Things that are wrong with Spielberg's War Of The Worlds ***SPOILERS WARNING***

Just saw this at the Picture House. Quite poor really. Most of the right ingredients are there - they're just in the wrong place I think. Anyway...

1. Special Effects - yes, they were stunning, but they just weren't that scary. The tripods were too polished, and they had bendy legs (ie not jointed), so they just didn't look realistic enough. If they'd been a bit more worn looking, and had jointed legs that looked like they might actually support the weight of the head rather than just dangling down from it, it might have been a bit more believable.[Edit: although, having said that, the actual aliens were very well done and the short period of time where they were interacting with each other was the best part of the film.]
   
2. Narrow Focus - It was very interesting that Spielberg took it from the viewpoint of one family, but perhaps it would have been a bit more involving if we'd seen what was going on from other groups of people's points of view. Tim Robbins character, for example, could have been a great character, but he turned out to be very one-dimensional and they didn't use him at all effectively.
3. Tom Cruise - Now, I thought he put on a very good performance. Unfortunately he's Tom Cruise. He's very famous. This should automatically disqualify him from playing nobodies-come-good in disaster movies. Because you already know he's Tom Cruise, and you already know that Tom Cruise always comes good. It's no fault of his, but he just isn't convincing.
4. A Crap Twist - "They're already here" is the movie's tagline. That's a big enough clue. But it ruins the storyline for two reasons. One is that they buried the tripods before humans were around. As, erm, part of the planning stages of the invasion in which they aim to, erm, wipe out all humans. The second reason is it ruins the admittedly already-weak HG Wells ending, where they have no immunity to Earth viruses, and all die. Erm *ahem*, but they were "already here" so surely they had already built up immunity.
5. A Crap Ending - Aside from the whole "they died of the common cold" ending, there is one really annoying revelation at the end which just ruined the film and made it even less believable. One of the characters was engulfed in a gargantuan unescapable fireball towards the end, but turns out to have survived. Okay, that's Hollywood. But still...
6. [Edit: Oh I forgot this one - EMP - If you're going to have them use electromagnetic pulses to wipe out human machines, please don't pretend that you can repair something immobilised by it, or have a person randomly using a digital camcorder which should not have been working. Get it right.]