Everything I had hoped it would be!

Rating: 9/10 (6 July 2005)

The good news for me was that I had taken everything into consideration before I saw it. I had read the book and seen the original 1953 movie and heard an audio tape of the 1938 radio broadcast. So, naturally I knew how it would end. Also, I knew quite awhile ago that Spielberg was directing and Cruise was starring. Thus, I knew that everything would be wrapped up in a nice bow with the main characters being spared and the side characters being offed (just like in Jurassic Park or the Indiana Jones movies) and I would have to deal with Tom Cruise's standard intense style of acting. All these things I have learned to live with as Hollywood facts of life. Hollywood fact # 89: You can't have a hundred million dollar budget for a summer blockbuster and then kill children who are main characters. If the movie is about an alien invasion of Earth then we must except that this is a fantasy and thus other stretches of credibility should also be accepted.
I feel sorry for the people who can't just suspend disbelief and enjoy a well made movie. Like those people who watch space battle sequences and then complain that you can't hear sound in space.
But if you are not a jaded and cynical person and want to see an exceptionally well made remake of the classic tale then you are going to be thrilled to death.
I, myself was incredibly thrilled b/c this is the first time that H.G. Wells' original vision of a tripodal war machine (as opposed to the flying machines in the '53 version) has finally been realized on the big screen. And they look fantastic! Insect like. Totally Alien. Terrifying. The moment the first one finally erupts from the street, I felt a surge of cold dread run through my veins. The sound it makes is the sound of doom. You feel like you are there on the street watching as it happens and realize just how hopeless the situation would be. I love how, as the tripod attains its full height and surveys the situation, you get a sense that the alien inside is cracking its knuckles in anticipation. And then comes the heat ray annihilation and my heart just kept pounding throughout the rest of the movie.
The characters are very believable. This is not your happy, glowing cereal box family. This is a self-centered, unlikable jerk of a father coming to terms not only with the unfathomable annihilation threatening the world but also with the fact that he is so out of touch with his estranged children he doesn't even know that his eight year old daughter is allergic to peanuts.
One of the most frightening sequences in the movie, I'm happy to say, is lifted right out of the book where Ray and his daughter must hide in a basement with a ranting survivalist as the aliens puree humans all around them and then send in their spy tentacle to search for survivors.
The movie maintains a sense of gritty realism throughout with panicked mob scenes, bodies floating down a river and a sense of being completely cut off (no scenes of familiar landmarks like the Empire State Building or the Capitol Building being destroyed, only regular old buildings in regular old towns).
And for all those people griping about so called "plot holes" they should think first about whether it's an actual "plot inconsistency" or whether it just wasn't spelled out in detail b/c for the normal American family, they don't know everything, they only know what they observed.
Bottom line: If you go into this movie WANTING to be entertained, you will be. This is right up there with "Jurassic Park" and "Jaws". This movie is everything that "Independence Day" and "Signs" were not.
Along with "Batman Begins" this is the blockbuster movie event of the summer to see. Again and again.