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SPOILER: WAR OF THE WORLDS>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>









I just saw it this afternoon. I hated the ending. Why do they always feel the need to
take a movie with a serious theme with violence and crying and death and make the ending a nice big hug so we all walk away feeling good? I Walk away feeling like i've been had. I feel ripped off, short changed, bamboozled....lol  But seriously, i had heard the ending sucked. But when it began to happen and cruise is walking up the street and there's mom saying "thank you for at least saving our daughter" i thought that that was an acceptable ending. But for the love god - when i saw "grandma and Grandpa" standing at the doorway, and mind you the streets look like hell. Obviously these tripods have demolished every city, so why was everyone in that cobblestone so well showered and put together?  Everyone else in the world was running for their life! And yet - the son lives? After that nuclear-like blast of fire, i'm supposed to believe that he left the forces he so wanted to join and went home to mommy.....alive? Uh - no.

Dear mr spielberg - it's ok when main characters die in the movie. Please don't sugar coat the ending with a most ridiculous warm fuzzy moment.

I almost expected grandma to be holding a plate of freshly baked sugar cookies.

I agree you with you Susan. When I saw everyone  come together I was ok this makes no sense. I like how their block was untouched meanwhile the tripod were probeing the houses. A stupid ending to a decent movie.

_____________________________
"We Greeks created democracy! You also created homos!"-Ghost World

Obviously the aliens didn't think Boston was worth blowing up.  A common mistake.

Yes the movie petered out.  And there was no story to speak of.  Ah, but the scenes of mass destruction.  Makes my heart happy.  And the death rays.  Death rays make me happy as well.

I've been recommending it to people only to have them come back to me saying "it's not believable".  Believable?  It's a movie about aliens blowing stuff up.  That's a stupid thing to try and believe.  If you want believable you may question why a group of aliens wouldn't monitor all the flora and fauna of their brand new world.  Seems hard to believe they wouldn't have examined the germ aspect.  They may not be as stupid as the aliens in SIGNS, but they certainly do join a long line of not-so-smart movie space aliens.

I liked it.  A lot.  No ending though.  When will people learn you can't just throw Morgan Freeman at a movie and make it good?

I was wondering why the aliens felt it necessary to spend so much time looking in the basement they were in instead of just stepping on the house or something.  Sure it was a tense scene but I was confused as to why they were looking so intently in that house.  The rest of the tripods seemed to just move forward and blast the hell out of everyone.  Maybe they knew it was Tom Cruise in there and just spent a little extra effort looking for him.  I know I would have.

Right - because aliens MUST probe farm houses in the middle of nowhere!!

Big cities with lots of brownstone homes and places to hide? Nah, clearly there were signs tha they had been splattering blood all over the street which eventually didn't take hold in whatever they were trying to farm. so that means there HAD to have been tripods there blasting stuff, lasering stuff and harvesting people. Why was the Cruise family unscathed? There are more people in the city than the country and yet in the movie it seemed vise versa (mind u no cars were working so it's not like they could have all evacuated the city that fast on foot), aliens are in the middle of BFE.

Plus people are stupid (wow there's a big black hole in the sky and lighting is striking the same place over and over, c'mon out honey and look - it's cool!)- i kept wondering why they were walking with the masses, gee - given the extermination issue, doesn't this make them an easy target? I'd be the one hiding in the woods by myself. Chances are they aren't going to be going out of their way to find the rogues. And at some point they were all actually walking TOWARDS the battle. Then they all turn around and run? Did they think heading in the direction of blasts and flashing lights was a good idea at some point?  After seeing some of this stupidity i kept thinking to myself we deserve to be exterminated...lol

Also I thought it was funny they made a point tha the main reasons the aliens didn't survive was germs and tiny aemoebas (sp?). Was i the only one questioning why the aliens went into that basement and at one point it sounded like they were drinking the water. IF i went to some alien world the last thing i'd be doing would be eating or drinking anything - seems like they shoulda come better prepared with extra bottles of AlienZarka Spring Water just to be on the safe side.

Wow, so harsh!

For one, the ending has been in place for longer than any of us has been born, and I don't really see how they could have changed it any different without resorting to the 'USA takes all the aliens down' crap which kind of annoyed me about Independence Day.

But yes, I feel the ending did lack somewhat a bit of punch: an extra ten minutes or so to see the aftermath would have been much more satisfying, perhaps a realisation that we as humans were screwed, and how we move on from that.

Also, people are generally attracted by violence, terror and craziness.  Why else would most people turn their head to look at a car crash or are tuned into their TVs to look religiously at twin towers falling to the ground?

In the situation in War of the Worlds, I'd say that people, running towards explosions and such, is not entirely unbelievable: me, like many others, would be feeling 'the cavalry has arrived' and wanted to see those nasty aliens get some good old fashioned earth justice, whilst realising this is silly and running away like a little wuss.

Remember people were also running away from that battle scene.

Also the family thing annoyed me: Speilberg didn't have to only focus on Cruise; seeing what was happening/happened [he should have died] to the son would have been an interesting side-story to the main one.

But overall I loved this film, and enjoyed it thouroughly...

"Why was the Cruise family unscathed?"

One word...Scientology...

Yeah, I thought it was a little bit strange that the son survived, and didn't even seem injured.

As for the germs, it's the way the story always ended. For a time when space travel, robotics and such were still a loooong way off, I think Wells did a surprisingly good job. I mean, when he wrote that book, people weren't even thinking much about rockets yet. The Martians were using a giant cannon. Of course, things like that make the book all the more interesting.

I suppose the aliens could be from a world without disease, or maybe they wiped out disease in their remote history and forgot about it. Or maybe we just accept that it is how the story goes.

From a literary point of view, it's very fitting. We start out with the idea that these things are as far above us as we are above germs. In the end, when all of our strength fails, it is the germs that win the war. It's a great message and a nice ironic twist that has, unfortunately, lost some of its punch over the years.

The thing I found hardest to accept was the aliens' invasion plan. Haul giant machines across space. Bury them all over the world (apparently where cities will most likely be built some day). Then leave, and stay away for thousands, if not millions, of years. Wait for an industrial civilization to arise, then come and wipe it out.

This is supposed to work better for the movie than just having the aliens and their machines land on Earth? Why didn't they just come and stay? Didn't some of them die of disease on an earlier trip? Did they just send these machines to every habitable planet in case they wanted to invade? How is that Practical?

Well, almost everything that has been said, I agree with. The only point I could actually argue is the placement of the tripods in large cities was not coincidence. Almost every major city and major civiliazation has been founded in areas near rivers, lakes, or oceans. Haven't you ever played a game of Civilization? Everyone knows you should build your first city by the coast or preferably  between a river and grasslands/plains.


Yes, the stereotypical angst-filled teen should have been turned into a  barbequed stereotypical angst-filled teen.

I've not seen it yet...read the plot at Movie Spoiler...but, yeah...the kid should have been the sacrifical Ham...er, lamb...and the kid and dad the only family members left.
Sad...but realistic.
However...as Wells well knew...disease killed more British imperial troops then Zulu Assagis, so his ending made sense , both then and now.
Maby the Aliens...xenophobic buggers that they were, were too cocky to belive the Earth held any real peril for them....and so they are humbled, along with mankind.

Yeah, I considered that, but still, it's a big gamble. You've got to assume that a civilization is going to develop and build cities. That's a big if right there. Could be just a coincidence that some of them were buried under cities, of course. Maybe most of them popped up in the middle of nowhere. The main point here is that it is a really dumb plan to bury your weapons, then go away for millennia. We're supposed to accept that these things had been planning this for a long time, but it seems like they had a plan long before there was an enemy here. Can't see them needing machines like that to hunt animals. Then again, if you're invulnerable to our weapons, how much of a plan do you need?

The musical version of War of the Worlds explains the ending in pretty good terms: the aliens had long ago rid themselves of disease and plague, so that now that they arrived here, they were completely vulnerable to earth's many different diseases to which they had no immunity.  Just like when you go to another country and drink the water and get sick: all the locals are fine because they are used to it, you get sick because you aren't.

Also I forgot about the buried tripods.  That was extremely lazy storytelling, mainly for a few reasons:

It was done so that the dramatic reveal of the tripods are more dramatic because you don't see them at first.

Are we supposed to believe that these things were buried under the earth for who knows how long and we didn't even notice one?  It's not like we never dig under the ground...

The way the lightning hits is so 'cool' and suspenseful, so they needed a reason for it.

The original, cylinder dropping out of the sky would have worked fine, they could have even shaped the reasoning around the lightning and the buried tripods [if it hits and leaves a crater, but is covered with dirt from the impact.]

But I try not to let minor plot points like this ruin the overall experience.

btw another thing that annoyed me was the lack of explanation on what the aliens were harvesting, what they were killing humans for to grow. Alot of regular moviegoers i talked with didn't get it.

of ourse i'm harsh! I don't just go and turn my brain off at a movie. :)  It doesn't mean i didn't like, i really liked all the suspense and tension. But the critic in me can't help but enjoy picking apart the little things. That's the whole FUN of a movie!

Regarding the end, i woulda been satisified if he just showed up with the daughter and the mother was there and the son didn't make it. more believable, i didn't need grandma and the son with his magic words of "dad!" to make me feel good. The son was right in the middle of a place that was practically nuked with high temperature flames. Ugh

Plus the tripods being buried underground, we have lots of technology that scan detect things beneath the surface, i can't imagine that would have gone unnoticed by the military. i know they have the technology to detect that kind of thing on satellite or something.

Maybe it's the goofy part of me that almost wanted to see the aliens look like the little guys in critters ;-)  Imagine dealing with THAT in your basement!



Post Edited (07-12-05 19:47)

>>>Maybe it's the goofy part of me that almost wanted to see the aliens look like the little guys in critters ;-) Imagine dealing with THAT in your basement!

Actually that reminds me of when I went and saw War of the Worlds, when we first see the aliens, some girl a few rows back could be heard saying ''awww cute...''

Real suspensful moment for her I guess!

Agreed. The suspense and the tension were great. The tripods were actually pretty frightening when they attacked, and the scenes of panic and rioting were quite disturbing. It was very well done, in that regard.

Still, a less ridiculous attack plan really would have improved things, and I suppose a few more clues to the purpose of the red weed wouldn't have hurt either. And Spielberg has a tendency to weaken powerful, tragic stories with happy, sentimental endings that don't fit.

>>>and I suppose a few more clues to the purpose of the red weed wouldn't have hurt either.

Well from memory the red weed was an explanation for the reason why Mars was red.  The red weed wasn't harvested, like in this one, but just, I guess, a cling on from the invaders much like rats.

Also, in the musical version, and I can't remember, but am assuming was in the book, the aliens didn't harvest the humans for the red weed, but actually injected the blood of humans into their own viens.


>>>>And Spielberg has a tendency to weaken powerful, tragic stories with happy, sentimental endings that don't fit.

Well he wouldn't want to stop being too predictable now would he?  He has pretty much a winning formula, so why should he mix things up a bit?

I mostly agree with AndyC, suspense was great, but overall a more downbeat ending along with a less ridiculous attack plan and this film would have been pretty much perfect for me.  But I actually like not knowing everything that is going on, like the purpose of the red weed.  We weren't meant to understand the alien's intentions other than the fact we were pretty much flys that needed swatting.

LOOOOOOOOOOTS of stinky reviews on IMDB.

btw didn't someone post a thread about how this movie wasn't going to have all the typical cliches? What happened to that? The ending is the biggest movie cliche of all time. Hugs, kisses, everyone is ok ..."dad! I love you dad" Look it's grandma and grandpa and mom is ok! the aliens didn't bomb boston, they only wanted to harvest the rednecks!

[dry heaves]

I thought this movie was EXCELLENT . . . right up until Cruise grabbed the grenades.  Then I said, "Why, oh, why, must you torture me, Mr. Spielberg?"  (I didn't really say that, but I'm using some poetic license here).  The end, with the family emerging from the doorway and everyone embracing made me think I had stumbled into a Waltons reunion.  Goodnight, Jim Bob . . .

The Burgomaster wrote:
> I thought this movie was EXCELLENT . . . right up until Cruise
> grabbed the grenades.  Then I said, "Why, oh, why, must you
> torture me, Mr. Spielberg?"

Oh well, in 20 years, he'll replace the grenades, and all the other weapons, with something harmless. Tripods will wave gigantic walkie talkies around as people flee for their lives.



Post Edited (07-14-05 12:36)

I was kinda hoping that if (and they did) show the aliens they would all be ET.  How creepy would that have been?

Right, ET wanted to phone home with the spill and spell so he could give his coordinates so the attack could begin. Remember when he told the boy "be good"?

Yeah...be good or ELSE

Overall I was pleased with the movie.  I had the same initial reaction about the germs ("what, they can't do research?") but then I just figured what had been said -- they didn't know what germs are, anymore than a cow knows what fission is.  Just not part of their experience at this point, so they were screwed.  

That's a lot more satisfying than ID4, in my mind.  Not perfect, no.  And not Will Smith, "Welcome to Earth!  *thwock!*" satisfying, but much better storytelling.  

It was doomed, as a film, to flounder in this particular forum setting because it isn't good enough to be great, and not bad enough to be bad.