Selfishness?

Rating: 3/10 (4 July 2005)

Apparently we don't need invaders to defeat us, we have already rotted to the bone. Simply look at how things have changed from the 1953 film version. In 2005, everybody is on their own. Right away we are hit with a divorced father having to deal with children whom he hardly knows. When the big trouble arise, none of the citizens team up. The hero has a van but it is only for his family. How can he drive past others without offering help? People act stupidly and selfishly throughout the film, and the protagonist is not a role model and is, in fact, a murderer.
There is no human dignity in this movie, no conquest performed by the minds and hands of our civilization to overcome impossible odds. Just our good fortune that the Creator fixed things for us way back when. Yet there is not thankfulness nor respect for this miracle in the movie. Just a cursory explanation in voice over to what happened and then grab the hat and get out of there. H.G. Wells said it more eloquently in his novel. Obviously, those words do not meet with modern morality. A pity, I say.
In 1953, the humans are saved as they gather together in a sanctuary, to comfort and be with one another to meet the end with grace. In 2005, a church is destroyed immediately, and there is no one to call to a higher power throughout the the movie. I suppose in 2005 we are all too smart to believe in anything beyond ourselves. If we are all there is, then that is the actual horror of this movie because from what I saw, we are nothing to brag about.
The aliens in this movie are not much different from ourselves. We hold a mirror up to them in one scene, perhaps we should have directed it at ourselves, instead.