I'm looking forward to this one the most!

[Ricky Retardo]

Seriously, it's been almost decades since Spielberg has delivered a big fat across-the-board popcorn movie ( ...The Last Crusade ). The trailers have been VERY promising and SS has NEVER shown any qualms about killing off a lot of people in ways that carry much gravity (the boy on the air raft in Jaws , the drowning of the slaves in Amistad , several scenes in Schindler's List and ALL of Private Ryan ) . Spielberg at his best is a master manipulator who can run you through a gamut of emotions sometimes in a single scene (of course at his worst he can be terribly and embarrassingly schmaltzy ie: ET orAlways ). After over ten years of big budget navel-gazing to middlin box office response (Ryan excepted), I think this is the project that will return him to the Midas touch he had in the 70's and 80's.

[Furious D]

I seem to recall a scene where the narrator clubs a curate and leaves him to be harvested by the martians. I wonder if that scene's in Spielberg's version.

[Cookie G]

I wasn't going to see this one in the theatre, but I just saw a trailer for it on the big screen and have changed my mind about it.

[Reverend Ned]

I simply can't rationalize spending the cash to see a movie with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of special effects and all sorts of super-bitchin' mondo pseudo-destruction, just to see the invaders die by breathing our air.

[Reverend Ned]

I seem to recall a scene where the narrator clubs a curate and leaves him to be harvested by the martians. I wonder if that scene's in Spielberg's version.

If Tom Cruise does that to Dakota Fanning, I may have to go see it after all.

[Pete Vonder Haar]

just to see the invaders die by breathing our air.

You'd prefer Randy Quaid flying a plane up their tailpipe?

[szmike]

I simply can't rationalize spending the cash to see a movie with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of special effects and all sorts of super-bitchin' mondo pseudo-destruction, just to see the invaders die by breathing our air.

It makes sense when you read the original novel. H.G. Wells makes several parallels (re: clubs you over the head with obtuse metaphors) to the aliens destruction of mankind to our attempt to eliminate smaller lifeforms that inconvenience us, like bugs or bacteria. The irony in the story is that mankind is saved by which mankind spent their lifetime trying to destroy.

***SPOLIERS***

And as far as how the ending fits the movie, this is not about Tom Cruise saving the world. This is about what Tom Cruise would do to save his family. The climax occurs not when the aliens die, but when he has to kill Tim Robbins to prevent Tim from getting them all killed and when Tom Cruise becomes a suicide bomber to take out the tripod that took his daughter. I'm of the opinion that he wasn't so much trying to save Dakota as he was preventing the tripod from slamming her to the ground and sucking the blood out of her while she was still alive. There was no way for him to count on some army soldier pulling him out of the tripod rectum with the pins sans grenades. Kinda like in Lethal Weapon when Danny Glover says "if she's gonna die, she's gonna die my way."