For aliens that are supposedly thousands of years ahead of us, they sure are stupid!

Rating: 6/10 (6 January 2006)

There is a fundamental flaw with any movie that tries to depict an alien invasion.... the humans win! Look, indigenous tribes in the Americas didn't do well against their more advanced European invaders, and humans sure as heck don't have a chance against a species that has no problem whatsoever travelling the speed of light. I'm almost offended that Steven Spielberg expected me to take this stuff serious. At least in "Independence Day," I never once get the impression that the director expects me to find his film symbolic or realistic. Instead of the bad parent anti-hero in Tom Cruise who lucks himself into survival, we get the President of the United States yelling "Booyah!" as he fires missiles off his jet. Maybe "War of the Worlds" made sense fifty years ago when it was first transferred to the big screen, but now, it's one of those movies that makes you say to yourself, "Yeah... sure.... mkay." For sophisticated beings, aliens sure do pick the biggest clunkiest invasion tools such as the giant tripods that they use to storm through cities picking off humans one by one, and apparently, they have yet to perfect heat sensors, x-rays or anything that would allow them to hunt humans through a method other than visual and audio detection. Since the movie admits that they have been planning this invasion for a looooong time, you would think aliens would invent an attack plan far more lethal and easier, like say... a mutated virus? Oh wait, I forgot, that's how they die... again! Lucky for us, these aliens spent so much time on quantum physics, that never had a chance to sit in a basic biology class and discover the tiny world of germs. If you want to watch a classic Spielberg alien flick, then grab "Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind" as soon as possible, if you want an alien invasion cheese fest that at least pumps you up, rent "Independence Day." Spielberg is too talented to waste his time on this "War of the Worlds" fluff.