Dissed by Spielberg: you, me & HGW

Rating: 7/10 (6 July 2005)

Okay, I'm used to big studio movies being big, loud, stupid and full of plot holes  spectacle over substance.
But WotW was unnecessarily so.
Here we have one of the great science fiction classics and a prior movie that had some reverence for the source material. And Spielberg's "enhancements" are the main thing wrong with this 'new interpretation.'
SPOiLERS!
If the "aliens" buried their machines in the soil in the past, they would already have been exposed to the "bacteria, microbes and viruses" that have been here long predating man.
I'm quite sure Mr. S. knows nothing about cars, but he can afford someone who does. An "EMP" would fry the engine management system of the late model minivan the mechanic was working on. True, it might fuse the solenoid or coil, but that's the least of the problems. It's integrated circuits that are dead meat. So most older cars (including Ray's Mustang) would have been fine with little or no work.
When the machine appears, the nice little 'hands' unfurl and shoot the 'death rays' at fleeing, unarmed people. Does it seem logical to you that beings that advanced would have planned to come to earth and individually shoot 6 billion people? I mean, the ones they don't put in their picnic baskets...
Let's say that we'll suspend disbelief because the aliens are 'so advanced' we don't understand them. There's still one aspect of this movie you cannot avoid. You can see the specific scenes where the Universal Studios WotW ride is being previewed: the cracking pavement, the tipping ferry boat; the shaking basement of the house hit by the falling airplane...
And speaking of falling airplanes: when was the last time you saw a jetliner crash that distributed large sections of plane over no more than 150 feet? The plane crash scene  again  looked like it was designed to be part of an amusement park ride rather than be realistic. But it was nice that the wreckage left a clear path for the minivan to exit.
And the ferry scene. Bad pacing for a Spielberg movie. Plus, we're expected to believe that with a limited number of machines to take over earth, four of them (breaking the 'pattern of three') show up to ineffectually menace our fleeing hero and family.
I'm sorry, but there's something plastic and contrived about Spielberg's 'adventure movies.' And I, for one, am getting tired of it.