Despite claims to the contrary this is a remake of the '53 film.

Rating: 1/10 (1 July 2005)

As with Spielberg I have been a huge fan of this story for many years now. Anyone who has read my posts on the boards will know that I have been critical of the choice to move the story both in space and time. What I was expecting going into the movie was to see a good movie that was a poor retelling of the original story.
On the whole I think I was wrong on both counts. I'll start with the good. More of the book has survived in the story than I expected although much of it has been handled in a clumsy and confused manner. This film is quite scary in places but it is not a consistent "horror movie" and doesn't have the same fluidity of mood as a film like Signs. The acting is pretty good, Dakota Fanning especially is excellent as she has been in quite a few films recently. Defintately one to watch out for in the future. The special effects are adequate but don't do anything you haven't seen before.
On the negative front however... The actual characters aren't particularly likable, at no point in the movie did I particularly care what happened to them over the extras. There are plot holes you could drive an articulated lorry through, most of which have come from the clumsy transition of the story to modern day. The movie is very short and yet has a whole subsection of the original story cut out. The transplantation to modern day hasn't actually added anything to the movie or made it easier to identify with the main characters, and has in fact made many major story problems which have not been well explained. I don't want this review to contain spoilers so I will provide no detail but most of the technical points of the story are provided by characters wildly speculating (unrealisticly in my opinion) or with a particularly poor scene with a news crew.
Over all this movie isn't terrible but has far too much lacking both as a straight up event movie and as a telling of the story. I have seen interviews with both Spielberg and Cruise where they have said straight up that this is not a remake of the '53 George Pal movie, but I'm afraid that is just not true. There is at least one scene lifted straight from it and the intro and outro are very similar. The overall spirit of the movie is identical as is the general B-Movie feel.
If you are a movie fan then go and see Batman Begins, it has none of the clumsiness of WoW.
If you are a fan of the story then go and see Batman Begins, it'll just be better for your blood pressure.
I really expected much much more from Spielberg. I'm not the kind of idiot that makes silly claims of movie boycotts etc but Spielberg has seriously fallen in my estimation.
As a movie I would rate this: 6/10
As a War of the Worlds Story: 3/10
Over all I was generous and gave: 5/10
I think this movie would have been better served by a different title and that would have left Spielberg free to handle some of the story problems better.