I'll check out the movie soon enough. A friend of mine just called me from Houston to comment on his take of the movie. He didn't care for the film, noting it was quite possibly the worst he has seen in a while (and he sees a lot of movies). I got the impression that he was caught up on the logical aspects of what happened and that really ruined the film for him. I wasn't sure I followed him, but he noted something to the effect that he didn't understand why an advance civilization with the means to conquer other worlds would chose to take over ours using tripods that have been buried beneath the Earth for a million years. Again, I'll see them movie anyway. And perhaps, having read your take, with a different mindset.
Most of the logical flaws can be blamed on Welles. For example: Why clunky tripods? Why the strange red weed and how can it possible terraform anything? Why annihilate the entire countryside if you're planning to use it? Why the deus ex machina ending and how can it be that "intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic" who have been planning this business for a long time didn't figue out about the dangers of earthborne contagions? And why have the aliens go out on EVA's when they've been shooting up everything previous to that?
Having the tripods buried deep underground is Speilberg's alteration but it adds - the more I think about it - an unsettling imagery to the film - and certainly works better now than Welle's idea of having them fired in giant cannon shells from Mars.
SO I went in prepared to deal with these anachronisms. And because of that, I didn't allow them to take me much off the track of what Speilberg was trying to do.
The only real distraction was Cruise himself, who as the review says always plays himself. But the stirling performance of Dakota Fannon makes up for that.