Spielberg- had a gun or two in his new movie!

[HankB]

In any case, it looks like there is another (low budget) version that was just released on DVD a few days ago (although I haven't seen it in the stores).

I picked up this version (By Pendragon Pictures) at Wal Mart for just over $8. I posted a review at Amazon. (If you like cheap - emphasis CHEAP - '50s sci-fi movies like "Beginning of the End" and "The Giant Gila Monster" you may enjoy the Pendragon version of War of the Worlds. Same production values. ) But at least it's based in 1898 or so and the aliens don't have the obligatory "force field" . . . they ARE vulnerable to cannon fire, but are far more powerful and mobile than the armies of the day.

In that movie, one of the characters is given a revolver - he claims he's "an expert shot" - but still loses the Shetland pony pulling his carriage when some hungry highwaymen with a hammerless O/U shotgun steal it for food. (Did they make hammerless O/U shotguns circa 1898?)

 

[Evil_Ed]

But TC was able to carry the belt of grendades up to the tripod because he came in slow and it didn't register.

"The slow blade penetrates the shield." -- Gurney Halak, Dune

 

[Travis McGee]

One more reason to give this flick a skip.

 

[bad LT]

Just remember, if aliens decide to attack Earth, head to Boston. It won't be touched by the aliens.

 

[Cesiumsponge]

And if your kid runs off, he'll mysteriously rejoin you at the brownstone home unharmed and everyone hugs and comes in for a pot of coffee as if nothing happened.

I heard some more bitching about the movie from people here who saw it; I'll pass.

 

[eab]

Several of my friends saw it and thought it was good. I however have no desire to see it. Don't know why. The book never really apleaed to me, maybe the anticlimatic end or just the whole story never realy got into it.

 

[moa]

The movie is okay, but I would not recommend it unless there is nothing else to see.

The part about the pre-buried alien tripods turned me off. Did not seem logical. If I remember correctly, in the original book, the Martians fly to earth in their space craft or whatever and bring their weapons with them.

At the very end of the movie, set in Boston, TC meets up with his children's mother, etc. Is not the old, gray haired man at the door the actor Gene Barry, who starred in the original War Of The World movie circa 1953?

Anybody catch that?

 

[denny]

Azizza said

Sorry guys, I think you are looking for things to go after that just arn't there in this case. The movie was not about some Average Joe going on a one man rampage and defeating the Aliens. This was about the last remnants of Society surviving and trying to escape. This was not about "victim disarmament" or anything close to it. The people that had tried to fight back were already dead and gone.

Nevermind. I give up. I could go on for hours but some people are going to insist that any movie/book/TV show that doesn't have 50 armed citizens, is just trying to take away our guns or make America Hate guns.

Then, please explain the scene at the end were TC breaks a piece off of the Militiaman statue and looks at it as if it is empty?

 

[kwelz]

I am afraid I dont' really understand what you are talking about. Near the end of the movie he is not breaking a piece off the statue. He is breaking a piece of the dying plant the Aliens had been growing. I don't really see where you are coming from here.

 

[denny]

Azizza said:

I am afraid I dont' really understand what you are talking about. Near the end of the movie he is not breaking a piece off the statue. He is breaking a piece of the dying plant the Aliens had been growing. I don't really see where you are coming from here.

My mistake then- from the distance I saw it, it looked like a piece of the statue.

 

[Tman]

Azizza is correct. On one of the cable channels (HBO/TCM????? can't remember), Spielberg talks about making the movie. He wanted to bring up the roots or, as I think he called them (please correct me if I'm wrong) veins that the aliens are attempting to use to "terraform" earth into mars. However, at the end of the movie, TC breaks off a dead piece of it, showing the alien stuff dying, and at the same time we see the force fields disappearing.

It seems that many people have different interpretations of the movie. Reminds me of a Rohrschach (sp?) test...you see what YOU want to see in the picture (projection).

 

[buy guns]

here is my interpretation: the ending was fine if you think of the movie as being deeper than just aliens fighting humans. its about fighting for the right to live. humans pretty much just took over the planet once we started existing. if we saw someplace we liked, we killed everything that was there and built buildings over it but now its happening to us. the aliens came to earth to colonize it. notice that they never killed animals in the movie (ie. the rat in the basement and the birds at the end). it wasnt until tom cruise discovered how to destroy the tripods (plus the ones that were destroyed in japan) did the bacteria start killing the aliens. basically its like the universe was evening itself out. thats why the narrator said what he said at the end.

 

[TheOtherOne]

Odd note. Saw the flick in the City Center Mall in Doha, Qatar. Mostly thobe-clad locals in the audience. Scene where the girl sees the dead bodies floating down the river? They were roaring with laughter.

Okay, for some reason I'm laughing at the visual image presented by your story but why exactly were they laughing?

 

[benEzra]

That wasn't a funny scene to me...what exactly was the audience finding funny about it?

 

[Nightcrawler]

Okay, for some reason I'm laughing at the visual image presented by your story but why exactly were they laughing?

That wasn't a funny scene to me...what exactly was the audience finding funny about it?

I have NO idea. Maybe because it was all white people/Americans that were dead in the river? The Qataris usually took the trouble to hide their contempt for westerners, but not always.

Honestly, I don't know. Different culture, I guess. Maybe to them dead people are funny if they're foreigners. Bet they wouldn't have been laughing if the tripods were shown marching through Doha or Riyad, incinerating mosques full of thobes and burkhas* instead of Americans.

Honestly, it's weird. I saw inappropriate laughter in a bunch of movies over there. Jackie Chan's New Police Story...scene where a captured police detective watches his whole team, including his brother-in-law, get killed. They were laughing then, too.

It's kind of creepy, actually. Messed up over there. One movie I saw, it was okay to show the scene where they were drilling a guy in the eye with a cordless drill, but the sex scene was edited out 'cause it was indecent. Violence and depravity are okay, but in the movie poster for The Pacifier they edited it to make the girl's skirt longer.

***, over?

Good to be home.


*The Qataris don't actually call the black overgarments their women wear burkhas. I cannot recall the actual name. A thobe is a traditional Arab item, being basically a dress shirt that goes all the way to the ankles.

 

[jnojr]

The Jurassic Park Trilogy -- clever children outwit ferocious dinosaurs while adults who have firearms are too incompetent to use them!

Y'know, I've always wondered... I've seen "Jurassic Park", and I know "Jurassic Park III - The Lost World" (I think) is out on DVD. I have never heard of, nor seen any sign of, a "Jurassic Park II".

 

[c_yeager]

Y'know, I've always wondered... I've seen "Jurassic Park", and I know "Jurassic Park III - The Lost World" (I think) is out on DVD. I have never heard of, nor seen any sign of, a "Jurassic Park II".

It was one of those movies that you can see 10 times on TV and never remember a single thing about it. Seriously, i will be browsing the chanels and find this movie and say to myself "hey this looks interesting" only to discover 10 minutes later that i had seen it before, and it was terrible.

 

[jpIII]

Did anyone notice that TC's snub nose changed from a chrome when he got it from it's box to a blued when the mob scene was taking place?

That stood out to me.