Sadly, not "Spielberg at his best" as some critics say.

Rating: 6/10 (19 October 2012)

I have read the actual novel twice, I have seen the movie now twice, once in the theatre and now on DVD. I have also watched the George Pal movie with Gene Barry many times, although never on the big screen. My disappointment in the Steven Spielberg version has nothing to do with the acting, or the screenplay, or the direction. It has nothing to do with the creativity (although I still prefer cylinders raining down across the country).
I loved the tripod machines. They were perfect! Their design and function were right on point and marvelous--actually very similar to the sketches on the old copy of the HG Wells anthology I read. The aliens, while nothing like their description in the book, were wonderful. The book's blobby, tentacled things with big eyes and beak-like mouths might come out cheesy, anyway, if not done properly. I thank director Spielberg for including elements more aligned to the 1953 movie: chopping off the camera probe in the farmhouse, the last movements of the actually alien at the end of the movie, and seeing Gene Barry.
I have tried but have not been able to overcome the cinematography and special effects. The movie was, paradoxically, over-produced. First of all, the blue/green screen effects were so obvious. The edges of a person or object in front of the screen looked pixellated. There were too many scenes of Tom Cruise or others running away from a flat blue screen with exterior studio lights positioned next to or in front of the trajectory of action along with smoke and dust that were supposed to bridge the gap from computer image to reality. The storm clouds in the beginning of the film were somehow strangely layered around the steel and concrete bridge. Even when looking out windows, the pixilated boundary between actor and background was obvious. In addition, most of the movie is obviously filmed on a studio indoor or outdoor lot. BUnlike in CE3K or E.T., W of the W's feels claustrophobic, and closed, stuck within the four walls of the camera frame. The film was just too "studioed": the ferry scene on Hudson with an indoor river, every hill or valley was indoor studio. The skies look fake, the ground looks fake. The ferry looks like it will hit the ceiling of the studio before it could even hit the edge of the tripod. The tripods rise up to the top of the studio's ceiling. On battles, the smoke and flames shoot right out from between the virtual canvas backdrop and the artificial hill. Jeeps rolling by engulfed in flames looked something out of Tim Burton's Invaders from Mars. Even at the end of the film, the image of the falling tripod against the building would not even be close to believable without the additional animatronics spilling forward onto the feet of the actors.
The special effects of CE3K still remain, as far as I am concerned,the standard by which all space/alien movies are to be compared. Independence Day met that standard. Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Last Crusade meet that test. In WOTW, Spielberg is bending over backwards, hitting us over the head, to tell us that all these events occurred inside a very large studio. Why? I am not sure. In contrast, the exterior shots of CE3K, E.T., Raiders, etc., feel and look exterior (even when they weren't). It was disappointingly obvious that 90% of the exterior shots in WOTW were actually INterior shots.