Not bad, but read the book, it's 100 times better

Rating: 6/10 (18 July 2005)

I just saw this movie this past Thursday night. Upon the rolling of the ending credits, my friends and I were not sure how we felt about this movie. The movie is relatively faithful to the novel in many ways, which is a good thing for fans of Wells' science fiction such as myself. My biggest problem with the movie lies with how the aliens die.
As in the novel, the aliens catch earth viruses and die. Now my problem lies here: In 1898, when Wells wrote the novel, science was just touching the surface of the nature of viruses and bacteria. So Wells having the aliens die from infection was a brilliant stroke of realism. However, in the present day, we have infinitely greater knowledge of viruses and bacteria than in 1898. We know the dangers of being exposed to unknown viruses and bacteria. So thus the Aliens in the movie should have also known the dangers. Hell, they should have sent a probe (just like the probe we sent to Mars) to test the planet for dangerous microbes.
However, I did enjoy seeing the tripods of Wells' novel brought to life. But you should probably read the book before seeing this movie or the 1953 version.