Get up and go see this movie now it's the best movie of the year !!! GO GO GO . The whole movie keeps you on the edge of your seat and is very realistic and well done . Not some cheezeball chalked with corny lines hokey space drama . This is closer to a horror flick then an action movie . I loved every minute of it and going to go see it again this weekend . I don't wanna mention any spoilers yet until more people have gone and seen it . It's really good and your gonna love so don't wait till DVD this is one worth seeing in the theatres.
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Spoilers ahead, yarrrggh. (Highlight to Read)
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The Tripods, holy crap damn fart shit. They were just massive, and with Spielbergs shots all from down low at the characters point of view, their size was just intensified. I remember when I first saw them kicking arse, I thought just how crazy Halflife 2 would have been if the striders were that huge.
The scene where you see all the army guys going up the hill to battle the tripods, it cuts to a shot of cruise looking up at them and then BAM these fighter jets fly over extremely low, unexpected, you could almost touch them, that was nuts.
The sound was incredible!
Favourite thing about the film is that there isn't any gung ho stuff like ID4, it treats the whole thing a lot more seriously. Similar feel to the original Jurassic Park.
I don't particularly like Tom Cruise, but he did quite well in this.
Main knitpick was with the Son, I mean what the hell does he think he is going to be able to do. Run up and poke the Tripods with a stick, throw rocks at it? Fair enough he wanted to help early on, but in the main battle nothing can stop the Tripods, they are getting their arses kicked, and he still wants to go? Dumbarse.
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Hats off to ILM, they did extremely well with this one!
Definately a must see on the big screen, DVD will not even come close.
Spoilers!!!!!!
the part where tom cruise snowboards down a moutain on a UFO with a rocket launcher!! totally extreme!! and the one alien that looked like an infested vagina! holy crap that was nuts in the butt dude!! then the hot alien on human orgy in the cathedral, insane CG!! the penis shader on the alien prince was so cool and sparkely.. war of world changed what i thought a movie could be and made me think about life in ways i never thought possible.. the heart warming ending where the alien saves the grandma.. i friggen cried.. dude i mean for real.. i cried.. i want the coffee mug now as a symbol of the impact that this movie will have on culture and the world.. i believe it will bring about world piece.. i hope spielburg gets a nobel prize for this.
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spoilers
i thought leting the son live was a complete cop out and really hurt the movie
SPOILERS!!!!
that horn the alien tripods sounded off before going to smack town on the humans was particularly scary.
SPOILERS*****
The eye probe was a part for me that was intense . It was played out so well . I mean the whole hide and seek thing ans then they are almost caught several times was just on edge the whole time it was great .
So what were those Red Plants ? I kinda figured that was there way of Teraforming the planet to be more like there home planet and blood was the furtilizer ? Ohh man and that part were they get captured and then the thing comes down and sucks the guy into the vagina thing was so freaky !...To many cool parts
It looked more like an anus to me :P
Red plants = the red weed from Jeff Wayne's concept album (and probably the book - haven't read it), which was meant to spread over the globe - I think it was meant to be for food? Or possibly change the atmosphere?
as a damn good movie, i definately would not say best movie of the year, but it was damn good
spoilers
i thought leting the son live was a complete cop out and really hurt the movie
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What mojo said.
Does Tom convert the aliens to scientology?
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Jesus, can't people leave the guy alone? The movie is great, leave it at that.
oh yeah, spoiler.
i loved it, was awesome.
Scott
if the eiffel tower,white,house,statue of libertay arent hit first how can these things be described as a higer form of life
As far as I'm concerned being in love is a perfect reason for being crazy/happy. Who cares who's watching.
-R
- The aliens had 3 legs,3 toes one back foot 2 foward and 4 small arms under their chest
-Conincidently so did the attack tripods,3 legs,3 toes and min appendiges under the body,hell ever the main hull was in the shape of their heads
-Little bit of symbolisim,when tom's character picks up a piece of the plant and it crumbles,the statue was of a minuteman who helo off the british in the revolutionary war,the minuteman statue pans around and shows that its pointing directly at the recently fallen tripod
-When tom and the little girl are captured,under the undercarrige of the ship there are examples of the aliens handwriting.
-this i swear i saw this,in the narrative intro,in the clouds above earth,an outline of a human skull is in the clouds,two shots feature the plant from space and both seem ed to have it
_ the holding cages in the tripod were made of interlocking sliding rings,one slide would open the top one slide would close it.
-When the 3 main characters are walking to the ferry,there are people holding signs of lost loved ones,one sign read "the devil is here"
-Tim robbins character was mumbling right before he was killed,i think that provided some insight on what the red stuff was,he said "i aint gonna be no fertilizer" transforming our environment maybe
-The only 2 things which were remeniscent of the 1950's original were the aliens hands and the probe eye looked alot like the beam emmiter from the first movies aliens
= after the 3 main characters escape the boat and see all the empty clothing falling,the little girl got a poncho from it,wearing dead peoples clothing
-kids mother was eowyn from Lotr Rohan people,glad too see all those actors getting work
one question,if they planted all those ships in the earth before humans?? wh not take over back then,are they technology harvesters maybe? let a race grow evolve,when they get advanced enough,take over and see what they made?
Wouldn't you think that a superior life form would find a much more efficient way to do us all in though? Oh well, I still enjoyed.
***SPOILER***
I also agree that it was a poor decision to have the son be alive at the end. My biggest fear watching it however was that they would kill off the step-dad and have Tom Cruise get back together with the mom at the end. At least they didn't go there.
Enjoyable movie. Dumb, but enjoyable. Nowhere near as good as Batman Begins, IMHO.
My guess is the aliens wanted to take over Earth in order to live in all the basements they left untouched. Seriously, it was like they were house-hunting for the right basement or something.
Also, I suspect that they haven't invented the wheel. Or the infra-red detector. Note to all invading aliens: camera-eye-tentacles aren't infallible!
On a positive note, he DID make the tripods quite true to the book and VERY cool. I agree, the fog horn thing and the heat ray were nasty. The whole fertilizer thing has shock value, but made no sense.
sigh.. why can't anyone make the book into a good movie??
i was loved the 1950s alien ship,i think im gonna make my own variation and make a normal mapped version of it
sigh.. why can't anyone make the book into a good movie??
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Believe it or not, most people haven't read the book, and some things just don't translate as well to film.
And according to everyone else and myself, it was a good movie, so he must have done some whacky thing right!
I wasn't sitting there going "oh look, a plot hole!" or "those aliens are stupid".
In a lot of the scenes, I was actually scared, or having an andrenaline-induced moment of panic!
I haven't 'felt' a movie like this since I first saw Nightmare on Elm Street as a child. Spielberg does a lot of things that make you draw on your own experiences and fears. It's things like that, which draw you into the movie, and make it seem more real than it is.
I abolsutely loved the film. Best movie I've seen in years. For me, it did edge out Batman Begins, just a bit
*spoilers after this point
I read the book and I think whoever was complaining about the small changes and such really didn't get the point of the book. If someone was making a movie as true to the book as possible, they would focus on how its a criticism of colonialism, and keep that general message. The problem is thats obviously not a summer blockbluster. Because of this I don't think think they should have kept the aliens die of bacteria and such, since that is an obvious criticism of colonialism
my only complaint was the decision to show the aliens unlike the original
[/ QUOTE ] They did show the alien (singular) in the original. Gene Barry was in a wrecked house and one goofy looking (muppet like) alien skittered across the floor. This was during the tentacle "eye" looking thru the wreckage scene. At the time it was still pretty scary.
*SPOILERS*
I enjoyed the first half way better than the second, and found that from the moment Cruise had to kill Robbins it went downhill slightly. Man, that bugged me a little. Even having to kill him bugged me ( I wish Robbins character had 'lost it' a bit more obviously to somehow justify the killing a bit more. ) But moreover, that was some risk Ray was taking there facing a man with a shovel emptyhanded, potentially leaving the guy alone with his kid If he'd lost the fight to the death.
I didn't much care for the look of the Aliens. Too cutesy ( facially at least ) and too close to Independence day. But this was a thoroughly enjoyable flick. Very impressed. Im still thinking about it now several hours later, which very rarely happens to me.
Something I didnt quite figure out: What exactly was the whole human harvest thing about and the stuff growing everywhere? Humans being turned into just food? Or were they being used to actually power the walkers?
*SPOILERS*
I agree with Daz somewhat. The first half of the movie was really kickass. The alien design wasn't my cup of tea though. I am a fan of the ass kicking,nasty alien design. I read that they purposely avoided the capital/landmarks being blown up. Which was refreshing for the genre. For all the bullshit hype that surrounded Cruise, the movie actually came through in the end.
Next day, the dawn was a brilliant, fiery red and I wandered
through the weird and lurid landscape of another planet; for the vegetation which
gives Mars its red appearance had taken root on Earth. As Man had succumbed to the
Martians, so our land now succumbed to the Red Weed.
Wherever there was a stream, the Red Weed clung and grew with
frightening voraciousness, its claw-like fronds choking the movement of the water;
and then it began to creep like a slimy red animal across the land, covering field and
ditch and tree and hedgerow with living scarlet feelers, crawling! crawling!
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The Martians spent the night making a new machine. It was a squat,
metallic spider with huge articulated claws - but it, too, had a hood in which a Martian
sat. I watched it pursuing some people across a field. It caught them nimbly and tossed
them into a great metal basket upon its back.
Then, on the ninth day, we saw the Martians eating. Inside the hood of their new
machine, they were draining the fresh, living blood of men and women and injecting it
into their own veins.
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Apparently, Spielberg found this too grotesque and decided to go for a "watering the weed" solution instead.
Oh...but the movie
Almost one of the best movies ever. Could have done without the sappy reunion at the then, but hey, it IS a Spielberg movie after all. I've read the book, seen the original, but I was on the edge of my seat the entire time, even though I clearly knew the outcome. I absolutely LOVED the design of the tripods and martians. Perfect. The effects were spectacular, and extremely real looking. Nobody quite does alien movies like Spielberg. It felt epic, and it was.