Seemed Like A Cross Between Independence Day And The Day After Tomorrow.

Rating: Null/10 (2 July 2005)

War Of The Worlds was a science fiction flick that far exceeded my expectations. To be honest, I had no intentions of seeing this movie. I have never read the book or seen the original. In fact, the only reason I saw the movie was because the large line at the theater piqued my curiosity. That and the fact that I had family in town to see the movie with. I was not disappointed. The beginning of the movie (and at various points throughout), was very similar to The Day After Tomorrow, with all the scenes of storms and people running away en masse. Later, Independence Day came to mind because of the way the humans were trying to figure out how to kill the invading aliens along with other little details. Other movies also came to mind but those were the two major ones.
The plot is almost too simple. Earth is attacked by aliens after millions of years of planning. Upon the attack the humans run away and eventually, figure out they have to find a way to overcome the unsurmountable odds or be wiped out completely. One of the major differences between this movie and Independence Day is that ID had many stories and families being tied together by this one story. War of the Worlds focuses on one family, The Ferriers.
Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) has just picked up his kids from his divorced wife for the weekend and has no major plans until this unusual storm starts to brew. In what seemed like an instant, all hell broke loose and aliens which were transplanted into these ancient war machines buried under the Earth and started wreaking havoc. That is the movie in a nutshell, folks. The rest of the time The Ferriers are running from their attackers and along the way, getting closer and bridging the gaps that have apparently formed between Ray and his kids. The story is actually a bit more complicated but I do not want to go on too long about it.
Dakota Fanning is an amazing little actress to be able to tackle a role like this and to be so convincing. I found Justin Chatwin, the actor who played Robbie Ferrier, to be annoying. Every movie usually has an annoying character and Robbie was it. Also, Tim Robbins stood out as the scared stupid Ogilvy.
The special effects, although I have read to the contrary, were top notch. The close-ups of the war machines, especially the eye things, were pretty cool, along with the explosions, etc. Spielberg did a good job of keeping most of the special effects, especially the aliens and their machines, out of the trailers and ruining the surprises. I feel I enjoyed the movie more without knowing anything about it beforehand.
This is what The Day After Tomorrow should have been like and would recommend this over "Day After" anytime. As I mentioned before, I have not read the book so I am not sure how the ending is meant to be. If the ending of the movie is just being true to the book, then that's cool. If not, it left a little something to be desired. Without adding spoilers, I can not really get into why, but it just seemed a little unfulfilling. However, that is just a small portion of the film that I happened to dislike. Overall, I felt Steven Spielberg did an excellent job and I salute him. 8.5/10