Have you read the novel? There are no heroics in 'War of the Worlds'! This movie was quite faithful to the tone and spirit of the Wells text.
Besides that, the new movie was plain stupid. The Martians supposedly buried thousands of ships underground a million years ago (conveniently in the cities we built later), and come back and pop into them in order to attack us? If they were here a million years ago, they would still be here and we wouldn't. And they would have terraformed the Earth to their liking back then (something they are trying to do in the movie present-day). And we never discovered a single ship, despite building lots of skyscrapers in the cities (we dig pretty deep for them, and it would be stupid to bury the Martian ships too deep). Also, our military is lobbing ordnance at the head of the tri-pod Martian ships, to no effect. Hello, blow out the earth under their legs and they crash to the ground!
Real bad logic in this movie.
I read the novel more than once.
I believe you're forgetting about the Steam Ram "Thunderchild" that charged through enemy fire and rammed one leg of a Martian ships tripod. Thus toppeling it into the water and allowing many ships and thousands of people to escape to the open ocean.
How about the hidden batteries of artillery (Masked batteries.) who's most effective means of attack was to wait until point blank range and then volley fire. And then they'd generally be wiped out at point blank range once the Martians had aquired the target.
It's been a long time (Longer than a lot of people have been alive.) since I've read it. But FFFFFTTTTT to the amazingly french like hollywierd idiots.
There are no heroics in 'War of the Worlds'!
What ARE you talking about?
The Thunderchild?
The gunner?