War of the Worlds = I hate Spielberg

[CubsFan7724]

Some of these short reviews mention that the ending ruined this movie, well you obviously have never read the book before. I agree it is a bit anti-climatic, but I would rather Spielberg keep the original ending than play around with it in an attempt to make it "cooler" for the modern day.

Exactly. Spielberg was simply recreating the movie with today's stuff. He didn't really change much from the book. He obviously added the EMP stuff, since that hadn't been discovered then. By and large, though, Spielberg left the movie intact, including the ending.

You have to understand a couple of things:

1) At the time (1930's), this ending for this movie was extremely original.
2) The ending and this movie are forever tied together. When you think War of the Worlds, you think of the unique ending.

Changing the ending of this movie would be like changing the ending of Sixth Sense just because that ending wasn't so trendy anymore. You can't do that. When you think Sixth Sense, you think, "Oh my God! Bruce Willis is dead!!!"

The same thing goes for War of the Worlds. It's a classic, and altering is practically blashphemy.

Forgive me, I haven't seen the movie (have read the book so I know how it ends) but if it was an Electromagnetic pulse (like one from a nuclear weapon) that would explain why their shields got knocked out, Starcraft style.

[Irish]

Some of these short reviews mention that the ending ruined this movie, well you obviously have never read the book before. I agree it is a bit anti-climatic, but I would rather Spielberg keep the original ending than play around with it in an attempt to make it "cooler" for the modern day.

Exactly. Spielberg was simply recreating the movie with today's stuff. He didn't really change much from the book. He obviously added the EMP stuff, since that hadn't been discovered then. By and large, though, Spielberg left the movie intact, including the ending.

You have to understand a couple of things:

1) At the time (1930's), this ending for this movie was extremely original.
2) The ending and this movie are forever tied together. When you think War of the Worlds, you think of the unique ending.

Changing the ending of this movie would be like changing the ending of Sixth Sense just because that ending wasn't so trendy anymore. You can't do that. When you think Sixth Sense, you think, "Oh my God! Bruce Willis is dead!!!"

The same thing goes for War of the Worlds. It's a classic, and altering is practically blashphemy.

Forgive me, I haven't seen the movie (have read the book so I know how it ends) but if it was an Electromagnetic pulse (like one from a nuclear weapon) that would explain why their shields got knocked out, Starcraft style.

No, actually the aliens used an EMP to knock out all the electricity/cars etc, so that had nothing to do with their shields going down.


I don't really care if it was the original ending or not, it freaking sucked. Keep the same ending, but take some time to explain that there was any way the son could still be alive, or how these aliens suddenly got the freaking flu, even though they had been preparing for this for hundreds of thousands of years.

It wasn't a good ending, it was a cop out. It was a way to leave no loose ends without going through the work to do so. Maybe it was original back in the day, but nowadays that BS doesn't fly.

I want to see just one movie where the son dies, the aliens win, and Tim Robbins comes out of that closed room instead of Tom cruise. Nobody has the balls to do that nowadays.

[DaQ]

I want to see just one movie where the son dies, the aliens win, and Tim Robbins comes out of that closed room instead of Tom cruise. Nobody has the balls to do that nowadays.

I wanted to see the son die anyway.

With the ending, my guess is that...(SPOILER)
















My guess is that the author (or Spielberg) wanted to show that weapons and hi-tech weapons/gadgets don't always win - sometimes, the simplest of things can defeat the biggest of enemies. Maybe there's some bigger meaning to it that Spielberg was trying to depict but it didn't come out so clearly? Like Spielberg against the war in Iraq (or fighting in general) or some weird thing like that? I'm only trying to guess.

I know Morgan Freeman (the narrator at the start and end) was saying some stuff about it, but pretty much the aliens couldn't win because earth's conditions (with oxygen and all that) were too much of them.

[reznorsboy]

I must say that I didn't expect much from this movie. I really hope that Fantastic Four is good!

[JTWood]

My guess is that the author (or Spielberg) wanted to show that weapons and hi-tech weapons/gadgets don't always win - sometimes, the simplest of things can defeat the biggest of enemies.

The ending shows that the aliens didn't understand that they were going to war with our entire planet; hence, the name War of the Worlds.

[JTWood]

...even though they had been preparing for this for hundreds of thousands of years.

Now you're making an assumption based on a bad screenplay. There was only one part of the movie where I really disagreed with what the script, and it was the part where Tim Robbins says, "They've been planning this for millions of years."

If the aliens had really been planning this for millions of years, why did they wait until our species developed before attacking? Why not just take over the planet before humans ever inhabited it?

Obviously, he's wrong because - in hindsight - Robbins' character was nuttier than squirrel soup. The problem is that Robbins' character spouts that misinformation before you realize he's insane, so you keep believing that his character was there to fill in the holes.

It wasn't a good ending, it was a cop out. It was a way to leave no loose ends without going through the work to do so. Maybe it was original back in the day, but nowadays that BS doesn't fly.

I'm glad they kept the original ending idea, but I agree that they probably could have at least dragged out the ending a little more and explained it in better detail.

I want to see just one movie where the son dies, the aliens win, and Tim Robbins comes out of that closed room instead of Tom cruise. Nobody has the balls to do that nowadays.

The Astronaut's Wife

[Nomar4prez]

Everyone is saying the ending was like the book. So, was the ending for the book like 2-3 pages? That's how I felt about the ending of this movie. I'm not mad about the reason of the aliens dying, but I'm mad about they just had Morgan Freeman do a voiceover for 20 seconds to explain something that was the centerpiece of the movie.........The first hour was pretty damn good I do have to say though.