Best Human *** Kickery since Independence Day.

Rating: 8/10 (3 July 2005)

It reminded me a lot of the "Oh...shit...we're screwed" feeling you get from Independence Day...
But yeah...it was pretty dang awesome.
It had a lot of the same mishaps as Signs did. I loved that you didn't see any of the Tripods in the previews or anything...instead you had to wait to see the movie. Revieling they they are tripods shouldn't be a spoiler..for it was based on the book...and the book described them as tripods.
Cruises character was a typical Tom Cruise performance... Cruise played himself in this movie...really. His children were the definition of annoying. There was the stereotypical scene/emo idiot who is so filled with stereotypical teenage angst...that you could tell he was going to do something stupid. The fact that he was still there... made me despise it as though he wanted to make it mushier for American audiences. If the Japanese made this movie... they would have killed him off... and show the family living on...well he was stereotypical anyway.
Cruises daughter in this... was a total brat...and I would have left her for the freaking aliens. If she were my kid. I would have given her the Brian Maddox. If she continued to yell... "sorry, you are alien food" but I'm a jerk anyway.
Special FX: Sweet I'm not a movie critic or a professional movie fan. I'm a guy who loved the movie...and was more than willing to overlook its bad parts.
The fiery train...was an omniscient mind-messer upper. It was a wonderful touch. It was on fire... And that was awesome.
The tripods looked cool...very much like Japanese fighting robots. I'm an avid audio synthesist and I loved the sounds they made. Lucckily my girlfriend is an audio junkie too...so we talked about the noises they made for a while.
The news broadcast showing all the tripods leveling a city was scary. The disturbing image factor was also pretty high in that the way they used humans for fertilizer.... It was quite nice. I also thought it was awesome that the Japanese were able to take a few down. I loved that part...because you know they know all about those Giant Robots. (I know I'm stereotyping here and sounding racist...I hope that whoever reads this is intelligent enough to know that I'm kidding).
The images paled in comparison to those in Asian horror..but they were still pretty gruesome. Just try and picture yourself as one of those people...any one of them..and note how well your day would suck if one day. All in all...I think you should see it. Just to see people get smeared across the board and go through yet another massive alien attack.
I'm going to see it again and get me a poster off of ebay. Good stuff here.
"as it did so a second glittering titan built itself from the earth" - Chapter 14.