Why do you do this to me, Spielberg?

Rating: 1/10 (4 July 2005)

Now, I haven't read the original WOTW book, and I haven't seen the 1953 movie, so forgive me for being rude, but I thought this movie was horrible. It was a waste of time and money for me. Usually I like Tom Cruise movies, but this was just boring like anything. I have a few problems with the movie: 1) Why are the aliens being affected by germs if they've been buried here for hundreds of years? 2) If they're buried underground, why hasn't anyone inadvertently discovered them? 3) How does an EMP disable all electronic equipment, and yet someone can still drive a vehicle (witness the news van), and film video on a camera? 4) Why is Ray's son still alive at the end? He's supposed to be dead! Okay, to be fair, the only good part in the movie was the unveiling of the first tripod up to the trio's escape from Boston. Other than that, though, it was really bad. You don't need to waste half an hour of the movie sneaking around in the basement. I also didn't get the sense that this was really an invasion. At least in a movie like Independence Day, the audience found out that the ships had been destroyed in other parts of the world. Here, we never find what's happening anywhere else. Speaking of which, the aliens look like a knockoff of the aliens from ID4, and the basement scene was already done (much better, in my opinion) in the movie Signs.
Bottom Line? Skip this, and go see something like Batman Begins.