The only good thing about the film is the way it portrayed the total and utter chaos an alien invasion would cause.
I didn’t mind this movie at all except for the last three minutes. The ending didn’t spoil the movie but it could have been better.
SPOILER
I had a problem with the in-laws house was intact and they were standing there in cardigans when every other house was blown to bits. How did they make it to Boston with nothing happening to them? How did the son get back there? The movie almost seemed to take place in a span of a few days.
Terrible ending.
I liked the movie, except for Dakota Fanning’s incessant screaming. It’s “chic” to bash it, but I found it very entertaining.
I’m reading the book at the moment and I’m honestly not getting that impression - Wells was a Victorian Englishman - phrases like ‘God’s Earth’ were just the common idioms of the day. Furthemore, the curate is portrayed as mentally unbalanced and deluded about the Martians - he doesn’t try to befriend them - he rants about it being judgment day.
H.G. Wells. Orson Welles.
Tom Cruise is actually a good actor when he’s used right, but he’s not who I’d cast for an Everyman role. I would have cast John C. Reilly. (And written a better script. Spielberg is a director who can really nail a given scene, but – I think – doesn’t know when a screenplay has problems. And he keeps using that crappy John Williams music.)
Actually, there have been at least four movies - there were a couple of low-budget releases around about the same time as the Spielberg one - both of them tried to be book-faithful in their own way, and apparently both failed miserably.
I wasn’t bothered by her screaming - that, combined with her excellent “panic face”, convinced me that she was losing her grip on things. Her portrayal, amongst all the other actors, was the most human.
She carried the movie, IMO.
I liked it, and I liked the ending. I’m sure I read the book when I was 10 or so, but I was completely taken by surprise by the way the aliens died. I thought it was a much more interesting idea than how Independence Day ended.
Incessant children’s screaming is a Spielberg trademark! Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Jurassic Park, E.T., Empire of the Sun, Hook…hell, he even managed to slip a screaming kid into Saving Private Ryan.
And I agree with you that it is an incredibly annoying directoral tic.
OK, I confess. :o
I haven’t read the book :eek: , but was relying on the UK film… :smack:
Oh dear. How can I put this. Comparing ID4 with Spielberg’s WOTW is kinda like comparing, oh I don’t know, Gilligan’s Island with Jaws.
Like it or not, WOTW was a very daring, artistic, compelling, atmospherey hand-to-mouth story set against some really stunning visuals. And the visual scenes worked because of the strong emotional context they conveyed.
ID4 was, um, a really, really, REALLY dumb, mindless, pointless, live action cartoon. Elements such as a believable plot, realistic characters, hell even basic accurate physics were all just hindrances in getting to show the special effects. It was a theatrically released video game. Even as action movies go, ID4 was garbage.
I don’t know any other way to say it, but if you could ignore all the flaws of Independence Day long enough to be entertained by it, well, Spielberg’s WOTW was definitely not going to be your cup of tea… 
I read the book a couple times… the last time about a year before the Spielberg movie came out. I actually thought David Koepp did a fine job of updating the classic story. My big issues were the opposite of the OPs. I usually like to see seemingly unimportant character development if handled well. And Spielberg usually handles that nicely. I mostly agree with Baldwin, that he doesn’t pay much attention to plot problems. I was a little disconcerted when I read that they’d be making this movie in under a years time. I it just doesn’t seem like enough time to really iron out all the wrinkles and develop a sound screenplay. Considering that, I thought about 70% of the movie worked for me, and was incredibly impressed with the VFX and overall mood. I feel silly complaining about the science in a movie, but with the original story being so old, it does make it somewhat easier to forgive. Such as they way the aliens met their demise. How could they be so foolish? Also, explanation given for how they arrived on earth. I LOVED the scene where the tripod first breaks out of the street, the vaporizing, and the bewilderment on Tom’s face when he comes home to get the kids. I felt Steven was on the right track by not going ‘Zemekis’ on us and showing the media, military and the rest of the world was doing. It was all from the vantage of Ray. There was some stirring imagery as well, and who doesn’t love a good tale of everyday joe thrust in unimaginable circumstances. You can’t help but think as to how you’d react in that situation, and the movie succeeds there.
The Farmhouse scene and the rest of the movie from that point almost drops off into lames-ville but it never completely ruined the movie for me. I’m a sucker for advanced aliens. In the original story, He was trying to back to his wife who happened to be in another town, removed from most of the attack. He didn’t have any children with him, often got swept up into the general movement of the refugees, and entangled with dubious characters.
Of course the book goes into more detail on the aliens themselves. Especially when the main character (I don’t believe we ever were told his name: all 1st person) is holed up with the guy who went nuts at the farmhouse. If I remember correctly, they were holed up there for weeks on end, and the one guy really started to lose it. I wish that angle was better portrayed in the movie, because in the story, it fit well and was very claustrophobic. Also, the aliens in the story were not humanoid. A mistake this film took, although he did keep their three legs.
The VERY ending of the movie was a forced reunion, and yes, in the story, his wife does indeed miss most of the attack, but he didn’t have a son that ran off to apparent suicide, only to come back in the last frame practically sipping hot cocoa and eating chocolate chip cookies.
Can you say any of this about ID4? No. I don’t think so. Was ID4 based on a science fiction classic? No, it was more of a parody. Will Spielberg’s version be the end-all be-all of alien invasion flicks? No. Not even close. In fact, I do hope someone does come by to re-tell the tale again, only this time, get everything ironed out.
As an aside, the scene in the farmhouse, where the aliens come down to explore… they gaze on the bicycle wheel almost if thinking: WHEELS! Why the hell didn’t WE think of that?!
Although they used a nuke to destroy the mothership in Independence Day, didn’t they also upload a computer virus to help them too? I took this as a nod to the original ending…
Something like that; it was more like a denial-of-service attack - something designed to occupy all of their processing capacity. A common criticism of the movie runs along the lines that it’s amazing the alien systems were Windows-compatible, but it’s a false criticism - it’s pretty much explained in the movie - the tech guy has already deciphered their communication protocol and inferred something about the way their systems work.
You’ll remember that in the book, Wells mentions that the Martians don’t seem to have invented the wheel (or the pivoting pin joint)–their stuff uses sliding plates for moving parts.
Like you, I was impressed at how faithful to Wells the movie was, and to the self-imposed restriction of only showing what Ray saw.
I would’ve killed the boy, though; his reappearance is the biggest eyerolling moment of the movie.
I rather liked that one. It was almost all character because the budget didn’t allow much effects. I’m thankful Howell has grown into a pretty good actor.
Plus it had gratuitous nudity and a girl who said the Martian ships “smell like ass.” Who could ask for more?
Thats my third. I am not familiar with another one.
Does any one think Martians could escape Microsoft?
The original movie was the best. it took time developing and didnt just jump into special effects.
Your summation expresses my thoughts exactly, cmyk. The strength of this story is not in the aliens or our organized response. It’s about one ordinary man’s reaction to the unthinkable and how he survives. It is essentially a refugee and panic story. This movie did a good job of recognizing that strength and sticking to it.
In previous threads on this subject, the scene where folks stand around like knuckleheads while watching the earth crack open is hotly debated. Some feel that people wouldn’t do such a stupid thing, but ISTR folks like firemen posting and saying yes indeed, the average person is a dumbkopf and would react to such a situation exactly as depicted. The writer of the book was just as wise; his characters stood about gaping as the Martians mowed 'em down around their crater. The folks in the nearby town, wondering why the crater tourists hadn’t returned, sent another bunch of folks to see why, and the next batch were rotisseried in their turn.
I’ll have to read the book again. At the end, the tripod which stands stock still, “ululating” as it dies, always gives me the chills, as does the prolonged, claustraphobic farmhouse scene.
MacOS, not Windows. Apple pays a great deal of money for product placement, so you should at least acknowledge that it was a PowerBook in the movie. 
As far as WOTW goes, it was a dreadful movie. There was nothing artistic about it at all. The special effects were amazing, no doubt, but the plot was dreadful, the acting was pitiful and the whole thing failed on virtually every level. Wait, the advanced aliens have been here for hundreds of years and yet don’t know that there are harmful bacteria here? NASA is wiser than that with their remote spacecraft! Their biology is similar enough to ours that they can use us as food for their blood-vines (on which, presumably, they feed), but they don’t know basic immunology? What’s with the alternating hysterical screaming and catatonia? They ignore virtually every other aspect of realistic reactions but throw that one in there to show us… what, exactly? That the acoustics in your local theatre aren’t properly designed for relentless piercing screams? Was anyone in that moving remotely sympathetic? Maybe the ex-wife, but she didn’t have much of a role.
A really crappy movie.
I wouldn’t say it’s completely devoid of worth. I think the imagery was great and it was well shot. I found the disaster sequences that comprised the bulk of the film to be engaging. Once it became a Tom Cruise action movie my interest dropped off.
Certainly better than Independence Day which gave away the stuff worth watching in the trailer.