Amazing Fantasy Achievement, with Terrorist Implications !!!

Rating: 9/10 (19 July 2005)

H. G. Wells, whose imagination ran deep before the advent of computers, could NOT have conceived a better attempt to capture his work , than what Director Spielberg has created. George Pal would have Loved it.
Ray Ferrier(Tom Cruise), is the Joe six-pack anti-hero, king of his dysfunctional ,but elusive domain. His children daughter Rachel Ferrier(Dakota Fanning), and older son Robbie(Justin Chatwin) are perfectly cast as the modern day survivalist children , caught between extended families.
Set in present time New Jersey, Tom's day starts as any other, but after the children arrive for a visit, so does an electric impulse storm, and then chaos .
Tom goes to investigate the electric strikes, when the giant tripod creature emerges from below, and starts disintegrating the population !
The chase is on for sanctuary , and Cruise nabs one of the few working vehicles to get out of town.
Spielberg pacing is superb, and he carefully selects, each temporary reality, and I mean temporary . He also never lets you get TOO comfortable with your surroundings, because you never know what is below your feet or if it is day or night.
Huamnity is demoted to it's lowest level, with each passing attack, Survival Mode . With the Tripod creatures running amok, safety is difficult to come by and the Ferrier family runs into refugees and eventually becomes one with the masses !
Spielberg evolves the Tripod creatures subtly,as they extricate themselves from the Earth, and the dirt subtly drops back to the ground.Then the Tripod machines whirl and wind up the life from inside, and howl a booming eerie sound, as they stretch for the sky. Just Terrific . The killing starts just after the sound, similar to a Pavlavin experiment, just with death as the substitute .
Tripods inherit the Earth, and extinguish life wherever they pop up from .
This is not a War, but annihilation . Conventional weapons have no effect against the Tripod creatures and their protective shield .
Dakota Fanning metaphors innocence and Justin Chatwin is the fiery adolescent who has estranged feelings for his father , but wants to fight the creatures under any circumstances . Part of the essence of this film explores each person's perception of reality, and how easy it is to change , for better or for worse .
Terrific in it's scope, this is not a perfect film, but the few flaws are ignored by the suspension of disbelief, sci-fi fans take with them when they buy the tickets.
The terrorist implications are parallel because some of the prevailing thinking is that they may already be here .
There is one classic scene when Cruise opens the door from the house where he had taken refuge on a battle scene, and discovers that the Aliens are reinventing the topography to their way of life, but it is also close to Dorothy opening the door to Munchkinland from the Wizard of Oz, clever .
All in all, a GREAT effort from Team Spielberg, but you would have thought, if the Aliens were so advanced to place weapons of destruction in place for colonization, they might have thought about vaccine ?
Also look for Gene Barry and Ann Robinson, the two main stars of the original WOTW.
Also, in the ending statement, you will find that this paradox also answers the question posed in the 1950's film, "The Incredible Shrinking Man .