Review of War of the Worlds

As usual, potential spoiler warning. Though I don't consider revealing that bacteria kills the aliens in the end as a spoiler. That's been out there for 107 years.

Anyway, we went to War of the Worlds on Sunday. I had mixed expectations as the previews looked good but the reviews weren't so great. Overall, I liked it, but like Land of the Dead, I wouldn't have missed out greatly if I hadn't seen it. The first half of the movie was quite good and was essentially a horror/sci-fi movie. The second half was rather slow, and the ending was a tad anti-climatic, but the book was like that, too. Speaking of which, unlike the original War of the Worlds movie from 1953, this one was a lot closer to H.G. Wells original book - tripods, a ferry, the red weed, etc. I believe Morgan Freeman's narration at the beginning and end of the movie was taken verbatim from the book. They did leave out the "black smoke", however; I'm not sure why.

A couple scenes that stand out:

• Tom Cruise's character's horror when he realized the powder he was covered with was the ash of the people that had been vaporized near him.
• The scene where Cruise's daughter sees the body floating down the river...and then more bodies and more...

A couple things I have issue with:

• The implication that the tripods had been buried years ago; I found the idea that they'd been launched from Mars (or wherever) in the book more plausible, particularly when dealing with the ones that were buried under urban areas. You'd think we'd have found at least one. Also, wouldn't the aliens' technology have advanced far beyond what they had when they'd buried the tripods in the first place?
• If the EMP pulse had taken out all the electronics early on, how were the camera and camcorder the people using to film the first tripod working? Granted, they could have had extensive shielding or something like that, but I doubt it. Of course, it's possible that some devices were spared; I don't know enough about electro-magnetics to know how likely that is.

Anyway, it was a decent movie. I'd give the first half 2.5 stars, but 2 stars to the movie overall.