Saw it at 2PM EST and I realize it's still with me past 10:30PM.
"Saw it at 2PM EST and I realize it's still with me past 10:30PM."
I saw it at the 4pm show in Greenbelt. I walked out of the mall into those storms that were just coming around. I heard thunder and realized I was scanning the horizon for Martian machines.
It was a good movie, faithful enough to the book (which I just read for the first time) and with lots of nods to the 1953 film.
Why it doesn't work. (1) The cliched dysfunctional family: egotistical father, rebellious annoying son (see "The Day After Tomorrow"), (2) No story, no "War", just repetitive hiding from aliens with Dakota Fanning screaming a lot, (3)Tim Robbins' character: One moment he says, "They've been planning this for a million years! This isn't a war! It's an extermination!" The next moment he says, ""We're the resistance! We can kill them!" (4)The ending. In both the Wells book and 1953 classic, the Martians' world is dying and they pick Earth as their best hope for repopulation, so their demise by bacteria is plausible and unexpected. In this version they'd been "planning this for a million years" with their war machines buried here forever, so you'd think they would have figured out that annoying microbe problem. (5) Tom Cruise is a one-note lightweight.