[The Iguana]

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.

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.

[PLMerite]

"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."

The buried-for-a-million-years gizmos (and how the Martians got to them) was the weakest part of the plot to me. At least one would have been uncovered in the course of human activity. Spielberg could still have had his swirling clouds and lightning and explained it as hypervelocity re-entry as the cylinders buried themselves in the ground.

People interacting with the cylinders was a pivotal moment in both the book and the 1953 film.

I agree about the clunky triods. In 1897 that may have been future-tech but in 2005 it's a little lame (although still terrifying). The 1953 film dealt with that more scientifically.

All in all, it was a good/scary way to spend two hours.

Previews were good, too.