and infectious microbes. Unless of course you are on Star Trek.

They modernized all the other parts of the movie, so why not come up with some good explanation as to why did the three legged invaders get infected with the bird flu or whatnot.

All in all, Tom Cruise was more creepy than the tripods and the aliens combined. His character was not even likable. He came off as an asshole, and a horrible parent. Despite all the heroic stuff he did, I didn’t think he really grew as a character. Tom just failed to portray the transformation they were aiming for.

My final verdict is a total waste of time. If you have seen the tripods in the trailers, you should be able to understand all the pop culture references to them in other work. There is not much more explained about them in the movie. So there is just no reason to watch this garbage.

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[tags]war of the worlds, tom cruise, tripods, aliens, movies, reviews[/tags]