Vanity: Things I learned while watching War of The Worlds (Caution: Possible spoilers).

Me ^ | 7/4/05 | Me

[Larry Lucido]

Caution: Possible spoilers!

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Things I learned while watching War of the Worlds

1. You can be a master crane operator at a shipyard, but your skills will have absolutely no use during an attack by Martians.

2. If you give your neighborhood mechanic advice on how to fix a car, that car will be the only working car following a Martian attack and will have the keys in it, waiting for you to come along with your kids.

3. No matter how much panic ensues, you and your kids will be able to drive a steady 60 mph, weaving through and around abandoned and overturned cars.

4. Even though you are a crane operator and live in New York where no average person can have a gun, you will just happen to have a snub-nose pistol in a case in your bedroom.

5. If you flee to your ex-wife’s house in Boston, there will be no food anywhere in the house except what you brought from your place.

6. A passenger jetliner can crash around your house and you’ll hardly notice it until the next morning because, for some reason, you decided to sleep in the basement instead of one of the comfortable bedrooms. The engine that landed in the living room won’t collapse the basement. There will be no bodies in any of the seats, since the passengers will have somehow evacuated prior to the crash. Your car will remain unscratched in the driveway, and there will be a clear path for you to drive away.

7. If a crowd of 5000 people pulls you from your car, don’t pull your gun until after they are beating the crap out of you. You’ll still have time to get to it.

8. If you’re getting the crap beat out of you by a crowd of 5000 people, just disengage, step back, fire two shots from your 5 shot revolver in the air, and the entire crowd will back off. They will think you still have 4998 shots left.

9. (Note: Important anti-gun message here). Just because you can hold back a crowd of 5000 people with a revolver you already shot twice, someone with a bigger gun will always get the drop on you, causing you to voluntarily drop your gun on the ground and surrender your car, proving the futility of having a gun in the first place.

10. The person who picked up your gun will blow away the person took your car, proving that, ultimately, guns accomplish nothing.

11. When fleeing attacking Martians, run past a farmhouse. A survivalist will emerge from a cellar with a shotgun, and invite you and your kids (and only you and your kids) to join him. No one else will notice or try to follow you in.

12. A survivalist will be half-deranged but will still be able to philosophize.

13. Martians can send a probe into the cellar you are in, but as long as you stay out of sight, it won’t find you because it can only detect normal light, not heat or infrared. A mirror will confuse it.

14. If the survivalist you’re hiding with gets antsy and starts digging a tunnel to New York, there is no moral dilemma in killing him as long as you have your 7-year-old daughter close her eyes and sing, and you do it behind a closed door.

15. A survivalist will always have a bandolier of hand grenades in his pickup truck passenger compartment. They will come in handy if you and your kid get sucked into an alien spaceship.

16. A superior civilization can plan an invasion for decades, but forget to pack antibiotics for the trip.

[Larry Lucido]

Please add your own.

[Perdogg]

I didn't read your posting and don't spoil anything, but I heard there is something unusual at the end that critics didn't like.

[Larry Lucido]

WOTW ping.

[Larry Lucido]

LOL! I won't spoil it, but I almost missed the end because my wife wanted to walk out. I told her, "Dammit, I paid $13.00 for us to see this crappy movie and, doggone it, we're gonna get our money's worth!"

[DoughtyOne]

17. That heaving tendency for audiences, just after Cruise comes on camera, is not related to Cruise.

[marsh_of_mists]

I suspect I know how it ends; I read the book.

Of course, for all I know the movie is nothing like the book.

[NO_2_CORZINE]

They mention God

[Max Flatow]

I don't plan on seeing the movie, but I will read what others may post. Thanks.

[timpad]

SPOILER ALERT:

In that particular case, it's faithful to the book. Sorry to say.

[Perdogg]

I saw the one that was made in color, it might have been the one in the 50s.

I am so psyched for "Fantastic Four".

I always thought, even as a ten year-old boy, that Sue Storm was hot.

[Perdogg]

It's God or L.Ron Hubbard?

[Larry Lucido]

I never read the book, but if it's faithful to the movie I may not bother.

[timpad]

18. If you throw half a peanut butter sandwich at a window, the side with the peanut butter will hit, perfectly flat, and stick there for, oh, at least two minutes.

[Larry Lucido]

That sounds good. Just heard Mike Chiklis is playing the muscular thing.

[Perdogg]

I am kind disappointed that Alba is playing Sue Storm and the rest of guys are kind of girly-menish, but it will be fun.

To me, Sue was a woman not a teenager.

[vezke]

15. A survivalist will always have a bandolier of hand grenades in his pickup truck passenger compartment.

I thought he found those in an abandoned Army Humvee.

[Names Ash Housewares]

The film is a "re-imagining" of a fifties film that was an update of an 1890's classic book.

The source material is severely watered down.

Spielberg is a cliche of himself now. We cannot view the world through his films without a terrified child emoting to every event for us to empathize with.

The film is about a dysfunctional famliy more then an invasion from another world, or so it seems.

The tripods and red weed are nearly all that remain of the original novel.

It is a big budget FX laden mess. Tom terrific is in nearly every scene so you better love his face.

Where is the HMS Thunderchild of the book? We arent toothless. We bring down invaders in the book. H.G. Wells devoted an entire chapter to the mighty warship Thunderchild afterall.

He could have done this with a modern update or a historically correct version.

Sad.

They got Batman right this year.

I guess I will have to wait decades again before they get War of the Worlds right too.

Why are people more forgiving of mangling sci-fi classics?

If Spielberg mangled shakespeare people would get all upset.

H.G. Wells deserved to have his work brought to us in the best way possible.

I strongly advise viewers of this film to know that this is very little of the book. It is NOT the War of the Worlds to me. It is not what I have read.

The fifites version has endured 50 years because it was a revolutionary interpretation of the book. Amazing FX for its time. And a true war, they used nukes.

This spielberg mess is not revolutionary in any way. It will not endure passed the DVD rentals.

Sorry. This aint it. But I knew it wouldnt be once I read who was doing it. Sad. Pity. Oh well.

Someday the Thunderchild will have her day and Wells work will be presented as it was intended all along.....

[Larry Lucido]

You may be correct. I'm not going back to find out, though. :-)

[dawn53]

A little off topic, but I'm totally disgusted with remakes.

I won't be seeing this movie because I heard it was boring and predictable, and that was from my nephews (age 15 and 17.)

I did think the new Batman movie was interesting, as Batman movies go. They seemed to work a little harder at character development than previous Batman movies.

But when I saw they're remaking Willy Wonka, I could hardly believe it. How can they believe that anybody could match Gene Wilder's performance in the original?

Where is original thought, fresh screenplays (that aren't full of smut for smut's sake)? Why all the remakes, or spin offs like the Honeymooners, Bewitched, Herbie movie, The Longest Yard, Amityville, Flight of the Phoenix, etc? (none of which I bothered to see)

I may be odd one out, but I didn't like any of the "new" Star Wars movies. Lucas should have left well enough alone with the first three, IMHO.

With just a few exceptions, there haven't been any good movies around since last summer. Just my 2 cents.

[Swordmaker]

15. A survivalist will always have a bandolier of hand grenades in his pickup truck passenger compartment. They will come in handy if you and your kid get sucked into an alien spaceship.

I have to disagree here... it was a burned out National Guard HumVee that had rolled down the hill after the massive fire storm destroyed everyone over the hill. Of course, we can now change 15 to read...

15. A bandolier of hand grenades will survive in a burned out HumVee so they can easily be found when a NY Crane Operator needs them because he knows he will be sucked into the anal orifice of a Martian Farm Cultivator after he gets snatched up into a Martian Farm Cultivator's Living Fertalizer Basket and can use them to blow up said Martian Farm Cultivator ... and so on.