# War of The Worlds (Thread contains SPOILERS!) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 27, 2005, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990 "2005-06-27T03:39:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![rexnervous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e9c0ed/32.png) [@rexnervous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rexnervous)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2005, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/101 "2005-07-02T00:51:28Z")
> [@Silentgoldfish](#): > > I’d say no. The only reason that it got a PG 13 is that most of the deaths are by disintegration and so there’s no blood. But it’s a really horrific movie, and I think I would have been shit scared had I seen it at that age. Agreed. This is one helluva an intense movie. 13, probably. 11, not likely. ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2005, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/102 "2005-07-02T01:59:32Z")
> [@Good Egg](#): > > I’ve been interested in going. My neices, ages 11 and 13 want to go. Would they be able to handle it? What are your neices like? What’s the scariest movie they’ve been able to handle? I doubt that it would have lasting trauma but it might give them some nightmares. Especially if you play the tuba or if you buy twizzlers for them. ---
**Author:** ![Tripler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripler/32/21807_2.png) [@Tripler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tripler)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2005, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/103 "2005-07-02T03:28:29Z")
> [@dogbutler](#): > > On Mars, gerbil stuffs _you_ Dude, don’t be a Communist. For the love of Og. . . Tripler I wouldn’t be hatin’, but I hate Commie pinkos. ---
**Author:** ![Bomzaway](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e480ec/32.png) [@Bomzaway](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bomzaway)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2005, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/104 "2005-07-02T04:13:15Z")
I thought I’d ask around about the EM pulse thing. Got my hand slapped for spoiling, but got some good answers too. > **[War of the Worlds and the EM Pulse](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=323563)** > > In new Spielberg film War of the Worlds (which ALL of you should go see BTW) a large “storm” creates an EMP and takes out all metro power, cars, even Tom Cruise’s watch stops running. However, a short while later someone is seen using a camcorder,... ---
**Author:** ![mack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mack)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2005, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/105 "2005-07-02T04:58:33Z")
I used my once a year theater-going trip to see this. As far as remakes go, I thought it was top notch. One thing I don’t get about these alien movies is that while the beings look really scary and evil I don’t see how their bodies reflect any kind of evolutionary advantage over ours. I guess that’s one of those Hollywood annoyances I was a little suspicious in the beginning when Ray went flying around the corner in his mustang. Cheesy, but that’s hollywood. The rebellious son thing got old real fast. Especially the yelling. When the machine first started cracking the street and buildings and made it’s appearance didn’t it occur to Ray that maybe he ought to go check on the kids? I mean this thing didn’t look like it was going to start making balloon animals. Maybe that was to reinforce the lousy father thing. There was a sort of a curveball in the very beginning because I thought when I saw Ray so skillfully handle the shipping container with the crane that it was a skill he would use later in the movie. The part from when they rolled into the little town until they went into Tim Robbin’s farmhouse was fantastic. The mob, the train, the ferry, the scene when they got out of the water and the machines were everywhere were all first rate. The machines hovering over the town is classic. I was bummed when I saw the machine slumped against the building in Boston. This is the end? Awwww. So I guess it must have been pretty good. The feeding sphincter was really creepy. Nice touch. What was _really_ cool was when I went outside after the movie and it was all gloomy and stormy. :eek: They showed a trailer for King Kong. It looks like fun but Kong looks kind of puny. More like Mighty Joe Young. ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2005, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/106 "2005-07-02T05:15:10Z")
I saw it tonight and was very impressed. Not sure what movie all the haters saw, but it wasn’t this one. Excellent acting by everyone but the kid who played Robbie, excellent effects, very creepy mood throughout the film. ---
**Author:** ![ouryL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ouryl/32/6067_2.png) [@ouryL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouryL)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2005, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/107 "2005-07-02T05:28:21Z")
> [@Archergal](#): > > We saw the movie at the 3:15 pm show yesterday. It didn’t suck, though emotionally it seemed overall to be a little hollow to me. But the aliens are pretty nifty, and it follows the original story better than the 1953 version did. > > I also think that the son surviving at the end of the movie was a sop to the happy-ending crowd > BTW, did anyone else notice > > that the grandparents at the end of the movie were Gene Barry and Ann Robinson, the stars of the 1953 version? > > BTW, the original novel by H.G. Wells is available online for free at Project Gutenberg, [here](http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/36). Didn’t you think Gene Barry was dead? ---
**Author:** ![ouryL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ouryl/32/6067_2.png) [@ouryL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouryL)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2005, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/108 "2005-07-02T05:31:43Z")
I thought the first half sucked. People were calm when they should have been running their asses off and people were hysterical to the point you wanna shoot them. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2005, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/109 "2005-07-02T05:52:32Z")
> [@Hodge](#): > > And of course, Cruise played his patented “cocky asshole who learns a life lesson and becomes a better father/brother/lawyer/pool player/fighter pilot in the end.” _Pssssst._ You left out bartender. ---
**Author:** ![ouryL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ouryl/32/6067_2.png) [@ouryL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouryL)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2005, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/110 "2005-07-02T06:05:53Z")
The end credits listed Sailor Moon rb, but I don’t recall seeing anything Sailor Moonish? Does any one remember anything? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![ouryL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ouryl/32/6067_2.png) [@ouryL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouryL)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2005, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/111 "2005-07-02T06:08:05Z")
and wasn’t that song Dakota sang from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2005, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/112 "2005-07-02T07:52:53Z")
**Moderator’s Note:** I’ve added a spoiler warning to the title of the thread, because I want to reply to several posts with spoilers in them, and juggling all the spoiler and quote tags is getting old. So, if you don’t want to read spoilers, you have roughly a minute before I hit the reply button again. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2005, 8:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/113 "2005-07-02T08:00:00Z")
I just got back from a late showing (starting at 12:40 A.M.), and driving home I definitely had a weird, slightly disoriented, post-apocalyptic feeling. Especially when there was a bit of a traffic jam on the highway leaving the movie theater… Regarding the ending (this contains a spoiler for the book, as well): In the book, IIRC the narrator doesn’t have any children, but he does have a wife, from whom he is separated and gives up for dead. At the end, he discovers she survived. So in a sense having the whole family survive (actually, did new husband/stepdad make it?) is being faithful to the novel. > [@rexnervous](#): > > Ok. Now a couple of questions that I had during the movie that I need help with: > > So the machines were buried millions of years ago, before there were humans. Yet the aliens need human - or at least mammalian - blood (although I’m assuming human blood; otherwise, why not attack when there were great herds of buffalo and such across North America?). Anyway, how on earth - no pun intended - would the aliens know that evolution was going to happen the way it did? Unless they happen to bury machines on every life-bearing planet they come across. > > So they need human blood. Why vaporize everyone in the beginning then? Seems a waste of viable fertilizer. Maybe they _don’t_ need human blood, or even mammalian blood; maybe they’re just using us to fertilize their terraformation vines (or I suppose that should be anti-terraformation) because, hey, they need fertilizer, and they also need to kill of the dominant species of the planet anyway. Might as well kill two birds with one stone. Of course, vaporizing us also works; it’s not like they probably invaded Earth because we are uniquely suited among all the creatures of the Universe to fertilize the red vines. > [@mack](#): > > One thing I don’t get about these alien movies is that while the beings look really scary and evil I don’t see how their bodies reflect any kind of evolutionary advantage over ours. I guess that’s one of those Hollywood annoyances Well, I don’t think the aliens bodies would necessarily reflect any “evolutionary advantage” over ours; they’d just be _different_. (Although they did seem to have the standard Hollywood Advanced Alien Really Big Heads. Being an OB/GYN on wherever they come from must be quite a challenge.) They have advanced _technology_; rather like us, presumably they long ago switched from slow old biological evolution to the much swifter cultural evolution. Naked humans can’t outrun cheetahs or outswim whales, but look who is driving whom to the brink of extinction (alas). > [@mack](#): > > There was a sort of a curveball in the very beginning because I thought when I saw Ray so skillfully handle the shipping container with the crane that it was a skill he would use later in the movie. As soon as I saw that scene, I took it for an interesting foreshadowing of the tripods, which, like Ray’s crane, are semi-robotic machines with a biological operator sitting up top making it go. (My sig line seems oddly…reassuring tonight.) ---
**Author:** ![Silentgoldfish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@Silentgoldfish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Silentgoldfish)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2005, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/114 "2005-07-02T11:13:25Z")
I really liked how the aliens had 3 legs, explaining why they invaded with Tripods. ---
**Author:** ![flamingbananas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f4b2a3/32.png) [@flamingbananas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flamingbananas)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2005, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/115 "2005-07-02T20:28:40Z")
This move was amazing. I thought Cruise acted really well and Fanning acted exactly how I prolly would have in that situation. The tripods were badass and just… wow. I’m hoping to see this again later today. ---
**Author:** ![Gangster\_Octopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a8b319/32.png) [@Gangster\_Octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gangster_Octopus)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2005, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/116 "2005-07-02T23:38:45Z")
One of my first thoughts after seeing this excelent movie was how much better this movie was in the hands of Spielberg than it would have been in the hands of a Jerry Bruckheimer or Michael Bay. ---
**Author:** ![Neidhart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Neidhart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neidhart)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2005, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/117 "2005-07-02T23:54:15Z")
> [@MEBuckner](#): > > (Although they did seem to have the standard Hollywood Advanced Alien Really Big Heads. Being an OB/GYN on wherever they come from must be quite a challenge.) They look like amphibians, so I suspect they hatch from eggs. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2005, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/118 "2005-07-03T01:24:41Z")
I admit one thing I didn’t like about the aliens is that They had three legs, but two eyes. Three eyes would have been cooler. ---
**Author:** ![BlackKnight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eb8c5e/32.png) [@BlackKnight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlackKnight)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2005, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/119 "2005-07-03T01:43:59Z")
I thought it was mostly crap. I’m surprised that it’s getting so many glowing reviews here. The special effects are decent (although not spectacular in this day and age), but the rest leaves much to be desired. First off, I don’t buy Tom Cruise as a blue collar worker. The movie would have been markedly better with a no-name Joe Shmoe as the lead. Especially if he was slightly overweight and didn’t look like a movie star. (I understand why they cast Cruise, of course.) Both children were annoying. What was the point of the conversation about the splinter in Dakota’s finger? I thought it was to show her as being tough for her age - except she spent the rest of the movie whining and screaming. And the son steals his dad’s car? I would have called the cops right away on the little bastard. Why the hell does he even _want_ these wretched spawn at his house? At least Dakota’s character wasn’t actively trying to get killed, like the son. What the hell was his problem? After he stole my car and gave me that kind of attitude, I would have let him run away with the army. Note to Hollywood: Not all teenage males are sullen, angsty pricks who act irrationally all the time and think they’re invincible. Really. Come to think of it, Tom could have saved countless lives just by rolling down his window as he drove past the damaged cars and yelling, “Check the solenoids!” (At least, I believe that’s the name of the part he told the mechanic to check. I don’t know car parts.) While it doesn’t take long for this knowledge to become obsolete, there were plenty of times in the beginning of the film for it to have been useful to _somebody_. Unsympathetic characters aside, there were too many implausable moments for me to take the film very seriously. For example, a plane crashes into your house, but your minivan not only survives completely intact, but doesn’t get a single flat tire driving over piles of broken glass and metal? (In my mind during the movie: “But it got a five-star safety rating!”) The heat rays looked cartoony and seemed remarkably inefficient. They only lasted for a second or two at a time, then stopped, then fired again. Why not a sustained barrage? Why not use poison gas? For that matter, why not just drop some bombs (or even very large rocks) from orbit onto all major cities? How the hell did these giant machines get buried underground and avoid detection for possibly thousands of years? Why are people standing around watching it come out of the ground instead of running? I fet no sympathy as the first wave were cut down. In my book, if there’s a gaping, growing hole in the middle of the street, you should go somewhere else immediately. The tripods, while realistic, didn’t impress me much. They just looked uninspired, artistically. Of course, we didn’t get many good close up shots of them, and when we did all we really saw were giant headlights. They were neither dark and graceful, nor lumbering and menacing. (Not to mention that when we first see a shield glow as it stops missiles, it clearly is not protecting the legs of the tripod. Later, a tripod appears to have its legs shielded, but that first time I couldn’t help but think, “Use your harpoons and tow-cables; go for the legs!”) Speaking of the shields, why do the shields go down? Sure, the controllers of the tripods get sick, but why would that make them lower their shields (or wonder in circles aimlessly)? Is there a thirty minute cool-down before they can use them again or something? Did they leave them on overnight and now the battery’s dead? Also, why doesn’t the snake-like sensor arm have a heat sensor? Or at least a microphone that doesn’t suck? It should have easily been able to detect the presense of Cruise, Dakota, and crazy shotgun guy. Heck, if it had even been able to _look down_ it would have found them easily behind the mirror. Alright, now that I’ve had my little rant, I’ll say what I liked about the movie. I liked the train. It was an unexpected bit of creepiness. I also liked how they lost the minivan. Very tense. I also like how somebody else paid for my ticket. ---
**Author:** ![athelas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5e9695/32.png) [@athelas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/athelas)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2005, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/120 "2005-07-03T01:55:41Z")
Loved it. See it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990.md?page=7)