We don't have a thread for this, and since my daughter and I have tomorrow off, we'll probably go watch it on the really big screen. I'll check back afterwards, but feel free to beat me to the punch.

I will see it sometime soon (Whenever I get the time, my summer break is over already) and look forward to another good Spielberg/Cruise extravaganza. Dakota Fanning is in it as well, someone whom I consider to be the best child actor in a long time.

Grade: A-

I honestly DON'T THINK this contains "Spoilers", but you may have to read at your own risk.

If anybody is going to see War of the Worlds expecting to see a feel-good summer popcorn flick, you may be in for a rude awakening. This is sci-fi and Spielberg, sure, but this is a flat-out horror film. There are "action" scenes, but they're presented more as mystery and spectacular thrills. What really drives the film is the suspense and the utter dread you feel when you have no idea what's happening, everybody around you is either being killed or maybe wants to kill you, and you barely have time to hope against hope that there's some way out of your nightmare. In that way, it's appropriate that the word "War" is in the title. But it's too bad that the title automatically leads people to have some understanding of what's going to happen.

The beginning of the movie, where the strange storms and enormously loud, nearby "lightning" strikes Tom Cruise's community, is extremely intense and scary. This film actually seems like the inverse of Close Encounters, right down through the use of the family, aliens, and unsolved mysteries. But the gritty, harrowing realism of this film seems closer in presentation to the battle scenes in Saving Private Ryan and the atrocities suffered by the camp victims in Schindler's List, unlike the benign fantasy of Spielberg's earlier opus.

I'm not going to "spoil" anything more right now. (I hope I haven't spoiled it already.) I will say that the film seems to be a completely-new kinda animal, yet many scenes WILL remind you of several other films, the most prominent being the 1953 The War of the Worlds. It certainly isn't perfect, and anybody can carp about things which they LOVE to carp about, but in this season of remakes, sequels, prequels, etc., this film seems to really punch you in the gut and then let you decide if you can take it for what it is. It doesn't follow TOO MANY pre-conceived notions, and it certainly isn't produced to make people go out walking on a high. It's just produced to make a damn good movie.

Note- I'm not getting into this now, but there's some really interesting ways to interpret how, when and why the aliens got here, and what they and their "tripods" are and/or are made of. They may all lead to false conclusions or be scientifically improbable (we know that already), but they're interesting, if you want to discuss it later.

What I want to know is whether the story outline was true to the original.

The ads make it look kind of overproduced style-over-substance-ish. And cross referencing Tom Cruise with Steven Spielberg makes me think they're going to go for a simplistic answer to a complex question like they did in Minority Report.

Plus I can't imagine huge tentacles flying around in the sky grabbing people in the original radio show....the focus was more on how the threat affected the people than on the actual aliens.

If it's true to the outline and themes of the original story, I'll go see it. If it's too Spielbergish in the way that A.I. and Minority Report were....maybe I'll wait for the indie film version.

If they changed the ending from the radio show -- I might just not see it based on that alone.

You're a funny guy, Bob. I think all your potential qualms will be assuaged by the finished film, but you see, some people don't care about the "finished film", they already know what's in somebody else's heart, even more than THAT PERSON does. I'm not talking about you, Bob, just all the other people I have to deal with at all the other websites. The film is REALLY quite unique in all of film history, but like I said, some people have their OWN agendas.

Mark, I have no idea what you're talking about. It isn't a 'personal agenda' to think that style over substance doesn't make a good movie, and that all this big budget big production special effects stuff usually amounts to style over substance.

Also, if you raise a complex philosophical question such as in Minority Report only to end it in a simplistic, overly mushy ending that only gives the audience pleasing answer, you're not doing the premise justice, and you're pandering.

Not being impressed by flashy special effects isn't 'having my own agenda'.

And I think, if you're going to name your movie after an existing franchise, you should try to be true to the franchise. If you want to do your own thing, that's fine. But then you should come up with your own franchise altogether.

That isn't 'having my own agenda' either. It's 'not buying into the cheap attention-getting tactics that Hollywood uses'.

I've not seen War of the Worlds, and I've not really even read any reviews of it yet, but I'm inclined to agree with bob that, based on the previews, it looks like Independence Day redux. I give Spielberg some leeway, but I also agree with bob that he's lobbed some real softballs when he could have made some great movies with Minority Report (good for about 80% of the movie, then fades to bad) and AI (a REALLY lousy ending made me hate an otherwise decent flick).

I've got a soft spot, as bob does, for the original radio play of WOTW, and I'm not fully expecting Spielberg to follow it verbatim, but I worry, based only on the trailers, that this is more of a summer popcorn flick than a clever, intelligent Spielberg flick.

BUT...these are only assumptions based on trailers, which are never accurate. WOTW is on my summer flicks I need to see list, behind Batman Begins, Fantastic Four, and (maybe) Star Wars. I'm not going to let the trailers scare me away from what could be a good flick. I like the fact that mark calls it a "horror" flick...that bodes well, I think.

Well, also based on what Mark's saying I'm worried it's going to be 'Fashionably cynical'.

Yes, I enjoy Welles' version, which I own on vinyl, but he's the one who moved "the franchise" from H.G. Wells' 19th-century England to Grovers Mill, New Jersey, in 1938. You may want to "argue" with me about War of the Worlds, although I'm not sure why, at least until you've seen it.

All I'm telling you in this thread are the reasons for my reservations -- i.e., the reasons I may decide not to invest $8.50 and two hours of my life in it. Anything I say could be wrong.

Everything I'm saying here is reasoning by induction. 'Other movies with similar qualities are like this, therefore, probably...' type reasoning.

But I do hold by my case that a lot of people think they can cheaply be perceived as deep by talking about how inherently evil humanity is.

Since Mark rarely steers me wrong on movies or music (Devendra Banhart being a rare exception...sorry dude, I just don't get it), I'm gonna take his word on the new WOTW and give it a try before it leaves theatres. Even if it stinks, it looks like it will be much better in the theatre than at home.

I also have to say some of my aversion, initially, comes from Tom Cruise's asinine recent behavior and a general aversion to Cruise, who is an overrated and undertalented actor in my estimation. His handful of good performances are balanced by others that are hammy or simply bad. And his Scientology PR jag in recent months is absolutely insane...but then, so is Scientology.

Mates, I saw this flick. And I agree 85% with Mark. I'd give it a B+, myself. A- seems to be a tad nice. Spielberg didnt ruin the story for those with worries. He made as good of a film as he could with such a godawful screenplay. I have yet to see anything with such a strong good direction, bad screenplay contrast than what I experienced with WotW. The characters aren't terribly well-developed, the endingh is contrived and bumped down my score a full point, and the ending is slammed into your head and with bery poor form. The camerawork is brilliant. The SFX are the best out there. Hell, this is just a summer popcorn flick and it's just as suspenseful a summer movie as "Jaws". Except the author of "Jaws" actually knew how to weave a good yarn...sheesh.

Unfreakin Believeable! This movie was the movie I wanted! Scary, Suspensful, Action packed, funny, just incredible. The acting was great, special effects were the best i've ever seen, the ending...... dissapointing! O well the whole movie makes up for it!

9.5 out of 10!!! Must See!!!!!!

I whent to it last week.
The best movie I have ever seen.

I wasn't too impressed with this remake which I found too manipulative and unbelievable even considering it's a science fiction movie. There were just too many scenes that were scripted just for their effect, not for their logical nor expected sensibility. In reality, using the premise of this movie, some of the events just wouldn't have happened and that made me feel that I was just a pawn in a movie that was produced to make money, not to be stimulated with a good science fiction movie. Anybody who believes they could drive a vehicle anyway considered the devastation just isn't being real. Even Tom Cruise's paranoid character ends up in the middle of the movie in the middle of paranoia. The ending itself was just too contrived.