War of the Worlds *Spoiler*

[CaptaiN_JacK]

. I don't get why they didn't just stick to Welles's original premise, and have the martians come in giant cylinders. Would have eliminated the whole series of questions.

I was thinking the same thing. Maybe it added action value to have them come up from the ground? I don't think they could have done the original cylinders-from-mars idea, since we know there is nothing on mars, but I think they should have stuck to the cylinder idea. My idea: Have 10 cylinders hit each major city in one day, and then try and stick to the original plot of having everybody run away (all electronics working, none of this EMP junk) while the aliens start building more and more equipment. Screw the whole terraforma crap, have it like the original: aliens taking over the world. And have the original octopus-like aliens that could barely walk on earth, I hate the ones in the movie, all they are there for is scare value (I would have been more scared if they were the aliens as depicted in the book. If they somehow would have had Tom make insights in the movie like the character did in the book about them being an evolved form of humans, that would have scared me a lot more.)

[MrWallen]

The origunal question was "why did the shields go down," not "what killed the aliens." I guess when they died they all fell on the "shields turn off" button?

The tripods were bio-mechanical creations, meaning they used a combination of conventional robotics (well, conventional for martians) with metal etc, and organic technology (as seen when the alien falls out of one with all that goo). This means that the tripods would be affected by disease just like the aliens, causing all kinds of things to malfunction.

As for who asked why they needed blood as fertilizer on Earth but not on Mars, my guess would be the plants, being red, are heavily rich in iron. Blood is also very rich in iron, as is the surface of Mars.

[Jaan]

I realize there are a lot of "holes" in the movie but I think that it's proper not to know, or be able to guess, why the aliens did what they did. Imagine if you lived in a primative tribe in a jungle somewhere and have never had contact with the outside world and next thing you know a bunch of guys in helocopters show up looking for oil or fissionable materials or whatnot. You would never be able to guess what was really happening and why.

[TDonovan]

I thought the movie blew hard. The only thing I liked was that I got to laugh when Tom Cruise tried to throw a baseball.

Looks like someone never played little league...

But seriously, I laughed during that movie. Especially when there was a guy up in the front row who laughed 10 seconds after he was supposed to, or did it at inappropriate times.

[bam wannabe]

I thought the movie blew hard. The only thing I liked was that I got to laugh when Tom Cruise tried to throw a baseball.

Looks like someone never played little league...

But seriously, I laughed during that movie. Especially when there was a guy up in the front row who laughed 10 seconds after he was supposed to, or did it at inappropriate times.

you are the type of person that kills the theater experience for me.

[wad04]

wow thanks target pratice, now that i'm 3/4s done with the book you've just wrecked it for me. next time put it in the right thread you ****ing *******.

that was just really uncalled for.