Just a few botches on an otherwise good remake

Rating: 7/10 (21 December 2008)

This was a fairly good update to the classic movie. However, with a couple simple changes, it could have been a 10 instead of a 7.
1) Technically, the idea that the tripod machines were buried millennia before the invasion is just silly. How could the Martians have anticipated the rise of a technological human civilization so far in advance? Wouldn't the Martian's own technology also have advanced in the intervening thousands of years and wouldn't they want to use their own latest and greatest against us? Wouldn't they have aircraft? The tripods were cool, but they should have arrived in massive flying ships, perhaps similar to the swan-like machines in the original.
2) Worse was missing the pivotal scene in the church. OK, Cruise is a Scientologist, and Spielberg wouldn't put him or either of his on-screen children in a Christian church. So, why not show people praying in synagogues, mosques, churches, and reflecting alone in their homes? The whole point is that when we are in our deepest despair, facing certain death, most of us will turn to faith in a higher power. At least, we contemplate our own mortality. Is showing faith in God considered lame in the 21st Century? Would it have made Tom Cruise less of a Scientologist? I hope not, faith is one of the things that makes us human, and what made the ending of the original film poignant and uplifting. Missing that scene is to have missed the whole point of the story.
If you doubt this, read the last lines of the original... in memorable quotes: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0407304/quotes