Yes, the 2005 Spielberg / Cruise version is superior to the 1953 George Pal / Barré Lyndon / Byron Haskin / Gene Barry version in several ways:
— It’s closer to the book.
— It has better acting.
— It has better special effects.
And yet I still prefer the 1953 version by a wide margin.
The 1953 movie War of the Worlds has the Flying Wing!
To me, the more modern takes on these kind of stories, even if well done, usually miss the mark. I think it’s because the stories themselves were suited to a certain era, so it might be better to see them in black and white, or grainy, than high definition with all the modern bells and whistles.
For example, take “King Kong”. Just the nature of that story, a giant ape coming to gleaming New York City and wrecking it, it’s not a “modern” story. It reflects the subconscious of it’s time, just like “Godzilla”’s radioactive monsters reflected the subconscious of Japan after a humiliating defeat and nuclear attacks. So, even though I like Jackson’s remake of Kong, it is missing something, despite being set in the same era, and having most of the shots intentionally duplicated. It’s a nostalgic piece now, but that wasn’t true for the original.