# 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:** 9
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2005, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/161 "2005-07-04T17:33:40Z")
> [@watsonwil](#): > > Hell, I think I am the only person in the world who thought Star Trek 5 was a fine film. And with that one sentance, your credibility for critiquing movies evaporates. ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2005, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/162 "2005-07-04T20:35:16Z")
One little nit pick I have of the film is about the clothes. While that was a cool image it did make me wonder if people in Jersey just don’t wear underware. ---
**Author:** ![BlackKnight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eb8c5e/32.png) [@BlackKnight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlackKnight)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2005, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/163 "2005-07-05T03:15:42Z")
> [@Stephe96](#): > > I’ve seen plenty of footage of idiots standing around watching monster waves just before they are all swept out to sea. And how 'bout all the New Yorkers who simply stopped and stared up at the WTC in flames (when for all anyone knew the country was under attack), and then ran like crazy when they started collapsing? How many of these people were less than a yard away from the wave / WTC? People of course will try to watch from a distance. But when the tripod was coming out of the ground, people were less than two feet away from a growing hole in the middle of the street! ---
**Author:** ![middleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9a140/32.png) [@middleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/middleman)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2005, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/164 "2005-07-05T13:18:34Z")
> [@RikWriter](#): > > Umm…yes, you are. 😃 > [@msmith537](#): > > And with that one sentance, your credibility for critiquing movies evaporates. C’mon! When Spock says to Sybok, “My place is with the Captain”… a tear forms. My enjoyment of this film “runs deep. Share it with me!” ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2005, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/165 "2005-07-05T14:57:19Z")
> [@watsonwil](#): > > C’mon! When Spock says to Sybok, “My place is with the Captain”… a tear forms. I had many tears form while watching that movie. Unfortunately, they weren’t tears of appreciation, they were tears from mocking laughter. ---
**Author:** ![mack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mack)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2005, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/166 "2005-07-05T15:10:37Z")
> [@Zebra](#): > > What piece of metal? You’re not talking about the gun are you? When the crowd first came up to the hole in the street Ray (Cruise) picked up a piece of metal. Someone asked “Is it hot?” and Ray said “No. It’s freezing” or something to that effect. ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2005, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/167 "2005-07-05T15:13:36Z")
OH, I thought that was a chunk of asphalt that got ‘burned’ by the ‘lighting’. That’s why he was suprised it was cold and not hot. My guess is that he dropped it. ---
**Author:** ![Rashak\_Mani](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ea666f/32.png) [@Rashak\_Mani](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rashak_Mani)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2005, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/168 "2005-07-05T20:19:58Z")
Anyone else was kind of rooting for the son and daughter to get fried too ? They were SOOOO annoying ! The boy especially was deserving to get blasted… so pathetic. Take the kids out and I’d give the movie an 8 instead of 7 in the IMDB… Spielberg likes this sappy shit too much. Gets tiresome. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Bird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Little\_Bird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Bird)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2005, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/169 "2005-07-05T21:15:43Z")
> [@FatBaldGuy](#): > > Generally, the movie reminded me a lot of _Independence Day_, but instead of the best and the brightest trying to figure out how to take out these invaders we have the Army with a few tanks & guns and everybody else panics. > > And don’t even get me started about the lame cop-out ending. You’d think that an advanced civilization that has spent thousands or millions of years plotting how to take over a planet would analyze **all** of the indigenous life forms, and not just the humans. _Urk_ _blink_ _blink_ _twitch_ You do realize that this movie was based on a book. And that _Independence Day_ was also loosely based on the same book? Remember how they use a virus to kill the aliens at the end…? > [@nivlac](#): > > I agree. How does it make sense that people are just standing around when a monstrosity comes out of the ground? Remember the tsunami at Christmas? How many stories did you hear about people just walking out into the low tide to get a better look? I know I saw a few vacation videos taken of the tsunami on the news. The audio was less like “Crap! Run Run!” and more like “Dang, would you look at that? Let’s move in for a better look.” People are naturally curious, when presented with a weird occurance in broad daylight they’re likely to stand around and look at it. Upon further reading, I notice **RickJay** and **Stephe96** have already said what I said. Well phooy, it deserves repeating. ---
**Author:** ![Catcher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9a140/32.png) [@Catcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catcher)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2005, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/170 "2005-07-05T22:27:06Z")
I had high hopes for this movie. The movie met them very well–up until the ending. The great setup and suspense and carnage and mystery kept me breath-bated for some spectacular finish with surprises and revelations about the TRUE reason why the aliens even attacked in the first place and their relationship to humans and why they need our blood and all that good stuff. But, all I got was the seriously lame “They got sick and died. The end.” I think these occasions call for those deviations from the source material purists hate so much. One more thing. I don’t understand why the aliens couldn’t have just taken over the planet a million years ago when they were burying their machines. They were here already and there was nothing to challenge them. Why wait for humans to show up at all? Just to kill them with million-year-old technology and hear them scream? They couldn’t be that sadistic. ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2005, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/171 "2005-07-06T00:32:15Z")
> [@Catcher](#): > > I had high hopes for this movie. The movie met them very well–up until the ending. The great setup and suspense and carnage and mystery kept me breath-bated for some spectacular finish with surprises and revelations about the TRUE reason why the aliens even attacked in the first place and their relationship to humans and why they need our blood and all that good stuff. > > But, all I got was the seriously lame “They got sick and died. The end.” I think these occasions call for those deviations from the source material purists hate so much. > > One more thing. I don’t understand why the aliens couldn’t have just taken over the planet a million years ago when they were burying their machines. They were here already and there was nothing to challenge them. Why wait for humans to show up at all? Just to kill them with million-year-old technology and hear them scream? They couldn’t be that sadistic. First of all, there was no official declaration they had been there for a million years…that was just a couple people speculating. Second…think about it this way. You see a habitable planet a few light years away. Not unique by any means, but handy. Right now, you aren’t ready nor do you need to colonize it but it’s there and your species thinks long term. So you send out some cheap-to-make (for you) tripods and bury them in the ground, just in case you want to move in sometime in the future. Time passes, your planet gets overcrowded or gets too polluted to live on or something. You could just live in space, but perhaps there are psychological reasons why that’s not acceptable. So you zap some pilots into those handy tripods and get to work. OR Perhaps they simply wanted to wait until we had mined all the useful material, or a good portion of it, in the world, so it would be easier to steal from us after they killed us. ---
**Author:** ![Baine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Baine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baine)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2005, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/172 "2005-07-06T01:22:35Z")
Maybe when the tripods were first designed, the aliens had not yet figured out a way to send a living creature through space, so they sent the tripods alone which would bury themselves. Then, when technology had advanced enough the aliens could send themselves through space to pilot the tripods. ---
**Author:** ![Catcher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9a140/32.png) [@Catcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catcher)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2005, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/173 "2005-07-06T01:24:19Z")
> [@RikWriter](#): > > First of all, there was no official declaration they had been there for a million years…that was just a couple people speculating. It’ll be really cool if someone has an alternate theory about where the tripods came from. Maybe I’ll rest more at ease. > [@](#): > > Second…think about it this way. You see a habitable planet a few light years away. Not unique by any means, but handy. Right now, you aren’t ready nor do you need to colonize it but it’s there and your species thinks long term. So you send out some cheap-to-make (for you) tripods and bury them in the ground, just in case you want to move in sometime in the future. > Time passes, your planet gets overcrowded or gets too polluted to live on or something. You could just live in space, but perhaps there are psychological reasons why that’s not acceptable. So you zap some pilots into those handy tripods and get to work. I imagine a hospitable planet would indeed be something very unique and should be top priority for an advanced civilization. If they were thinking long-term, they should have dispatched fully equipped settlers as quickly as possible to stake their claim before intelligent life develops, or another civilization somewhere finds it. A few cheap tripods do not seem adequate to guard such a valuable discovery. They can save a whole lot of trouble by just coming here early and avoid the whole surveillance and plotting. Whether the aliens need to colonize immediately or not, it would be far easier, safer, and cheaper to do it now than later. > [@](#): > > Perhaps they simply wanted to wait until we had mined all the useful material, or a good portion of it, in the world, so it would be easier to steal from us after they killed us. But at the same time, the native species would be depleting other valuable, non-renewable resources whlie they wait. And mining does not seem like an important factor at all when deciding when to take over a planet. It should be cake for them to dig stuff up if they’ve mastered space travel and death rays. ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2005, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/174 "2005-07-06T02:38:00Z")
The thing is that we can’t understand them. We can’t talk, we can’t read their writing. We have no idea WTF is going on here. So how are you going to have any explaination as to the whys and hows of what the aliens were doing? You can’t. You just can’t. It’s like a tornado that destroys your next door neighbors house and they only problem with your house is that your neighbors stuff is all over your yard. ---
**Author:** ![meara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@meara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/meara)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2005, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/175 "2005-07-06T03:41:57Z")
> [@Catcher](#): > > One more thing. I don’t understand why the aliens couldn’t have just taken over the planet a million years ago when they were burying their machines. They were here already and there was nothing to challenge them. Why wait for humans to show up at all? Just to kill them with million-year-old technology and hear them scream? Think of it like any other construction project. They got the go-ahead, tore up the planet, planted all the machines, and then got caught up in a million years of budget freezes, zoning hearings and other assorted red tape. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2005, 11:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/176 "2005-07-06T11:26:09Z")
> [@Catcher](#): > > I imagine a hospitable planet would indeed be something very unique and should be top priority for an advanced civilization. And you know this HOW exactly? You should contact NASA since they would kill to have that sort of certainty… :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![ExTank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2005, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/177 "2005-07-06T11:58:38Z")
This was slightly hit-or-miss with me. The bad bits have been nailed by \*_BlackKnight_ well enough for me. Dakota Fanning’s screaming was a bity annoying, but what would you expect a 10 y/o girl to do in such circumstances? Actually, if she went fugue, or into total denial (and sang and acted happy), _that_ would’ve been creepy. I took the “They’ve been here for millions of years” as the hyperbolic ravings of a mentally unstable ignoramus. How the son survived a firestorm that engulfed an entire battalion is beyond me. The birds and the tripods: at the ferry scene, when Rachael sees the birds flocking towards the tripods, I assumed some form of “strong electromagnetic field” emanating from their shields, or other machinery, screwing with the bird’s homing instincts. Disturbing (in a good way!) bits: Mob violence, As Ray flees the first tripod, the close-up of the woman vaporizing, Great Flaming Train o’ Death, War Tubas of the Gods (I thought it was part of the soundtrack at first), Creeping Red vines; I was thinking “arteries” As far as why the “sick” tripod’s shields were down: sick and delirious alien driver accidentally hits the “SHIELDS” button, either believing it’s a Vicks Formula 44D dispenser (alien equivalent thereof), or mistakenly thinking in it’s fever-haze that he’s actually turning the shield “ON.” As far as why the aliens got sick and died in the first place: in recorded human history, brilliant military strategists have been brought down by bigger details than “microbial infections.” Just because the aliens are technologically advanced doesn’t make their IQ any higher than ours, and the smallest of details can easily be overlooked. ---
**Author:** ![TwoTrouts](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a9adbd/32.png) [@TwoTrouts](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TwoTrouts)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2005, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/178 "2005-07-06T13:15:47Z")
> [@ExTank](#): > > As far as why the aliens got sick and died in the first place: in recorded human history, brilliant military strategists have been brought down by bigger details than “microbial infections.” Just because the aliens are technologically advanced doesn’t make their IQ any higher than ours, and the smallest of details can easily be overlooked. I like this ending. It was a very powerful way to end H.G. Wells’ story, quite original for its time. This invasion was the last desperate act of an alien race whose planet was dying. They had taken as many precautions as they could, maybe even developing immunization for the plethora of diseases that plague man. Yet, because their biology was so different, it may be that another form of disease got them – maybe it _was_ the birds after all. ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Scrappy\_Hero\_Pup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ea5d25/32.png) [@Happy\_Scrappy\_Hero\_Pup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Scrappy_Hero_Pup)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2005, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/179 "2005-07-06T14:01:37Z")
Re: Tripods and pilots: Wherever they are from is so far away that the pilots would age and die before they got there. So they fired the tripods conventionally, then, once they hit, the pilots came at the speed of light, which was still long enough for human civilization to have developed. Cuz it’s far, ya know. ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2005, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990/180 "2005-07-06T14:57:40Z")
> [@Larry Mudd](#): > > It’s extremely _invasive_, and chokes out all native flora as it quickly and easily takes over the landscape. Then it just as quickly dies off. Sort of like Wal-Mart … [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-thread-contains-spoilers/309990.md?page=10)