I felt like I was watching the latest made for tv movie about how the disfunctional family deals with the latest tragedy.
I was bored with the dialog about 10 minutes into it and the number of inconsistancys/impossibles(like buried machines for 1 million years) kept me wondering if speilburg was on drugs or off???
btw, if they could bring the machines a million years ago, why didn't they take the planet then?
More on how the book's conservatism differs from the movies and the leftists of the post-911 world:
1) Leftists of the modern era cannot conceive of a realistic plot for a war of civilizations and so they don't believe one exists and won't prepare to fight as a result. This way of thinking is reflected in the way the WOTW movies are clearly presenting civilizational clashes as unrealistic fantasy. The book, on the other hand, was in 1898, a clear warning to the British that the Germans (for instance) could develop tanks and airplanes and perfect gas warfare and annihilate England out of a simple desire to have resources that Britain controls. The book's message that others can and will "attack us out of envy" is very realistic. I am sure that the book was seriously studied at Sandhurst and other military academies in the days before WW1. The 1898 book is more of a help IMHO in conceptualizing the war on terror than the 2005 movie is (despite the fact that I think Spielberg did a respectable job of evoking some of the post 9-11 unity and spirit - I do recommend the Spielberg movie, but rue the fact that Spielberg obviously felt the need to display Americans as a "dysfunctional family").
2) Leftists don't see Islamists as having a motive to fight the west other than their own projected motive of "defeating western conservative thought." This leftist unwillingness to pinpoint a realistic motive for our enemies (Vietnam, Iraq) is possibly reflected in the movies' not bothering to pinpoint a motive for the aliens. The 1898 WOTW book, on the other hand, goes into extensive detail about what the motives for the war were (dwindling resources on Mars, humans as a food source).
3) Leftists don't want to see how Islamists (and the "insurgency" in Iraq) are constantly having to change tactics in the war on terror because the other tactics were not working. You will never hear a leftist journalist say "suicide bombings are being used now because the insurgents are afraid of direct confrontations with US and Iraqi troops". This is because leftists don't want to believe that our enemies actually can be defeated militarily (meaning they have tactics that fail). This is definitely reflected in the way the WOTW movies show the alien tactics to be successful from start to finish. The message is supposed to be that our enemies will only defeat themselves or diplomacy, like bacteria, will defeat them. In the book, however, the tripods have NO FORCE FIELDS and the heat rays cannot always stop those humans who can successfully hide a cannon in a concealed trench and fire at a tripod from close range. The Martians are forced to regroup and change tactics, just like Al Qaeda. Scientists in the book examine gas residues to try to figure out how the British population can survive a future gas attack. The book clearly states that England would have had a chance if it had prepared and that England can prepare and defeat the Martians if they try again (presumably by innoculating themselves first against bacteria). The book ends with the Martians having seemingly given up on attacking Earth and trying to invade Venus instead. This reflects the very conservative point of view that the best way to defeat an enemy is to make it "not worth it" for the enemy to choose you as their enemy, but rather to choose someone else instead (we defeated the Nazis and later the Werewolf insurgency by directing Germans' attention on the "Red Threat"). Just as HG Wells had the Martians deciding that the Venusians were possibly easier to conquer than the Earthlings, it is likely because of our policy of defeating Al Qaeda militarily in Iraq that Zarkawi is now announcing that the "Shiites are Al Qaeda's real enemy". Metaphorically, for Al Qaeda, Venus may be easier to defeat than Earth. Wells understood this concept.
4) Leftists believe our enemies are always innumerable and constantly multiplying so it is no use to fight them. Both WOTW movies give this impression and they may as well have been named "The Slaughter of the World" instead of "War of the Worlds". The book, on the other hand, has a small force of 10-15 tripods with a grand total of about 50 Martians attack England and this force takes 25-40% casualties of its machines (but can repair some of these machines and build new ones) during what could be termed an actual "war". The HMS Thunderchild delivers the enemy a 15-20% loss with one heroic act that gives thousands of British the chance to escape across the English Channel.
The point is clearly made that the 50 Martians that attacked would not have been able to receive reinforcements until Mars and Earth were in opposition again (I think that means every 7 years or every 3 years?).
On military issues: the book "War of the Worlds" predicts Dunquerque 42 years later (via the Thunderchild episode) but with the British saving themselves in the opposite direction while brave members of the military fight a desperate rearguard action. I am wondering if any of the defenders at Dunquerque actually thought about how they were playing the role of the ironclad HMS Thunderchild from a novel they would have read as children. The success of the fictional lowlying ironclad HMS Thunderchild against the Martian tripods may have convinced a lot of children to grow up to be military submarine warfare experts.
HG Wells predicted in WOTW that:
1) Air Supremacy is paramount in war
2) Surface ships (and wooden ships) are vulnerable on oceans in war
3) Gas warfare can and would be used to horrific effect
4) Lasers would someday replace bullets
He is still ahead of his time and, thus, worth reading a lot more than Spielberg is worth watching. Again...I do recommend the new movie and, no, I don't work for Spielberg.
Interesting note: I thought that posting on this was wasting important business time...but I just spoke with an older British customer on the subject of the Thunderchild and he ordered a lot of products from me afterwards. I guess, to many British people, the "memory" of the fictional Thunderchild is still pretty powerful. Spielberg could have had an American submarine save passenger ships in a similar manner in his new film...but he chose not to have what could have been his most famous scene since the one in Saving Private Ryan where Tom Hanks takes a bullet for Matt Damon in a raging battle and then whispers "make this worth it." Maybe there were plans for a Thunderchild scene but the leftists in Hollywood convinced Spielberg not to have such heroics displayed as having been "worth it".
Which brings me to a major point about the book: HG Wells spends an entire chapter on how the Martians would eventually recruit humans to be traitors against their own kind and help harvest other humans for food. He describes leftists perfectly in this chapter. The hero listens to the artilleryman explain how this would happen...and the hero realizes to his horror that it would actually happen. Please read it! HG Wells predicted, in 1898, that the likes of Michael Moore would exist.
It is not for nothing that survey questions on Operation Iraqi Freedom concentrate on "was it worth it." This is an effort by those who would divert attention from all the civilians who have avoided death in blown up airplanes and buildings because the enemy was occupied by our Thunderchilds. They want us to go to sleep so we can be harvested without resisting, just like Wells predicted. Then again, I don't want to sound like the artilleryman. Wells had the hero walking away from him because he did not want to dwell on paranoia too much. :-)