I seen it at the drive in this past weekend...and it was great.

Anyone else seen it yet?

Yeh it was alright though whilst i knew that the ending was going to be bad you really dont expect it to be such drull.

I have not seen it. Does it do the book justice?

It stays true to the book i believe which is what caught so many people off guard, they really (for some bizarre reason) werent expecting the ending to remain the same.

I havent read the book however i want to if just to explain the ending in more detail.

I have never read the book, so I really couldn't give a fair answer.

As far as the ending goes...it was a good way to wrap it up. All in all, I really enjoyed the movie...one of the best I've seen this year.

I too plan on reading to book now.

Send me a PM of what you thought happened in the ending because i was left asking "WTF?" and i dont have the book to hand to be able to find out.

If you feel like reading it, you can online:
http://www.alcyone.com/max/lit/worlds/
The copyright is expired.

I am going back to the drive in to watch it again tonight (along with Longest Yard)....I'll see if I missed something. I think they could have done a better job describing what the ending would be...it kind of came out of nowhere.

It is a statement about the hand of man not having control of the universe. That it took something small and insignificant to beat evil.

Strange to hear you say that first sentence, Echo....but yeah thats a good way of looking at it.

I remember seeing that opening scene and thinking it was a preview or something at first...and not being able to place it in the movie...and then the ending comes and Mr. Freeman explains it all, lol.

*POTENTIAL SPOILER BELOW*



Upon review of the movie for the second time, I found a new respect for the ending. It's not something you could see coming, I dont think.


---Spoiler Below---

The Narrator (Morgan Freeman) says that they were undone by the germs in the water and food here on Earth. "A Billion deaths had given man the right coexist" n other words our ability to become immune gave us the advantage.

We saw it over the weekend. It was better than I expected! (I don't care much for Tom Cruise!)
Some scenes were genuinely frightening, and I even knew how it ended. TC does a creditable job and the special effects are just incredible..the kids got on my nerves tho, esp the little girl, who whined a lot, but I suppose if I saw ugly alien ships I'd whine a bit too, lol.
Great movie.

Originally posted by jerejerebinks
Upon review of the movie for the second time, I found a new respect for the ending. It's not something you could see coming, I dont think.
Read the book. In fact, you really should have read the book before seeing the movie.

The boy got on my nerves to no end...but she did too. I guess I'm kind of partial to Dakota Fanning because I think she is just amazing.

To Borg - To be honest, the first time I watched the movie, I had forgot there was even a book.

I did a quick scan of the book and i noticed a few "small" differences from the offset.

Its set in London, England in the book

He travels with his Brother for the most part

It doesnt explain anything at the end as to why they all died.

Now i havent read it, i simply did the last chapter and random bits of other chapters, (the 2 books thing threw me at first)

But it seems the Directors had cause to stray from the original flow of the book. Not that Hollywood ever takes its base literature seriously anyway

I saw it yesterday and I really liked it.

Some scenes (the storm, the train in flames, the unseen battle behind the hill) are really scary and beautiful. It's very dark, it avoids all the cliches of Independence days or Signs.

Originally posted by Lokideviluk


It doesnt explain anything at the end as to why they all died.

Now i havent read it, i simply did the last chapter and random bits of other chapters, (the 2 books thing threw me at first)

But it seems the Directors had cause to stray from the original flow of the book. Not that Hollywood ever takes its base literature seriously anyway

Here is the explanation (chapter 8, 2d book)
In another moment I had scrambled up the earthen rampart and stood upon its crest, and the interior of the redoubt was below me. A mighty space it was, with gigantic machines here and there within it, huge mounds of material and strange shelter places. And scattered about it, some in their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid handling-machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the Martians -- DEAD! -- slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth.

I think it's quite clear in the movie too. I was surprised by the sentence about god's wisdom, knowing that HG Wells was rather materialist.

About the movie not being a literal adaptation from the book, I don't care. A scrupulous adaptation usually makes a bad movie, since novels (especially that long) are not supposed to be movie scenarios.

I think adapting Well's book would have been betraying his spirit. Wells' purpose was to show his time's biggest power, UK, being treated like it had treated its empire. Setting the movie in its original context would only have done an historical movie, maybe a steampunk curiosity, but nothing as appalling and thought provcative than Spielberg's vision of our world being ruthlessly destroyed.

It was more to do with the "Gods wisdom" that threw me completely. I understood it was something like a virus, bacteria etc however when they mentioned God.... well.

Cheers for the clarifaction though Astra.

Great description, Astra.

Oh god,

While the movie had some really frightening moments, in my opinion, the whole damn thing sucked.

Geez, where to begin.

FIRST, these aliens have been watching our planet with "envious eyes"and decide to take it for themselves. And how do they go about doing it? WELL, first they bury these machines in the ground, wait a half million years for humans to evolve, THEN the aliens come along in these things, burrow to their craft and, of course, the craft just pops out of the ground and they go blasting humans. Nobody ever dug up one of these things, everything works and the chrome is still shiny! Hell of a wax job, I think. Not to mention very reliable machines. Toyota couldn't beat that one. This is not forgettingthat the aliens came up with a very, very roundabout way of taking over the planet!

Now, H.G. Wells wrote his work more than a century ago. Our weapons since that time have vastly improved. We've gone from relying on horses and slow moving armies on foot to smart bombs, supersonic craft and very well protected tanks. So how do you get around this inconvinient fact and keep slow moving tripods from being pulverized within a day of popping out of the ground? Why Magic Shields(TM) of course (kind of imagine one of those annoying infomercials trying to sell those "miracle" products). With Magic Shields(TM) you get blanket protection from every single bomb, rocket, grenade and anything else humans can throw at these tripods. The best part is, with Magic Shields(TM) you don't have to explain to the audience how they are suck up all this heat and kinetic energy and still keep on working! So don't wait till the NEXT invasion gets screwed up by clever humans, call the 1-800 number and order your Magic Shields(TM) now! And if you call in the next ten minutes, we'll throw in a free ginsu knife and a handy anal probe! :rolleyes:

You would think that, seeing as how these aliens had a half million years to think about invading Earth, they'd have done just a LITTLE research into the bacteria, viruses and bugs that run rampant on this planet and figured out how to stay immune from earthly diseases. WE have yet to figure out how to travel to other planets, yet us lousy humans are already aware that alien viruses and bacteria are a worry. You should know about the steps NASA has to take to make sure THEIR probes aren't carrying earthly bacteria to other planets!

Of course, Tom Cruise gets the only car in all of New Jersey that isn't immobolized by the EMP pulse, gets picked up by the only alien tripod that isn't turning humans in confetti and is the only one to have had a sack of grenades with him when the tentacles reaches out to pull him through that thing that looks like a human orifice and into the tripod.

Then there's the cliche alien slime and the cliche attrocities where that poor guy gets pinned to the ground and has all the blood sucked out of him.


Then there is, what has to be the lamest, suckiest ending of all time. When Tom Cruise gets to grandmothers house in Boston, all the aliens have caught awful diseases and have died. Like getting to grandma's house will make everything better. Like it was a good idea to go to a major city in the first place, seeing as how the tripods are leveling those places first.


Well, if you can put those questions aside, don't think too hard on the plot and like watching humans being vaporized, it was a good movie, I guess.

Dammit.

I feel you. It must have had a horrible director! (*severe sarcasm*)