War of the Worlds, a review

[Rhydderch Hael]

Pfft. You'd think aliens would scan the planet for incompatible pathogens before invading.  This was just as lame as the aliens in Signs who were allergic to water (gee, what's all that blue stuff we see from orbit? naw, it can't be water.)
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You could write it off as arrogance or complacency on the Martians' part. They probably assumed that their bodies had evolved to the point that they could perfectly resist any germs that Earth could come up with. If pathogens were rendered extinct on Mars thousands of years ago, then pathology would have fallen by the wayside as well.

Once they got infected, though, they were doomed. The trick is, that would not have mattered much. They would have undoubtedly soldiered on as best they could until they literally dropped dead from the plague.

The guys in Signs, of course, should have seen their doom from orbit. It's like a human battle fleet rolling up to a planet covered in oceans of boiling sulfuric acid, then dropping troops down in summerweight cotton BDUs.



There was an episode of The Outer Limits that gave the whole War of the Worlds treatment, but reversed the roles. A human invasion force was wiped out by an alien plague. The trick was the disease was not organic, but electromagnetic. A form of disease never encountered by humans. A truly alien disease transmitted in an alien manner. By the time you even figure out the true nature of the plague, you're already doomed— to say nothing about researching a cure.

[Minionman]

Someone described once how aliens would probably not get human diseases, since if they were alien they probably have different cell structures and metabolisms, so human and alien germs would probably cause little fear in the other.

However, it seems to me that aliens could get eaten up by gangrene or mold type diseases, since those critters eat anything organic and aliens would probably have no way of fighting them. There's also bigger parasites that may or may not get into their bodies and eat them away.

Course, this is all just guessing anyway.

[FearlessOne]

Just saw this last night.  I'm a military sci-fi reader, so the anachronisms and inconsistencies in the plot and in the aliens' technology were so jarring to me that I couldn't enjoy the movie. 

There are pretty obvious plot holes - how didn't we discover those things before, for one thing, and why would any invader with that level of technology (we're talking inserting the "pilots" at near-relativistic speed from total stealth) want our planet anyway, but there's tons of tiny stuff. 

Little things, like I said, but things that really got to annoying me after a while.
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Ok, first, how didn't we discover these things before? One would think that subway digging, mining, severe erosion, magnometers, any one of these would have uncovered some of the tens of thousands of these devices. Well, that assumes that they are completely 'dead' until reactivated by the lightning or emag pulses or pods. They may have nanotechnology to repair damage and use sensors to detect whether discovery is imminent. In that case, the buried tripod has to disintegrate or assimilate with nearby minerals. Nanotechnolgy involves assembly and disassembly.

Second, why isnt their technology better? Well, you know from the movie that it's very clear that they are quite primitive in alot of ways, brutal, and above all arrogant. Morgan Freeman tells us that they watched us from far away - and that probably means in this movie that they are NOT from Mars (where the heck in the movie did they even mention Mars? I see several posts here saying so.) He also says that at least some of them had 'vast intellects'. This may not mean the grunts we see transported across space and down the lightning pods or perhaps even hatched just a few years while in transit. Their technology may be in a state of stasis just as their home world is dying. Maybe the last time they fought a war was millions of years ago, and that military technology worked fine then. Arrogance = Ignorance here.

Third, why not harvest all instead of vaporize? I dont know why u asked this question. It makes perfect sense to me. Conquer and then unterraform. They transform from warriors to fiendish horticulturalists as soon as the threat is over, although I admit, we dont seem to be much threat.

Fourth, low tech spotlights. Well, they work. You might like to see infrared sensors, but remember they also seem to have big eyes and perhaps can see very well with only a small amount of illumination.

Fifth, why noisy tripods, no envirosuits/weaponry. Again and again, they are in many ways primitive, perhaps a dying culture that over the past few million years has lost sight of how far they have declined, just as it wasnt until the beginning of the High Italian Renaissance that people figured out we had been in a 1000 year decline. These may be grunts, another species enslaved, a subspecies specially bred. Disposable.

Their efficient primitivism gives this movie its scary tone.

[Munkay]

Morgan Freeman tells us that they watched us from far away - and that probably means in this movie that they are NOT from Mars (where the heck in the movie did they even mention Mars?  I see several posts here saying so.) 

The opening sequence of the movie shows the planets, and while Morgan Freeman is talking it zooms in on Mars. I don't know if there is another instance pointing to Martians, but I'm pretty sure the movie stayed true to the book in that sense.

Cheers,

Munk

[FearlessOne]

The opening sequence of the movie shows the planets, and while Morgan Freeman is talking it zooms in on Mars.  I don't know if there is another instance pointing to Martians, but I'm pretty sure the movie stayed true to the book in that sense.
Cheers, Munk
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Well, I went and saw the movie yet again, and it only briefly showed the top portion of an orangish world, probably Mars. Then it panned the camera up to another world, which was clearly the earth. Yes, the book used Mars as the likely origin of the aliens. But the movie wasn't so commital. In fact, I'm pretty sure Morgan Freeman said something about them being or looking "far across the galaxy" and Mars isnt even far across the solar system :) He did NOT mention the planet Mars by name, and thank goodness for that! (although it would kinda explain why so many of our probes go kerplooie when they try to land there...)

If any of u guys want 'further reading' on this, I made 2 long posts over at diabloii.net at their Off Topic forum that are quite amusing:

http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=361290

...its around the 85th or so post out of 92 total. Someone over there actually posted a huge long review of the movie today and said something like "so Cruise goes to Boston and its too cold there and the aliens die..." You just have to be kidding me.