Samprimary watches War of the Worlds.

[schild]

I totally moved this one up.

[Paelos]

I think that pretty much covered it. Oh, except for the whole, "unnecessarily slow moving robotic eyes to do ground searches" nonsense.

On a side note, if I'm an alien race capable of putting spaceships underground well before cities were ever built, why the hell would you even bother? Why not just drop them in and start gunning away while the technology on Earth sucks? I mean, were the slings and arrows going to be a problem for the tripods of doom? Perhaps they had to have a driver training program and the courses took a long time to master? Maybe there was a labor union lockout after the initial push?

[Strazos]

So the consensus is that the movie sucks balls?

[Paelos]

So the consensus is that the movie sucks balls?

This movie sullies the good name of "sucking balls"

[Samprimary]

I actually enjoyed the movie. It was at its best when it was conveying PURE TOTAL WRIGGLING HUMAN HELPLESSNESS, as Scott Tobias put it. Totally allowed me to forgive the weak bits.

[Samwise]

 

[Ironwood]

Emotional Correspondant. 

Cheers.

[Toast]

Nice comic. Now I feel that I don't even need to see the movie.

[ahoythematey]

That linking image deserves it's own place in the emoticon collection.  I love Tom Cruise as an actor and I think it's fucking priceless.

[Samprimary]

On a side note, if I'm an alien race capable of putting spaceships underground well before cities were ever built, why the hell would you even bother? Why not just drop them in and start gunning away while the technology on Earth sucks? I mean, were the slings and arrows going to be a problem for the tripods of doom?

I can actually answer this, based on the premise of every form of War of the Worlds that has existed ever since the original H.G. Wells story.

Basically, humans having slings and arrows or rocket launchers and tanks and jets - either way, it's irrelevant. Again, as Tobias puts it:

War Of The Worlds has stronger echoes of Spielberg's Schindler's List, due to the stark terror of innocents who are powerless to stop their extermination. Evoking the spirit of H.G. Wells' science-fiction classic, the film positions itself as the anti-Independence Day: Since the enemy has no apparent weaknesses, no amount of can-do American bravado will get the job done. Heroism lies in survival, not in bloody retaliation, and Spielberg captures the awful, wriggling helplessness of people in the face of overwhelming force.

The aliens, for untold reasons, are biologically similar to the life structures on our own planet. One version of the story has the aliens as an ancient Earth race that had a civilization long before even the age of dinosaurs; they migrated to Mars to avoid the slow loss of methane in earth's above-ground atmosphere, and now that Mars' water has dried up, they had been living beneath the surface, jealous of Earth's potential to supply their needs. So, once they have the terraforming capacity to return Earth's atmosphere to a comfortable quantity of methane, they return in force and clear the way of the humans to make this place their new home. Spielberg's version seems to draw on this: The vines that are carpeting and absorbing the environment after being planted behind by the harvester tripods? They appear to be visibly changing the atmosphere, as the aliens slowly clean house and start terraforming it to suit them.

In the alternate version I've been speaking of, the aliens have lived in clean, sterile, and closed environments under Mars for thousands of generations. When they return to Earth to work their master plan, their bodies have no cultured resistance to the bugs n' virii n' shit just crawling around our open environment. In lieu of their capacity to manufacture reactionary antibodies? Any virus or malignant bacterial/fungal infection, even stuff that wouldn't give us a cold or anything, just has to get in their bodies once, and will replicate and destroy cells until the bodies go septic and die.

Which is, again, what happens to the aliens in every retake of War of the Worlds. Basic premise. Which is what makes it different, and this is the element that is ultimately memorable. Mankind gets off lucky.

[Paelos]

In essence, it's manufactured bullshit. You made my point.

[Murgos]

It's Deus Ex Machina.

I'm enjoying how much this ending is pissing some of you off.  I knew the way this story ended when I was 8.

[Hoax]

The key to enjoying this movie is watch Signs first, then you will be utterly fucking disgusted with the stupidity that advanced space-traveling alien races are portrayed with that War of the Worlds can't possibly bother you.

[HaemishM]

Countering stupid with uberstupid?

[Samwise]

In the spectrum of "advanced alien species attacks current-day Earth and somehow doesn't win" scenarios, War of the Worlds has to be one of the least far-fetched.  In Signs they're defeated by water, and in Independence Day they're defeated by a virus uploaded from a Mac laptop.  Compared to those two, dying of foreign microbes seems downright plausible.

[HaemishM]

See, I think the thing that works about the ending of War of the Worlds is the time period. These aliens attacked in a time when long-range information on other worlds was non-existent, so the idea that aliens could come to earth and not know they'd be ass-raped by microbes is consistent. Fast-forward the time setting a hundred years or so, not so much. In modern contexts, it just looks stupid.

[Samwise]

This is true.  I maintain that it's still not any stupider than the other two examples.   

I like the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen version better, though. 

<spoiler>They enlist the aid of Dr. Moreau to create hybrid uber-germs and then use those to kill every living thing in the area, Martian and human alike.  The "official story" from the government (since they don't want it known that they used biological warfare) is then that the aliens were killed by the common cold, and the humans were killed by the aliens.</spoiler>

[HaemishM]

No, Signs was fucking stupid. Clown shoes stupid. Orange wig and a horn fucking stupid. It isn't like they couldn't look out the viewport of their spaceship and see with their own bug-ass eyes that the world was made of 75% POISONOUS LIQUID THAT ACTS LIKE ACID. I mean, if I'm alien stormtrooper #473, I get told to go down to a planet where the glass of water they constantly refill at dinner is skin-burning lethal to me, I'm telling my rape-ship superior to get bent.

[Glazius]

This is true.  I maintain that it's still not any stupider than the other two examples.   

I like the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen version better, though.

I don't know what Alan Moore was on, but reading through the TPB I am absolutely astonished at _how many_ Victorian-era works of literature he managed to beerslam together.

LEG's War of the Worlds was amazing, even the bits set on Mars.

--GF

[Yegolev]

I'm glad I don't analyze movies for logic anymore.  I am much happier these days.

[Soln]

Well, I tried to see this.  On my own, one Sat. pm.  Few people in ciniema.  I left at the point they were about to enter the ferry. 

I haven't left a movie mid-way since I can't remember when.  I just couldn't take the inevitable and unbelievable plot of giant machines stalking tiny humanoids, and TC.  Tom has definitely gone off his meds.  I've enjoyed other films of his, but he definitely has freaked out and carried that through the film.  I couldn't stand the screaming and huffy over acting.  Man, that was baaaaaad.