The negativity is ridiculous.

Rating: 10/10 (3 July 2005)

Once again I find myself utterly confused as to why so many people want to tear apart such a breathtaking, visceral film such as "War of the Worlds." The one area I have seen repeatedly take a beating is the ending, which is not only faithful to the original book, but also makes sense (at least in the context of this type of story). This isn't the "gung-ho, let's ram our fighter jet into the alien ship while David Arnold's overpowering, triumphant, patriotic theme ushers rednecks across the world to cheer on their favorite drunk" of Independence Day. This film is about a family fighting to stay alive, using the alien "invasion" as a backdrop, but surely not as a second thought.
And even despite the family messages and what have you, the film is incredibly terrifying. It's not too long (barely scraping the 2 hour mark) and it seemed like an hour and fifty minutes of that runtime was dedicated to blowing up people, buildings, and just about everything else. Also, the acting is simply incredible, especially when Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning are acting together during the many intense sequences throughout the film (which also happens to cover the majority of the running time). But instead of being "Independence Day II: Windows XP Edition," we get an adrenaline-filled horror/suspense title that recalls Spielberg's "Jaws" and "Jurassic Park" days, in which all he wants to do is provide a few hours of terror. With "War of the Worlds," he certainly accomplishes this task. Whatever happened to the idea of going to the movies for a fun time?