Hmmmmmmmm!!!!!!!

Rating: 4/10 (3 July 2005)

This may be considered to contain spoilers, but as this story is over 50 years old most of you will have some idea what happens anyway, but I do reveal the differences.
The 4 stars are only for the effects as the tripods are in the essence of the original drawings and move well (see the cover of Jeff Waynes album of the musical version narrated by Richard Burton), this was the only thing I had against the original film as they floated on 3 beams but it was probably technically impossible back then or at least too expensive. As for the story why change it to THIS!! This was a perfectly good story that has now been mullered. Spielberg has done to this story what an iceberg did to the Titanic.
At this point I should tell you I have read the book many years ago bought the vinyl mentioned above and seen the 1953 film (no, I'm not that old I saw it years after it came out) the same goes for the radio show. The 1975 film about the radio show 'The Night That Panicked America' showing how gullible you lot in the USA all were/are was most interesting. Sorry, I had to get you lot back for the "Europe fell in minutes" gag in the film. (Not Sorry really ;-) Well the USA were not making dent in them either.
If a race was so advanced 1 million years ago to create these tripods, why bury them in the Earth and wait for it to be populated? Surely they would know that in a thousand or even few hundred years later let alone a million years on they would develop much better craft that could take out/harvest humankind in one go and wouldn't be bothered with what would become 'that ancient junk tripod technology!' The original story has them coming from Mars (a million to one chance but still they come, as the story goes) landing, which made a crater from where the tripods were built and emerge.
There was no time given for investigation or explanation of many things that happened. For example in the 1953 film we had 'lets try this; oh, it didn't work lets try something else' etc. This film just had the troops throwing everything they had at them and we didn't see much of that happening.
In answer to comments about blunders I have read here. If you think about it you can get around some of the EMP knocking out everything electrical mistakes. As someone who has qualifications in electronics I know not everything would necessarily be affected depending on where it was at the time of the EMP and if it was shielded for example in a thick metal box or garage or even if it was underground in a basement or car park. But this aside when they emerged to find a plane had crashed on them it was very convenient for the car to have no damage and to have a path through the rubble to make their escape.
I had shown the original film of 1953 to my 11 and 8 year old a few weeks ago and they enjoyed it and even got a bit scared with it. The thing missing in this film is ambiance, no time given to get any real suspense, just burn baby burn. I will not be letting the kids see this one yet (it's a 12A in the UK) for this reason.
Not a good remake as so many aren't.