Pengwuino said:
Well I have my complaints about the plot but i CAN chalk that up to it being such an old story. Of course, it's a REAL stretch to think that such advanced aliens could not understand anything about biology. Even if biology as a whole was barely understood, we still had enough knowledge to be able to think "Ok we know how to cure a few diseases... its not too much of a stretch to think aliens could have figured this all out before us and not be prone to our diseases" and put it in a story to make it more believable. Then again one would suspect the original story would make the assumption that this was their first attempt at an attack on another planet... so they wouldn't have a chance to even realize disease needed to be accounted for. If they were whiping out planet after planet and then it was finally time to take Earth over, it wouldn't have been acceptable though. Since that wasn't the case, I guess that can be a realistic idea back in the day.
However, the idea that their shields stopped working because the operators had a cold doesn't make any sense and wouldn't have made sense back then either. Oh and the kid magically living. How did that happen? Did i blink and miss 20 minutes of the movie? Did things like that happen a lot back in the 1800's?
The acting can't be excused though, sorry.
As far as the shields go, they didn't exist in the novel. In fact, in the novel, the Martians were not invincible to our weapons. A well placed cannon shot would take one out. One of the early strategies used was to lay in hiding with artillery and ambush them. The Martians countered this by laying out a poisionous gas before them to take out the gun crews.
The shields were introduced in the first movie. Wells' original Martians would have never stood a chance against even mid 20th century weaponry, so they had to up the ante.
This is one of the problems with changing the time period. You have to introduce changes that tend to unravel the storyline.
An example of this is in the Movie
Starship Troopers(which BTW in my opinion is a much worse movie than WotW.)
In the original story the MI wore "powersuits" which were a mechanized type of armor/spacesuit with all sorts of built in weapons and electronic sensors (almost a one man tank). The "bugs" were also a technologically advanced, space faring race.
The producers of the movie felt that the powersuits would be too expensive, so they took them out of the movie. Without the powersuits, the MI would be no match for the Bugs, because the Bugs bred so fast they could throw vast numbers into battle. Now the producers could have equaled the score by down playing the Bugs' numbers, but they wanted those scenes with huge number of bugs. So instead, they downgraded the bugs to a pre-technological race.
But then, since a major plot line had the Bugs taking out the hero's home town, they had to have a pre-technological race somehow being able to throw an asteroid across half the galaxy and hit the Earth with it. (In the original novel, the city was taken out by a nuclear strike.). They also had to come up with that silly scene of Bugs shooting plasma out their arses and up to orbital height in order to take out ships.
Pull out a plot thread and the whole story unravels.
As far as the kid is concerned, this is most probably a nod to the orginal story. The main character is separated from his wife early in the story. (He takes her to a cousin's, where he thinks she will be safe, and by the time he returns, the Martians and through the area. BTW, they have no chidren in the novel). He doesn't know her fate until the end of the story when he returns to the remains of his home and finds her there too.
There are a lot of little nods to the orginal story.
The birds that give Cruise the clue that the shield is down. In the novel, it is birds circling a machines hood and picking at the dead flesh of the Martians that is the first indication that something has happened to the Martians.
The man in which they hole up with in the basement is a composite of two characters from the book and is given the name of a third minor character.
The "Hooting" or "howling" sound the machines make was how they communicated in the novel. (pre-radio)
The ferry scene is a nod to a part of the book where a steamer tries to escape to sea. (In the novel, the steamer escapes due to the intervention of an ironclad called the "Thunder Child". )
I won't comment on the acting, as I don't consider myself that qualified as a drama critic.
