Nothing special besides the initial Alien attack

Rating: 5/10 (9 January 2014)

The initial invasion is brilliantly depicted. The sound design is just awesome. I bet those scenes can be reused to make a really good movie.
The rest is just one of a million "american father tries to save his family in peril" stories. One of the war-based ones. Not among the best of those although Tom Cruise makes a more likable and less stereotypical father than most. Usually it's an old fashioned patriarch. Tom Cruise is more of an supposedly irresponsible young guy with a big heart. Apart from that: lots of special effects, a variety of Sci-Fi threats, a not too complicated story in many small adventures.
Well that's it I guess.
Oh wait: one thing about the original might be worth mentioning. The intro contains a passage that somehow doesn't fit this film at all as I see it. The neat assortment of good and evil this film brings about somehow isn't to be found in this one...
Here it is: "And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?" -from "War of the Worlds" by H.G. Wells