A total waste

Rating: 3/10 (6 October 2005)

This was a special-effects ladened, badly written, HG Wells spinning in his grave, totally wasted opportunity that merely added to my already low opinion of the director and leading man.
But if you think I minced my words, I'll add the following.
First, it's fine to give a nod to an original, but you shouldn't be blatant about it. I thought the wholesale borrowing of stuff from the 1950s 'War of the worlds' was a little annoying, the seeing-eye snake and the dead alien hand at the end were two examples that sprang immediately to mind, and this is from someone who hasn't seen the movie since the 1980s.
Second, if you're going to make a plot-point based on science, the least you can do is get the science right. After a cursory search on the internet -- that suppository (sic) of all knowledge and wisdom -- I found huge debates on the use of Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) in the story. This should have been made clear or not used at all. Even a trashy movie like 'Broken Arrow' explained this plot-point to a degree that could be understood.
Third, the burying of the war machines was just complete and utter tripe. Surveys of the ground when the cities were built and subsequent demolition and rebuilding would have picked things like that up. Even Wells didn't make a mistake like that when he wrote the book over a hundred years ago. His machines came in the traditional way - via meteorite!
Fourth, the devastation wrought by a 747 crashing to the ground has to be seen to be believed, especially as the SUV that Cruise and co. stole seemed to survive untouched. All I can say is that world governments could save a fortune on their defense budgets by purchasing a fleet of these babies rather than blowing it all on tanks and Hummers. On a slightly related tangent, it won't just be the cockroaches that survive the holocaust, it'll be the damn off-road vehicles too!
Fifth, the news crew was an appalling we-need-some-exposition-here-quick approach to already messy storytelling. If the Family Cruise had been picked up by these news people, I could see the point of having them there, but all they did was talk a bit and bugger off without even offering them a lift. Furthermore, the explanations they gave didn't add anything to the movie and were only there to state how aliens got into the machines and that other countries were under attack. As for the former, the aliens could have been in the machines since the year dot, they could have been transported via the lightening a'la 'Star Trek'; bottom line: who cares, especially since the aliens were revealed later. And for the latter, I felt like slapping my forehead and saying, "Duhhh, and here I was thinking the aliens only had a grudge with America". Even 'Independence Day' handled this better, albeit in a highly patronizing way.
Sixth, we have the Deadly-Hollywood-Logic approach to a capture and escape that reads like a video game scenario. Your daughter has been captured by a marauding tripod, you obtain some handily located explosives, you get captured by the very same tripod that's got your child, you are picked as the next victim to be reduced to fertilizer, and you are saved (after shoving grenades up the asses of the baddies) by the same people who were either unable or unwilling to save the previous victims of the aliens. Add to this the appalling acting from the military officer and the devastatingly idiotic line that follows ("Fire in the hole"?! What hysterically panicked civilian is going to understand that for god's sake?) and as the final jaw-dropper, the captives to survive a drop from 4 stories in the air and escape the obviously faultily constructed alien cage. Give me a break!
But the penultimate slap in the face, to this whole affair, was the homecoming. Spielberg and the script writers definitely saved the best for last.
Here we have a country that is supposedly in chaos. Great areas have been destroyed, humanity has been brought to its knees and the slums of Chicago have been flattened. But, the promised land beckons: we have a rich neighborhood that the wife and family lives in that is completely untouched; no zap gun damage, no red weed, just a couple of cars with the engines exposed. Even the aliens recognize good real estate when they see it! Perhaps the whole invasion was only a ruse; the aliens were really in the employ of rich developers and paid a handsome sum to wipe out the slums of the world to be later purchased and redeveloped into prestige apartments suitable for Yuppies, Guppies and the occasional small investor trying to double their money in an uncertain world. Oh, and the aliens of course. And the minor issue of excess population and homelessness was solved neatly by turning them all into red weed fertilizer. Blood and Bone isn't just a snappy name, folks.
But wait, there's more. As the final insult, and jaw dropping proof that Spielberg has no guts, Cruise is greeted not only by the family (shaken but not stirred), but also by the errant son who, furthermore, has no broken bones, no bandages, not a scratch on him. After the carnage that occurred the other side of the hill which he was determined to get to, I'd have expected him either not to have returned at all, or to at least have lost something -- an eye, a limb, bladder control -- something, anything. The son's survival just goes to prove that there really are no consequences for being a complete and utter idiot.
I could have lived with the other things, but this final touch was just incredibly insulting.