No-Dooz will help!

Rating: 5/10 (13 January 2006)

In some ways this film is much better and more true to the Wells book than the 1953 George Pal classic. However Steven Spielberg kind of forgot to make people we would actually care about surviving, in fact, you want to martians to win.
You don't really feel for the family of Tom Cruise's Character in the film at all. He is slacker that really has nothing to do with his kids, the kids have all kinds of issues and are for the most part annoying and his ex-wife is a meddlesome shrew. Go Martians, Go!
What the film got right, the Martian ships. Tower tripods with a thirst for human blood. The sound they made when readying for an attack, the Jeff Wayne album was much better here and the red weed. Herein lies the problem, mans useless fight against the invaders was push to the back or not even shown in the film. Instead we get the annoying family. This is fine if you care about the people and have a good story line. Take the movie testament. They had no effects in this story about nuclear war and its aftermath, they did not need to, the story told it all.
Another problem is that the invaders machines were always here buried underground for perhaps a million years or more. Hmmm. With all those subways, oil wells, mines, geological and tectonic shifts we never bumped into any of them. If they were buried so deep so we and time would not expose them then they would have cause a lot more damage when the released themselves from their self imposed prison.
Those who know the Wells classic probably saw hope at times. The man who wants to live underground, the feeder ships, the red weed, the ferry at the river, all of these coming close to the Wells classic but all squandered in the name of Tom Cruise's face time on the screen.
You used to have good movies in you Steven......What happened.