An excellent adaptation that gives accurate representation of the book and homage to the old movie

Rating: 9/10 (29 June 2005)

****SOME SPOILERS**** When I first heard that War of the Worlds was going to be released into theaters, I immediately thought, "Great. Someone's remaking the old classic and turning it into the action movie of the year. Pshaw." However, then I saw the trailers and realized that it wasn't remaking the movie--it was adapting the book. The book itself is a thrilling, eerie, frightening story of human nature and it's reaction to a hostile alien threat. Things that were left out of the original were the red weed, the black fog, the alien tripods, and the main character himself--a man, desperate to get back to his wife, whom he'd sent to the hills for safety.
This version of War of the Worlds is the most fabulous and faithful I've seen. The few changes that were made were perfectly acceptable--modern times being the most obvious, as the book was set in 1890s England. What few items were left out--like the black fog the aliens used to suffocate the humans--was all right, as they made the aliens invincible instead of vulnerable, like in the books. Also, the aliens themselves were changed, but were still perfectly awful--also, it paid homage to the old movie, with the eerie suctioned hand dragging itself out of the ship as it died.
The mobs in the movie had to be the creepiest and scariest part of the movie, simply because they were a little too close to reality than one would like to think. People like to imagine that they'd be rational if something like this happened, and like to think that they wouldn't be so animal as to attack people and turn upon them just to get something that they didn't have. However, history has shown the opposite. The brutal nature of the mobs in the movie was chilling and frighteningly accurate--quite possibly the scariest moment of the movie Morgan Freeman as the narrator was an excellent choice--he had already proved himself to be a marvelous narrator with his performance in The Shawshank redemption.
Tom Cruise portrays a tortured man, desperate to save his family and get back to his ex-wife--everything was perfectly in line with the main character in the book.
Tim Robbins was a combination of two of the characters and played them excellently--a man driven insane by the loss of his family and the prospect of being completely drained and used as fertilizer.
Overall, I give the movie nine stars--it was an excellent source of entertainment as well as horror. Very well done.