I saw War of the Worlds last night. It rocked! I still don't think tom cruise was a great choice, but I suppose it attracted more people...

Spoilers Ahead!



Well, I'll start by laying out some differences between the book and the movie. For starters, in the movie the war machines were hidden underground, and it was hidden in a lightning storm that the capsules came with no machines, simply the aliens that would controll them. That's fine, but it's quite unrealistic. Think it through. Would an alien civilization visit earth, bury dozens of these massive war machines in preperation to take on a species that was barely beginning civilization? Why not just take control then. Save tons of resources, and they could much more easily control the population they wish to feed on. I suppose the main reason this wouldn't make sense would be that they wanted much more food for their large population, so that is excusable. In the book of course, it was much more believable. They came in 10 capsules, each holding 2-3 martians, and the materials needed to construct one tripod and other construction equipment needed to further their efforts.

The tripods themselves were a wonderful recreation of the book. In the book the tripods were never given a real feel of complexity, with an amazing fluidity of movement like it was nearly an extension of the martian inhabiting it. Of course, these are more machine like in movement, but overall I'm very pleased with the tripods.

On to the next thing: The beam. In the book, you had a "Heat Ray", which immediately burst everthing into flame. Every segment of ground its gaze passed over was forever charred, it made bricks crumble and lead run like water. This new weapon is much different. I expected them to make it something different than the heat ray, but I hoped, this being science fiction not one of spielberg's crappy suspence movies, that it would be explainable by science. The way the beam behaved was this: it was a large purple/blue beam, that when it hit someone, would immediately disentigrate/char/explode them. My first guess was that it was some sort of microwave beam, superheating the water in humans, but powerful enough to charr them at the same time. Hence, humans get both exploded and charred at the same time. Makes sense right? Nope. Spielberg just had to include one thing that would defy reason... When people explode/disentigrate, their clothes remain intact, and go flying off. That makes no sense at all! I guess they went for some hollywood "Disentigration beam". Oh well, so much for science fiction. Also, it should be noted that the black and deadly gas rockets from the book are completely neglected here.

Next up, Characters. In the book they never gave any of the characters names, even the main one, as it was being writtin as if by a survivor of the aliens that wished to remain anonymous. The narrator was a man of science in the book, a writer for one of the many upstart papers of the time. He wrote on many different subjects, and was conveniently and amateur astronomer, with a friend that worked in the also very convenient, nearby observatory. He and his astronomer friend Ogilvy, the only one with any real significance to the story with a name given, were some of the first to observe the giant jets of gas coming from Mars. Eleven of these jets were observed. One was the casting of the great gun, and the following ten, one every 24 hours, were each one of the capsules.

Mr. Cruise did a fine job at the role he was given, but sadly that was not one that reflected the original hero. He was a single parent, taking turns with his ex-wife looking after their two children, a young girl, seen in the trailers plenty (and extremely whiney), and also a typical troubled teenage son. He is such a typical cruise character, I lost a bet that I thought he was an ex fighter pilot that would eventually kill one of the tripods.

I'm off to do something else, so I'll conclude this later.