War of the Worlds: Spielberg Mutilates His Own Masterpiece (SPOILERS included)

[Pyrodrew]

Originally posted by JohnT
Ambulance driver or not, he was a human being slowly losing it because he lost everybody he loved and his world, his support system: his civilization. He was slightly unhinged when Cruise first entered and became a complete nutcase while in the basement over the next couple of weeks as the aliens plans became readily apparent and he dwelt upon how utterly and finally this war was lost.

The planet Earth, not just people, but billions of years of evolutionary growth, all life as we know it, lost to the aliens - don't you think that would freak the **** out of you too?

You must have been watching War of the Worlds3. Everything you said above wasn't true. The whole world and evolutionary growth of the world was never lost. The war was never lost by humans. He lost his wife and kids, but he could have had other family/friends elsewhere. The only thing the abulence driver saw were the blood vines outside his door. So no that would not freak me out to start screaming so the aliens could kill me, but thanks for the warning about you.

Possibly, but who knows what supplies were in the basement? Who knows if they snuck up in the house and got food/toiletries/etc?
Again, this isn't something we're told. Movie-goers assume that because the movie didn't show them going up in the house, then they didn't.

Who knows maybe they killed and ate aliens to survive? Who knows if Cruise discussed Scientology for months until Robbins finally went mad? There is nothing to even hint any of that happened.

How long do you think it would take for them to spread over tens, hundreds of square miles, in the valley that was pristine (as far as alien plants are concerned) when Cruise first entered the basement?

The shot of the eerily quiet valley, red mist hanging over everything, no wind blowing, and the ground covered with red vines (and other alien plants for all we know) is the best indication that a fair amount of time had passed, a time much longer than a mere couple of days. Now if you want to calculate the growth rate of the alien vine just from the bit that we saw in the film to determine how much time it would take to cover the valley, go right ahead.

Your own "who knows" argument destroys these paragraphs. Who knows how efficient the aliens are at spreading the blood vines? Again, this isn't something we're told. The movie goers didn't see what happened over night....

Putting the "who knows" argument aside, I never said I calculated the growth rate. But you seem to have calculated that the blood vines couldn't have happened overnight, we all eagerly await your mathematical equations for this.

I saw nothing surprising with the aliens spreading the blood vines over night. The aliens were "transporting themselves on lightning bolts", manipulating the weather and given all their other technological marvels you saw... you find an overnight terraforming hard to believe???


For the record, the movie goers are never shown what happens weeks after Cruise dropped Dakota off at her grandparents house. I would like to think that a few weeks later an alien virus accidently wiped them all out.

[OzzyKP]

Originally posted by Pyrodrew

You must have been watching War of the Worlds3. Everything you said above wasn't true. The whole world and evolutionary growth of the world was never lost. The war was never lost by humans. He lost his wife and kids, but he could have had other family/friends elsewhere. The only thing the abulence driver saw were the blood vines outside his door. So no that would not freak me out to start screaming so the aliens could kill me, but thanks for the warning about you.

If you were sitting in that basement watching the earth get terriformed by aliens who walked around with impunity and you looked out your window to see a world devoid of human or earthly life, what would you think?

That would freak me the **** out, just like John said. Would I start screaming, no. Would I assume it was probably all over by that point? Yea. I'd try to cling to life as long as I could, pray, take comfort in survivors left around me, remember, and prepare for the end.

The picture painted at that point in the movie is entirely grim and hopeless.

[Pyrodrew]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
If you were sitting in that basement watching the earth get terriformed by aliens who walked around with impunity and you looked out your window to see a world devoid of human or earthly life, what would you think?

That the area outside my window within my vision might be devoid of human or earthly life. The world is much bigger than what's within my field of vision. In addition, I/Robbins (a mere abulence driver) was still there (I'm human or at least earthly life ), Cruise was there, a little annoying girl (who didn't exactly make Cruise's journey easier) even survived. Why couldn't someone else have survived?

It's not like Robbins had a great unique hiding place with a cloaking/invisibility device... it was just a mere shack/house with a basement & the aliens still couldn't find them, while Robbins was alive. To top it off one was (growing) insane. Stupid aliens.

That would freak me the **** out, just like John said. Would I start screaming, no. Would I assume it was probably all over by that point? Yea. I'd try to cling to life as long as I could, pray, take comfort in survivors left around me, remember, and prepare for the end.

Remind me not to let you in when that happens.

The picture painted at that point in the movie is entirely grim and hopeless.

I saw it as somewhat grim and suggesting Cruise's journey would become more difficult and dangerous. It also worked as a nice scene to surprise the audience. But I never saw it as hopeless.

Dakota wasn't freaked out by it as she ran right out into it by herself... this from a little girl who was screeching and scared of nearly everything.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by JohnT


Tom Cruise is in the business of Tom Cruise. He's not there to write lines for Tim Robbins. If Tom is going to make this into some sort of Scientology mission statement (as bizarre a notion as the one that states the movie is a Fascist masterpiece), he would've said the words, not Tim Robbins (who is not a Scientologist.)

Wasn't it the female reporter who pointed out that the machines had been pre-planted?

Here's what Cruise and Spielberg had to say about that idea:

NEW YORK — Well, at least now we know Steven Spielberg likes the Phoenix. But Tom Cruise probably never will, thanks to me.

As you may have divined from the trailers, Spielberg’s War of the Worlds departs from all previous versions of the story by having the alien tripods emerge from underground, where they’ve lain dormant for eons, instead of arriving in spaceships. To me, that sounded like some aspects of Scientology lore. (Google "Xenu" and see for yourself.) So I wondered whether Cruise was behind the plot change. At a media press conference at Manhattan’s Essex Hotel last week, I asked him, "What resonance does that have for you as a Scientologist." "In what way?" he replied. "In that some of the tenets of Scientology deal with the past of aliens on this planet." Cruise bristled but never stopped smiling. "That’s not true," he said. "Like, huh? W-w-what? What paper are you from?" "The Boston Phoenix." "The Boston What?" He looked at Spielberg. "Is that a good paper?" Spielberg nodded. "I read it. It’s a good paper." Cruise then returned to my question. "It has no resonance whatsoever. There’s absolutely no relation to that whatsoever."

Spielberg picked up the ball and said that the plot change had been his idea. "I didn’t want to do the old ‘death from above’ cliché that we’ve seen so often in science-fiction movies. I just thought that was more of an original way of introducing a threat from where we least expect it to come, an extraterrestrial threat coming almost from the inner reaches of earth." Cruise interjected, "If you are interested in Scientology, you should read Evolution of a Science, I don’t know if you’ve ever read that, or Fundamentals of Thought. That will give you a greater understanding of what Scientology is. There’s a book called What Is Scientology? Read that." Uh, thanks.

There's more at: http://www.portlandphoenix.com/movie...s/04793537.asp

I had no idea that Spielberg was an expert on Scientology.

[JohnT]

He's not.

Did you not see the words "Cruise interjected"?

And no, it was Tim Robbins. The female reporter was there to show the audience that (a) this was a worldwide phenomenon and (b) how the aliens themselves made it into the machines. She said nothing about how the machines themselves made it into the ground.