War

A fairly busy day for me today. At noon I went over to Polly's house to swim and hang out. Gabo was also there. Good times all round.

At five-thirty I met up with Gus. We got some food (cheese-steak stromboli = good), then we were off to the theater to take in a movie. The movie? War of the Worlds.

I seem to have a review style emerging, so I'm just going to go with that.

Disclaimer: I have read the book, so I am going to be nit-picking like anything. Oh yeah, some spoilers too.

• Morgan Freeman as narrator. Off to a good start.
• Tom Cruise. Worse-getting.
• Why does his daughter have to be so damn creepy?
• The movie is set in America. I can handle this.
• It's been modernized, with EMP's and so on. Again, I can handle this.
• The aliens are riding lighting bolts. Nnnno.
• The Tripods have been buried for a million years or something. Again, nnnno. Why not?
  • Why would you wait until a reasonably intelligent species had dominated the planet to invade?
  • Why not take it while there would not be any (real) resistance?
  • Why wait until after a species has gotten a good ways towards using up a large portion of natural resources (okay, the Tripods seem to run on blood, not oil, but still) and have polluted everything they could?
  • Um, I'm willing to allow that maybe three of the Tripods could be buried under the earth without anybody noticing, but these things are everywhere, under roads, everyplace. Somebody would have seen something.
  • I am willing to allow that maybe when they buried them the bacteria that's so lethal to them hadn't evolved yet, so they didn't notice they were all dying, but it shouldn't even be an issue.
  This is why the book made (more) sense.
• What did you do to my heat-ray, dammit? This is just some sort of sissy cremator laser or something. Sure, leave their clothes intact, that makes sense.
• So, these "vast" intellects haven't advanced past the flashlight stage, huh? No infrared, no x-rays, nothing. Right.
• The aliens look all wrong.
• I really don't need the inter-family drama, the drama of the alien apocalypse really is enough.
• The fire-train is cool. It can stay.
• In their weakened state, the shields of the Tripods fail. Now, it may just be me, but something as vital as a freakin' shield seems like it would have emergency back-up resources and so on, since you'd kind of need them most while weakened. I guess vast intellects think differently, though.
• How the hell does Robbie survive?
• Okay, so a plane crashes into their house, and somehow the van is untouched. Right.
• I hate Tom Cruise.

So, overall, I didn't like it very much. The cinematography was aiight, as were the special effects, but the rest... Just leave well enough alone, okay, Spielberg?

In closing, I have to recommend the eComic, or, y'know, the book, over seeing the movie.