I personally was surprised, and pleased, at how closely the movie followed the book–and given that it was following the book, I was able to forgive any plot wonkiness
I would sure have liked to see a Thunder Child equivalent, though…
You’ve got to set alien invasion movies in the autumn; it’s the season of death and decay.
Kids pick up on things. It’s always been that way; nothing to do with media saturation or right-wing punditry. A ten y/o doesn’t have to sit and watch the news, or sit and listen to every word of an adult conversation to know that The Terrorists are Mean, Scary People who do Mean, Scary Things. In my day, the boogeymen were The Russians. We didn’t know how the USSR’s government was different from ours, or why they were at odds with us, we just knew, by osmosis, that they didn’t like us, and someday, someone might Push the Red Button.
Likewise, 10 y/os today don’t understand Al-Queda’s politics, but they have pieced together the bits of info that have filtered down to them. Rachel didn’t have to see the tripods to think “terrorist”; she just knew something was not right, and jumped to the conclusion that she had been conditioned towards. And if she did see the tripods before she said that, well, that wouldn’t be a reasonable assumption for an adult, but for someone who was six years old when planes flew into buildings and made them fall down, “terrorist” is the default assumption for anything scary, unexpected and inexplicable. The line was realistic, not agenda-driven.
Other than that, I don’t have much to add, except this: I wonder why Ogilvy’s line about extermination was changed to reference maggots instead of ants. Reason I say that is, the ferry scene made me think of an ant colony under attack. A bunch of tiny little creatures, scrambling for survival. Just like ants, some of them fell by the wayside before the exterminator even struck. And just like ants, if any were to survive, it would be by sheer luck.
I thought this movie was excellent even with its flaws and so I’m going to try and answer a few of Terrifel’s points.
*Terrifel
I was amazed at how convincing Tom Cruise was as a blue-collar, fortyish divorced father of two. Ha, ha! I kid, of course; he’s horribly miscast and distracting here.
I’m not sure where all this current Tom Cruise hatred is coming from (I am aware that he’s said some stupid things in an interview but not what they were)) and I’ve always liked him as an actor but I thought he did a perfectly fine job as an ordainary man caught up in incredibly weird events. I like the fact that on more than one occasion we see the main character running and hiding like a wuss with no over the top heroics (cowering under the table during the lightning storm for instance)
*Is the invasion of Earth not a compelling enough plot by itself? Must we also endure Tom Cruise’s personal journey from self-centered prick to slightly less self-centered prick? Would this movie have suffered greatly if Tom’s family were semi-functional to begin with? Of course, this would have required Tom Cruise to act in a compassionate, non-pricklike manner from the get-go, so I’m guessing the answer is “No.”
Spielberg stated that his intention was to create a film showing one ordainary families experience of an alien invasion and in that I think he succeeded admirably. OK so it was a family that was more than a bit dysfunctional but that leaves more to build around.
*“Hi! I’m a V-8 engine block. I don’t have any lines in this film, but watch for the scene in the Extended DVD Release where Tom Cruise quickly examines me and thereby intuits how to repair a vehicle damaged by Martian EMP.” The part of the V-8 engine block was played by Christopher Lee.
Now you’re just being pedantic, the engine block was to show that the Cruise character works on car engines as a sideline to his main job and how he knew that it might be the solenoid that may be the problem.
*Word on the street is that TiVO is really cool to have!
Ad placement in films is fucking annoying, definitely.
*In a disaster, people often exhibit strange behavior. This does not mean that all strange behavior is equally plausible. Inside a burning building, it makes sense that people are going to stampede headlong toward the exits, and it’s implausible that they will stand around oohing as the walls around them burst into flame. If people are outside a burning building and don’t percieve themselves to be in direct danger, it makes sense that they will stand around and gawk. If a forty foot tall battle tripod erupts from the street directly in front of them, I have to think that the ‘headlong stampede’ reflex is probably going to trump the ‘gawk’ reflex for most people.
Well as forty-foot tall battle robots erupting from the ground has never happened we don’t know what peoples reaction would be. Granted, when the Obvious Weapons of Doom began unfolding I’d have been off and around the corner as fast as my legs could carry me. I thought that whole episode was the best scene in the movie myself.
In weird circumstances people do weird things, in your burning building scenario it quite often occurs that people do wait around until its almost too late and then all stampede for the one exit (because in a panic people often automatically default to heading for the way they came in and not an obvious exit nearby)
*Did anyone else notice that when the tripod came out of the ground, it was making a vacuum cleaner noise? I’d guess it was an old-style Electrolux canister sweeper. Warning: This movie may be too intense for some housecats.
It was almost too intense for me but then I’ve never had a problem with suspending disbelief in order to enjoy a movie. As long as its well-made which WotW is.
*Going back to the “implausible behavior” element, I was impressed by the complete and total unflappability of the neighborhood mechanic in the face of alien invasion. “Oh, thanks for the helpful hint about the solenoid, Tom! She started right up! Say, did you notice that giant war tripod erupting from the street and vaporizing people a few minutes ago? What was that all about, eh? Say, I can’t let you take that truck, you crazy knuckleknob! Stop your fooling.” One could excuse this bizarre behavior (and all the rest of the acting in the movie, I guess) by chalking it up to emotional overload, but it looked more to me like the symptoms of Green Screen Ennui.
I thought that was a bit weird myself but explained it to myself that he was working inside his garage and didn’t hear or see the devastation and panicked people. Which is plausible if you’ve ever worked inside a mechanics garage.
*“Is it the terrorists?” Okay, this is where I officially began to invite this movie to bite me. Yes, Mr. Spielberg, I get it that you’re riffing on 9/11 tropes here, you’ve made that very clear already. However, I frankly doubt that even the most media-saturated ten-year old would look at a giant space tripod shooting death rays and assume terrorists were to blame. I can’t even imagine the most extreme right-wing pundits leaping to this conclusion. I recall somebody else in another thread pointing out that in most zombie movies, none of the characters has seemingly ever seen a zombie movie. This movie goes them one better, and proposes a parallel Earth without any science fiction at all, where “a terrorist attack” seems like the most intuitively plausible explanation for huge invading machines with laser beams.
The daughter and son didn’t see the tripods, all they may have been aware of was screaming and explosions with their dad arriving back in a state of shock. Why wouldn’t they have leaped to the conclusion that it was a terrorist attack?
*So, the Cruise family (I know they all called each other by name repeatedly, but I still don’t register the characters as anything but Tom Cruise, Evil Clark, and Drew Barrymore circa 1982) arrives at the ex’s house to find them already gone. Even though the power is still running, don’t waste time turning on the television set or radio to find out what’s going on! In affluent neighborhoods such as this one, there is always a newsvan parked on the road in the morning to provide fresh newsclips and play-by-play commentary on current events.
They’d already tried to get news on the car radio which didn’t work.
*In the event of total worldwide catastrophe, it’s reassuring to know that it will still be possible to drive from New York City to within comfortable walking distance of Boston without encountering any traffic blockages, as all motorists instinctively guide their vehicles to the road shoulder when EMP shuts down the power steering and brakes.
I found this hard to swallow as well.
*When herding evacuees onto a dangerously exposed ferryboat, always play the most nostalgically bittersweet music possible over the public address system. This creates a more relaxed, hope-free atmosphere for the refugees.
Going for the ferry or, Obvious Sitting Target, was a stupid thing for the characters to do in the first place.
*Tim Robbins: Why are you on the screen for so long? Are you trying to prove that you can act even more annoying and unappealing than Tom Cruise? Please stop. What is the point of your character, other than to play the chicken to Tom Cruise’s Hawkeye Pierce?
The scene in the basement dragged on for far too long but it did have a shockingly satisfying resolution when Cruise decides that he’ll have to be dealt with. Again, one of the best scenes in the movie.
*Note to aliens: when an Earth primate attacks your tripod with a handheld explosive powerful enough to activate your defensive shields, perhaps the best course of action is not to immediately mix him in with the captives that you’re bringing inside. Seeing as how you’ve also got those death rays and all. Just a thought. Boy, that was a lucky break for Tom, wasn’t it? All those nameless extras being disintegrated willy-nilly (while running away) throughout the entire film, yet Tom Cruise tosses a grenade at one of the tripods, all by his lonesome, and isn’t instantly obliterated. Obviously his fighting spirit impressed the aliens’ sense of Klingon honor.
Either that or the first wave of armed Battle Tripods was followed by second wave of unarmed Harvesting Tripods, they did seem to be much smaller after all.
**Note to Spielberg: So, you decided to crib the ‘alien death scene’ from the George Pal film, complete with drooping three-fingered hand. That’s fine, go for it. One little suggestion, though: this scene might have had just a tiny bit more dramatic impact if you hadn’t already given us a good, long look at the aliens about twenty minutes ago! If I recall the earlier movie correctly, the death scene was the first and only time we actually saw the invaders in the flesh, which is what made it such a powerful moment, which is probably what inspired you to repeat it in your film. Why, then, did you completely undercut it by having CGI aliens frolicking about in the basement earlier, especially when that scene immediately followed *another basement chase with the tentacle, and was therefore completely pointless and redundant? Was this scene added in post-production after audiences at test screenings in Obviousville, MI expressed disappointment at not seeing a prolonged scene with actual big-eyed aliens?
The aliens were weak and we’d have been better off not seeing them at all. The quick glimpse of something weird in George Pal’s version was a lot creepier than Speilbergs use of them.
*Oh, wow. After that gut-wrenching, emotionally gripping farewell on the hilltop,
Evil Clark survived after all! And made it to Boston on his own, just like the Incredible Journey. It’s almost unbelievable, what with the entire hilltop being vaporized into flames, and all the soldiers and vehicles melting and exploding and what not. He must have dodged to one side at the last second.
A very stretched happy ending but at least Spielberg didn’t kill off the new boyfriend so they could once again have a happy family unit.
*“Hi, I’m Morgan Freeman. I don’t appear in this movie, but I do provide the omniscient framing narration awkwardly paraphrased from Wells. Meanwhile, please enjoy the performances of the many, many other talented black actors in this film.”
Again you’re being pedantic, would you rather have that than have a black actor forcibly placed in the movie in order to have the Token Black?
In summary… Ick. There were one or two good bits–I enjoyed the pleasingly Romeroesque ambiguity about the aliens’ motivations and origins–but mostly, ick. I’d like to be more positive by citing the admittedly impressive CGI effects, but in a Spielberg movie where the world is invaded, I was frankly expecting more than just ‘impressive.’ I was expecting superlative effects used in an original manner, and instead I got warmed-over ID4.
It was a completely different film to ID4, I don’t know how you can even compare them except to say they’re both about alien invasions of earth. I enjoyed ID4 for what it was as well, a light and fun summer blockbuster.
I saw this movie last weekend and thought it was better than I expected it would be. The “Earth-invaded-by-aliens” plotline has been done to death (especially during the last ten years with ** Independence Day, Mars Attacks**, and Signs). When you further consider that “War of the Worlds” itself has already been the subject to such memorable adaptations like Orson Welles’ 1938 radio play and the 1953 George Pal version, it would have been difficult for even a talented director like Spielberg to prevent this version from turning into a tired retread. Fortunately, for the most part, he succeeded in putting an interesting spin on the material.
I have some comments and questions. I’ve noticed some posters wondered at the logic of the aliens burying their tripods in the ground and then waiting thousands (or millions) of years to come back. To me, it was because they were raising crops (i.e., us). Spielberg seemed to be drawing on Charles Fort’s quote about the the Earth being a farm and we being someone else’s property. They were waiting for the human population of Earth to grow to a certain point before they came back and “harvested” it. I could be wrong but I noticed the aliens seemed more interested in humans than other species as a source of the blood they wanted.
One thing I wondered about is whether the aliens were using human blood for food or fuel. If it was the latter, it would’ve been a very obvious “blood=oil” metaphor. It also would’ve made sense in the context of the aliens’ long wait for the human population to expand since more humans=more human blood=more fuel for their machines.
Also, when it was revealed how the aliens were after human blood, did anybody who was familiar with the source material think the movie was going to have the aliens be felled by AIDS or some other blood-related illness? That would’ve been crass, insensitive, and in bad taste but it would’ve put a contemporary spin on the original ending by Welles.
Forget about footages, I’ve seen people doing the same with my own eyes, though they missed the Darwin’s award by surviving. I was visiting a coast spot called “hell’s hole” for its particularily impressive and violent wawes crashing in a large crack in a granite cliff. Group of morons showed up. Began some acrobatics above the cliff on steep and wet rock to climb down and have a closer look. Told them not to do so. To no avail. Pointed at them that the high tide was coming. To no avail. They found a perfect spot on a rock to observe from close distance, sat down, pulled out food and wine bottles for a lovely picnic, and surprise! They’re in quick order surrounded by the raging waters and cut from the top of the cliff. Called the police from the nearest village (no cell phone at this time) to come and rescue them. Fortunately, the tide wasn’t high enough to submerge their rock. I had however some sadistic pleasure in knowing later that they however spent several night hours drenched on their fucking observation spot, with a really, really close look at the wawes.
Oh, yes, the movie. I’m not a fan of action movie, usually, but I’m going to say I found this one impressive. Like many others, the train scene made me :eek: . Acting? I didn’t noticed much acting in the movie, actually. The little girl was great, though.
I liked the fact that the main character (except once, but that’s OK) was mostly scared all the time, and didn’t act heroic, as I expected (nor did he found out the alien weakness and saved the world, as I feared), leaving this part for various other characters (his son helping people to climb on the boat, the soldiers and the crowd trying to rescue him in the cage, while usually crowd never spontaneously react and do something useful in most hollywood movie, and just wait for the hero to save their day, the militaries, and even, in his foolish way, the other guy in the basement who wanted to do something and take down at least one of the fuckers. I think that making TC a non-hero added a lot to the scariness of the whole situation.
I also liked a lot the fact that the movie concentrated on this small group and they (and we) weren’t told what was happening exactly except for what they could see (no war room, no scared TV anchorman, no following of the reaction and fate of a dozen of other characters), despite SS showing the variety of reactions from characters appearing briefly and dissapearing immediatly (the guy with the gun stealing the car, the couple trying to save the small girl, etc…).
The suspension of disbelief worked for me (which is rare in Sci-Fi movies), so I wasn’t annoyed much by the implausibility of the plot.
A couple things I didn’t like, though :
-The movie was too sanitized. Nothing even remotely gory was ever shown (for instance, TM tells to his daughter not to look, but actually, there’s nothing to look at. The plane is empty, there aren’t any bodies around). Every death is “clean” (vaporization) or hidden (the blood sucking). I’m not a lover of gore, but my only “suspension of suspension of disbelief” came from these permanently sanitized scenes.
-The fact that the son made it. I hated the director for this cheap trick. It removed a lot from the drama. Fucking, fucking mandatory happy ends. It did not belong here.
Anyway, I would say the movie gave me (and left me with) a strong feeling of doom. Nothing, absolutely nothing can be done, everything collapses, and you just can run (or just walk) for your life (in the best case). No successful hero, no hope, nothing. I don’t remember any movie previously that gave me the same feeling (including some “end of the world due to nuclear war” movies) . I think this feeling is the main reason why I liked the movie and was, to my surprise, impressed. And also somewhat depressed immediatly after I left the theater.
I’m thankful at least for that.
By the way, except for the long-expected hug by his son, TC character doesn’t receive that much praise and thanks . His daughter runs to mom, and the happy reunited family actually include kids, former wife, former wife’s boyfriend and parents in law at the exclusion of Cruise who is left alone standing in the street.
I don’t think should have looked scarier. That’s their technology which is scary. They looked like they were taking some leisure time to satisfy their curiosity between two extermination missions, after a close examination by the tentacleye to make sure the place was safe. Somehow, it seemed to me that they not being very scarry actually added to the horror of the overall situation. Let’s exterminate everybody, let’s make sure there’s really nobody left because we’re not going to put our precious tentacles at risk, then let’s just have a casual look at this weird stuff. Oh! we’re called back for some more extermination. Well, I guess we just have to go.
All this while the characters are paralyzed by terror. The contrast was excellent, IMO.
By the way, ’ surprised by the descriptions of TC’s character as a “self-centered prick”. It never appeared to me as such, nor at the begining nor at the end, and I found the character rather likeable, and even somewhat pathetic at the beginning of the movie.
That’s one of the things I found the weirdest, personnally. I would have tried to go away from the crowds, the cities, etc… and certainly not came anywhere close to a river crossing packed with panicked people. In order to achieve what? Bring back my daughter to her probably already vaporized mother before the end of the week-end?
TC character lost me on this one. He had no clue what to do or where to go, as often mentionned by his own children (making him once again pathetic), so I assume the idea is that he’s coming back to the only place he can think of : his ex place. All in all, he seems to somehow believe the BS he’s serving to his kids : we’ll go to mom’s place, and everything will be fine and safe again then.
I didn’t perceive this this way at all. His main instinct sems to protect the kids from any harm (including looking at awful stuff) and he goes to great lenghts to do so. So, I can’t think of him as a selfish guy who just want to get rid of them and run from his life. Despite the accusation being made by one of the kids (yet another strike at his battered down ego).
Actually, I perceived him as feeling he is an unadequate (and not much loved) father from the beginning to the end, in ordinary times as in the middle of a world-shattering event. So, he brings back the kids to mom, as they themselves want, because in his mind she’ll presumably be more able than him to take care of them.
Oh! I’ve got a question about this statue. I wondered while watching the movie whether or not it was an actually existing and well-know statue, and whether or not it would ring some bell or would have some symbolical meaning for the american audience.
Preach, brother.
As a long time firefighter, I’ve decided that there are three types of people in this world.
Give me a burning gasoline tanker and a thousand civilians, for example. Five hundred of them would get the hell out town without looking back. Four hundred would run to an apparently safe distance and then turn and watch. The remaining hundred would stand within 50 yards of the conflagration, grinning and slapping each other on the back. The best I can figure is that there are a small minority of people who are utterly unconvinced of their own mortality. Whatever plot holes the movie has, I have no problem believing that a small core of idiots would stand around and watch an alien death machine rise out of the ground.
Dang, looks like you did a fair job of addressing the lion’s share of them. I’m glad to hear that you enjoyed the movie.
Me either, honestly. I’ve disliked the guy for years, just on the basis of his performances. That said, I don’t know why after all this time the rest of the world would decide not to tolerate him now all of a sudden.
I guess if you’re comfortable with the one character he always seems to play, then he’s a fairly safe investment of your movie dollars. He is to ‘cocky and sneering’ what Christopher Walken is to ‘tightly wound,’ or what Jimmy Stewart was to ‘amiable,’ pretty much. He’s a known quantity. When he strays too far from his home territory, as I sensed he was trying to do in The Last Samurai, he just seems sulky and lost. I did enjoy his performance in **Legend ** though.
Oh, no doubt; I just meant to suggest that there were probably a million different ways to present that information more subtly, other than having the engine block sitting right in the middle of his living room for no apparent reason. (Why? He has a basement and garage; is it really plausible that he’d drag the block up a flight of stairs in order to work on it?) If it was so important that the audience understand that Tom knows how to repair cars, why not have the character work at the garage in the first place, rather than the peculiarly non-sequitur job as a crane operator?
And I actually wasn’t kidding, I would not be surprised at all if there were in fact a scene revolving around the engine block that was filmed and then cut from the theatrical release because of time constraints. It just seems like too intrusive a prop to have sitting there for no purpose. I doubt Christopher Lee will be involved in such a scene, although it would be cool if he were.
Even so, I think they’d still give it a shot at least. I would, anyway. But my main objection is the way this situation was presented. If there’s no information available on the TV or radio, fine. I can easily accept that. But then, the next morning, to have a news van parked right out in front of the house, complete with newspeople eager to cue up relevant news clips and explain just exactly what was being seen on screen… I submit that this is implausible. It would have made much more sense, and been infinitely more dramatic, to have the Cruise family turn on the TV and see these broadcasts as they were happening, hear the panic of the news services and authorities, and watch the channels drop off the air one by one. Since Spielberg was going to be evoking 9/11, I think it would have been more effective to go that route, since this is in fact how most people experienced the tragedy, through disjointed TV and radio reports. I would guess that very few people had a newscrew on their lawn feeding them updates.
Yeah, I admit that I didn’t give Spielberg credit for this; after the family dynamics was set up in the first few minutes of the movie (“Hi! I’m Wealthier, More Successful, SUV-Driving Romantic Obstacle!”), I was totally expecting New Dad to bite it big time, probably by running out in front of a tripod trying to save his SUV or something.
Well, it’s not as though Mr. Freeman has never found himself in such a situation (coughRobin Hood:Prince of Thieveskaffkaff). He’s plainly one of Hollywood’s go-to guys when you want to add some class and some ethnic diversity to your movie at the same time. That’s why I found it just a bit peculiar that he was brought in to do the voice over narration, while the black man who I recall getting the most screen time in the movie was Weedy Street Guy from the first reel (the guy who informs us that the sun doesn’t cause lightning).
I personally think Morgan Freeman is a very charismatic and talented actor, although admittedly he is to “dignified person of color” what Tom Cruise is to “cocky sneering guy.” So I guess it’s just a matter of taste.
That’s a big “except,” in my opinion. They’re both bloated summer films about alien invasions of Earth, where the aliens overwhelm humanity with superior weapons of war (alien invasions can be handled differently, as for example Invasion of the Body Snatchers), and none of the characters in either film has more than the bare mimimum amount of characterization, and I don’t know if **Independence Day’s ** ending was intended to directly satirize Wells’ original story, but it certainly came across that way. By comparing the two earlier, though, I just meant that the effects were at a roughly comparable level, used to similar effect. **War of the Worlds ** had some big eye-candy scenes of destruction, but so did Independence Day, and I didn’t percieve the former film to have any more spectacular effects than the latter.
I’m still thinking of Spielberg as the guy who gave us Jaws, Close Encounters and Raiders of the Lost Ark, so maybe it’s my fault for having unreasonably high expectations. I need to start thinking of him as the guy responsible for **A.I., Minority Report ** and The Terminal.
Yes, it 's plausible. I’ve seen people doing just that. The point is that whatever they’re working on his within close distance of their bed/fridge/whatever . Basically they change their living-room into a convenient workshop.
The purpose could have been simply to show that TC place is a mess, and that maybe he isn’t extremely resposible as a father, like for instance the epty fridge, the spoiled milk, te mess in his bedroom, etc…
It is. Like most of the movie, actually. That’s when supension of disbelief comes in handy.
How many thousands of times did we see exactly that? I, for one am happy that they get rid of the mandatory panicked anchorman, for a change.
Besides, I think the fact the main characters are extremely poorly informed about what’s going on, and by not very reliable sources add to the drama. Also, the essentially immediate lack of TVs and radio broadcast shows how bad the situation is.
the comparison doesn’t hold water. Not much was disrupted by the 9/11. What’s happening in the movie is on a way, way larger scale. People on the 9/11 heard about the events on TV and radio because the society was still functionnal. In this movie, it has been completely disrupted everywhere in a matter of hours.
By the way, I think that there was indeed too much references to 9/11. And specifically hinted too much at people behaving in the same way they did on 9/11. There’s too much of a difference in scale between these events to expect as much similarities. I doubt for instance that in such a mess people would be lining up to give blood or that you would see walls full of “missing” posters. Did you see this sort of things, on a significant scale, in a city under attack in a war zone? I’m not sure whether he really, really wanted to please the american public by using these references or whether he really, really couldn’t think about more realistic references (it’s not like there aren’t many examples around the world of how people react when their city is completely devastated by an ennemy attack). I assume the former.
I too remembered this movie. So, I was pleased to notice that WOTW wasn’t early as bad as Jaws and its ridiculously sterotypical characters. I’m going to be killed for that, but I absolutely can’t understand the hype about “Jaws” and his caring and responsible father, distracted scientist, hardened veteran, unconcerned irresponsable mayor only worrying about tourist-generated income and so on…
I’m glad this thread was revived, because I just saw WotW Monday night and didn’t want to be the one to resurrect it.
I can’t remember where I heard it, but I recall Spielberg saying in a recent interview that for as good a movie as it turned out, he no longer likes the ending to Close Encounters, because the father
essentially abandons his family to fly off with the aliens, or whatever.
Did anyone else hear this statement? What’s the likelihood Spielberg made WotW in this manner to “redeem” himself from the way he handled Close Encounters?
It does seem to be a real love it or hate it film, my friends are fairly evenly split on their opinion of it, for example.
I actually thought he did move quite far from his earlier ‘cocky and sneering’ persona in this movie, he might have been like that at the start but he spent the rest of the film one-inch from running around screaming and panicking like a little girl. 
I have an uncle who is a mechanic and it can be fairly hard to tell where his garage ends and his home begins so I had no problem accepting that the Cruise character would have an engine block in his living-room, as someone else says its basic laziness, instead of going to the engine-block, bring the engine-block to you.
Thats a good point about why not just make him a mechanic in the first place but I think as someone said earlier in this thread that Spielberg was trying to make a parrallel between the aliens sitting high up in their machine to do their work and the Cruise character/humanity doing the same. That we’re not actually that different.
The news crew was a very big stretch but I think Spielberg felt he had to give some background info about the invasion to the viewers. Watching the news channels as they dropped out would indeed have been creepy but I think Spielberg viewed the ‘panicking news-reporter’ as a bit of a cliche and thats why he didn’t use it. I have to say that the fragmented news-reports are one of the most chilling things about that old nuclear war film ‘The Day After’ and part of it that really sticks in my mind.
At least he didn’t use James-Earl Jones… 
As ‘Alien Invasion’ films they approach the subject from entirely different directions though, WotW is a small-scale claustrophobic, one ordinary man’s experience of such an invasion and within that context I thought Spielberg succeeded admirably, I found the scene where he runs outside after his daughter and see’s for the first time the effects the aliens have wrought on the landscape a truly apocalyptic image for example. Independence Day was the ‘large-scale’ depiction of a similar event which many different main characters, chisel-jawed hero’s, military and political leaders, events shown on a global scale and an all round fun action film.
I enjoyed both but they really are vastly different movies.
I too was disappointed that the son survived, and not only because I didn’t like him. I was actually rooting for his death.
Two scenes will stay in my mind, and they have both been mentioned already. The train scene for one. But mainly, the scene where they showed they wall plastered with homemade missing signs.
Except for the ending, I found this movie to be extremly realistic.
“I will not let my daughter die because of you.”
Saw it last night, and was underwhelmed, all in all. The reviews and many fan descriptions had been highly positive, and it just didn’t do it for me. Maybe my expectations were too high.
Good stuff: The 9-11 imagery wasn’t overdone, I thought, but just about right. Dakota Fanning was damned good. Tripod emerging from the city street was frightening. Bodies floating downstream. Flaming train o’ death zooming past. Mob violence over the van and getting on the ferry boat. Foreshadowing of aliens’ fate with Dakota’s comment about the splinter. Foreshadowing of tripods with Cruise up there moving shipping containers. Minuteman statue (symbolizing American common folk coming together to defeat an overwhelmingly strong opponent) with dying alien lichen. Miranda Otto.
Bad stuff: Cruise playing pretty much the same role again. Implausible explanations for how the tripods got underground (what, no one’s ever dug one up before?). Conveniently open highways for Cruise’s minivan to zoom through. Refugees walking around Boston street mere feet away from an Army squad about to attack a tripod. Teenage son survives to the end, creating yet another Happy Hollywood Ending. Not nearly enough Mirando Otto.
Did New Dad actually appear at the end? I only noticed Miranda, her parents and the teenage son.
I think Wells’s concept of ultrapowerful aliens brought down by Earth microscopic critters has simply become too implausible to sustain the weight of the story’s ending. They’d have protective suits, high-level vaccines or something, and wouldn’t fall prey to our germs/bacteria/viruses, having studied us and our world as long as the opening narration posits.
What was that again? I don’t recall it.
As was suggested in an earlier post (and with which I agree), there was a bit of foreshadowing when Dakota said her body would eventually eject the splinter in her hand, without having her dad (who looked pretty tired and strung out, at the time) poke at it. I took this to be a reference to the Earth’s ecosphere (a body) ejecting the foreign irritant of the alien invaders (the splinter).