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War of the worlds


Hobbes

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***SPOILERS***

 

 

 

No, not that bit. I'm talking about the time when they first see the Martian weed, and one of the tripods pins a human to the ground and jams that whopping great needle into them, not when they're being plucked out of the cage.

You're right, sometimes it is better not to show what happened (like the battle scene, and all that was left was the flaming Humvees) but sometimes it IS good to show what happens. Notice the heat rays are a lot less spectacular, too. No one running around on fire...

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***SPOILERS***

 

No one goes to war with just one weapon. :P

 

There was one obvious use of the heat ray on a train, when they stopped at the crossing and the passenger train went past with fire spilling out of it's windows. Obviously if the blasts were REALLY hot, or were not just pure heat but something else, we could be turned to charcoal dust or something instantly, and if hot enough it would have a destructive effect on stone and steel, too.

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****SPOILERS****

 

The burning train scene is one of the best. The gates come down, the refugees stop in an orderly fashion to wait for the train and then it speeds past them and no one says anything afterwards.

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Yeah, I'd forgotten what an incredible image that was. The hope of the arrival dashed yet again by an image out of time and history. Like finding the Mary Celeste adrift at sea, all hands gone, with warm meals still sitting on the tables....

 

Oh, no spoiler warning, by the way: if you've not seen the movie, you shouldn't be reading this thread this deeply.

 

I liked the way the violence was handled, overall. I think that the big needle scene was sorta dumb, and could have been a lot more horrifying; have the thing move slowly behind the car and prod the guy, listen to his screams and watch him try to escape before maybe simply HEARING the coup de grace...

 

Overall, though, I loved how much Spiggy left to the imagination. Though I would have been happy to never see the Martians.

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So would Tom Cruise... :P

 

I've just seen it, and it was definatly a lot grimmer than ET.

 

Overall, I liked it, but I do have a couple of quibbles:

 

They never explained why the aliens sent down the fighting machines, and then waited for countless centuries before sending down the operators. Could this have been an allegory for Al Qaeda sleeper cells?

 

The Red Weed was never explained. People who hadn't read the book wouldn't have had a clue what was going on there.

 

I think the violence and the alien dietary habits meant that the film should have been given a 15 rating, and not the 12a rating it was given in the UK.

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They never explained why the aliens sent down the fighting machines, and then waited for countless centuries before sending down the operators. Could this have been an allegory for Al Qaeda sleeper cells?

 

The Red Weed was never explained. People who hadn't read the book wouldn't have had a clue what was going on there.

 

I think the violence and the alien dietary habits meant that the film should have been given a 15 rating, and not the 12a rating it was given in the UK.

 

I love how they just forgot that first bit. It was half-discussed between Cruise and Robbins, and then that was that. Brilliant tying up of loose ends there, Shpielberg. Sack that scriptwriter.

 

I think the Martian Weed's purpose would have been obvious, but if not, those of us that have read the book get to feel superior. :P

 

As for the rating, I thought the film just plain wimped out in places. Should have been more explicit and given an 18, but they're too hungry to make money to worry about that.

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They never explained why the aliens sent down the fighting machines, and then waited for countless centuries before sending down the operators.  Could this have been an allegory for Al Qaeda sleeper cells?

 

 

There's a lot of visual references to the GWOT on the movie: the crashed plane and the NY skyline at the beginning, plus the ash covered Cruise and the papers/clothing falling from the air.

 

Overall I noticed a lot of 'hidden' messages. At the beginning when Earth is being shown there's a red light on space (Mars?) that resolves itself into a red traffic light. When the church's façade is sliding you can see on the shop's signs a couple of almost comical messages, like Insurance and so on.

 

The Red Weed was never explained.  People who hadn't read the book wouldn't have had a clue what was going on there.

 

I noticed the red weed too, but since it wasn't explained my first impression was that it was rivulets of blood on the landscape (like when Cruise notices them on the basement's window), until I remembered it from the book. Surely gives a creepier look than merely explaining that it was a weed.

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There's a lot of visual references to the GWOT on the movie: the crashed plane and the NY skyline at the beginning, plus the ash covered Cruise and the papers/clothing falling from the air.

 

I think you may be reaching there. Although then again, maybe not.

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That noticeboard full of pictures of the missing that had been placed there by desperate relatives reminded me of the similar tragic noticeboards that cropped up in the aftermath of 9/11 and, prophetically, the London Underground bombing.

 

In the book, the 1938 broadcast and the 1953 film, the aliens came down with their machines. If they had been on Earth before, they would have discovered the dangers, and they would have picked some other planet to invade. The idea of the sleeping machines might have been inspired by the 1988-89 TV series; that postulated that the aliens of 1953 had merely gone into hibernation and were now awakening and taking over peoples bodies.

 

It was still better than Independence Day. Those aliens only had themselves to blame for buying Windows NT for their computer systems and not bothering to get some anti-virus software while they were in the shop :P

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"Races across the galaxy curse Windows..."

 

That noticeboard full of pictures of the missing that had been placed there by desperate relatives reminded me of the similar tragic noticeboards that cropped up in the aftermath of 9/11 and, prophetically, the London Underground bombing.

 

They're in quite a few films, including 28 Days Later. I know Shpielberg isn't subtle, but surely he wouldn't be this...dim?

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