so where was the plot?

7/31/2006 1:39:45 AM

getting to Boston. aliens couldn't fuck with Boston

7/31/2006 1:40:56 AM

^^ good question

7/31/2006 1:50:16 AM

THEY RIDE THE LIGHTNING

other than that, no real plot

7/31/2006 1:56:19 AM

I wrote a letter asking for my two hours back

7/31/2006 7:43:31 AM

I tried watching it a couple of times. I got through about 7 minutes before I had to change it. The characters were so unrealistic and fucking annoying that I wanted the aliens to kill them so I wouldn't have to listen to Tom Cruise's nose whistling constantly and hearing Dakota Fanning screaming all the time because she's a stupid bitch.

7/31/2006 7:46:51 AM

Spielberg has sucked since Saving Private Ryan. However, I didn't see Munich, so maybe he redeemed himself with that one.

7/31/2006 9:20:29 AM

I seriously considered making this thread when I watched it on HBO a few nights back. I was expecting a halfway decent movie, and ended up being so confused and lost that I honestly wanted my 2 hours back.

I hated Close Encounters of the Third Kind, so I knew I'd likely not like this one but gave it a shot anyway, and boy what a mistake.

Truly a horrible, horrible movie.

7/31/2006 9:28:36 AM

What do you mean 'no real plot'

What part of Alien invasion blew your feeble minds away?

7/31/2006 9:29:11 AM

Saving Private Ryan

Great. Fucking. Movie.

7/31/2006 9:38:15 AM

what was the deal with the son?

"i have to go"

"what do you mean?"

"i just do"

then he walks over a hill with a bunch of soldiers, there's an explosion, and he shows up at the end.

7/31/2006 9:41:13 AM

I kept hoping the son died

7/31/2006 9:47:19 AM

Quote :

"then he walks over a hill with a bunch of soldiers, there's an explosion, and he shows up at the end."

yea, this was super fucking lame

7/31/2006 10:03:32 AM

i actually know people that like this movie. people with advanced degrees.

7/31/2006 10:28:52 AM

^I'm one of them!

7/31/2006 10:34:26 AM

I just saw it for the first time last weekend as well. I thought it was pretty ok (aside from Dakota screaming and being annoying at everything) until the end, and they walk into Boston, all the damn buildings are still standing, and there is like 10 alive people in the one appartment.

But yet they show the tripods leveling some po-dunk ferry town.

Whatever, and the sons alive too, right...

Have some nuts spielberg, kill the whinny bitches off.

7/31/2006 10:53:26 AM

^walkie talkies in ET

7/31/2006 10:55:12 AM

The plot was stupid. The visual effects were pretty sweet and I thought the atmosphere was pretty fucking intense. It almost gave me a lot of confidence that we are completely fucked if aliens came to town.

"Derrrrrrrrrr. I'm gonna just stand here and watch."

7/31/2006 10:56:40 AM

I got through about 20 minutes of this movie. That's 20 minutes I'll never get back.

^As for aliens coming here to start a war, my theory is that we can not even sustain life on the moon for a couple of people for much more than a few hours. If they have the technology to sustain an invasion force here for long enough to fight a war, it won't be much of a war. Well, unless we can get Jeff Goldbloom to hack into their computers or something along those lines. What are aliens using these days? Java, C++?

7/31/2006 11:12:16 AM

Terrible plot. I should've remembered it from the old movie, but the quick transition from "Earth is fucked" to "bacteria killed the aliens" really seemed like a shitty cop-out worthless ending.

Quote :

"what was the deal with the son? "i have to go" "what do you mean?" "i just do" then he walks over a hill with a bunch of soldiers, there's an explosion, and he shows up at the end."

Yeah, that really pissed me off. Not only was it self-serious garbage, but how did he not die, how did he get to Grandma's house, and why was Boston not destroyed?

7/31/2006 12:21:41 PM

Boston is inveeeeeeencible!

7/31/2006 12:25:39 PM

Quote :

"RIDE THE LIGHTNING"

excellent album.

7/31/2006 12:28:36 PM

Not even nasty, ugly aliens want to go to Boston.

[Edited on July 31, 2006 at 12:42 PM. Reason : Spielberg sucks]

7/31/2006 12:41:26 PM

Although the movie didn't do justice to H.G. Wells, I am glad to see that they didn't change the way the aliens were eliminated.

7/31/2006 1:01:21 PM

Hmm... New York City in flames while Boston is unscathed? I guess the screenplay was written by a Red Sox fan.

Seriously though, I enjoyed watching the movie simply to watch what civilization would look like if order collapsed and calamity came down upon us. It just fell apart for me though when the son went over that hill.

7/31/2006 1:09:25 PM

Quote :

"I am glad to see that they didn't change the way the aliens were eliminated. "

in the hg wells version they died b/c of bacteria

in the spielberg version i think their heads exploded after trying to drive around downtown boston

7/31/2006 1:14:59 PM

Quote :

"so where was the plot? "

7/31/2006 1:18:39 PM

Its not a cop out ending you mongoloids, its a big LOL@HUMANS because our massive technological greatness couldn't do dick while small, million year old bacteria proved fatal.

Its how the book ends.

The only thing anyone can gripe about is the love dove ending Speilberg puts in this movie. The dumb kid should have died, no question.

7/31/2006 1:29:20 PM

Yeah, I couldn't stand how Dakota was screaming the whole time. She should have been doing something more realistic... like playing patty cake while people were being vaporized around her

(didn't like the movie BTW)

7/31/2006 1:33:08 PM

I mean seriously, if anything she should have screamed even more and acted even dumber.

7/31/2006 1:34:29 PM

the fact that the son comes back in the end rendered the sophias choice like decision useless (seems like steven wants this semi-happy ending to his movies - havent seen munich yet).

7/31/2006 1:34:38 PM

Quote :

"Terrible plot. I should've remembered it from the old movie, but the quick transition from "Earth is fucked" to "bacteria killed the aliens" really seemed like a shitty cop-out worthless ending."

That's how the BOOK this was based off ended. I don't think you can consider that a cop-out ending.

I read the book way back in like 4th grade, and I saw this movie, and I liked it. Although I did think it was lame the kid at the end survived, I still liked the movie.

The dead bodies floating down the river, and the burning train were great scenes.

[Edited on July 31, 2006 at 1:41 PM. Reason : ]

7/31/2006 1:39:27 PM

Quote :

"Not even nasty, ugly aliens want to go to Boston."

truth, that.


Also:


This is the best WotW version ever made. The movie is garbage.

7/31/2006 1:43:19 PM

I actually liked the concept of showing a relativly well known story in a different light where it was all shown in the perspective of one guy living through it all. I actually liked most of the movie, and was okay with the aliens death because I just knew thats how it ended.

But the ending really pissed me off.

I mean REALLY pissed me off.

7/31/2006 4:34:21 PM

Quote :

"I couldn't stand how Dakota was screaming the whole time"

7/31/2006 5:08:10 PM

it was intense, but coulda been alot more of a movie than that,
if he was gonna do one point of view it should have been more intersting than that
but the fight over the van was one of the best scenes in the movie
actually there were alot of great scenes
too bad the story sucked

7/31/2006 5:15:48 PM

she annoyed every single one of you, i guess she is a good actor


what do you think a 12 year old girl would do after she saw that shit

7/31/2006 6:06:05 PM

I like this movie. The initial attack was worth the price of admission. There's no plot because given the point of view (one family's journey), things happen to them as they come into play. Good flick.

7/31/2006 8:10:50 PM

i hate the "oh-by-the-way..." ending

i mean i get that thats the way the story was made

i just wish the would have gone more in depth upon it

7/31/2006 9:02:26 PM

Quote :

"she annoyed every single one of you, i guess she is a good actor what do you think a 12 year old girl would do after she saw that shit"

7/31/2006 9:38:17 PM

no she was annoying in a too mature imature child actor whos trying to steal the show kinda way

7/31/2006 10:14:51 PM

this movie sucked

7/31/2006 10:38:52 PM

dakotas character was 9 or 10 in the movie. boston was destroyed but the townhomes where grandma lived just weren't

7/31/2006 10:51:59 PM

It was an okay movie. Dakota Fanning didn't really bug me too much, and Tom Cruise didn't manage to annoy me enough to make it unwatchable. But I agree that the son should've died. Him being alive at the end = wtf.

My main gripe with the movie is all the plot holes (some of which may be H.G. Wells's, though):

-The ships were placed underground millions of years ago? If the aliens were already here by then, why didn't they take over the planet at that time? And how the hell did we not manage to find even one?

-The aliens have enough advanced technology to move themselves through space from their planet to ours (possibly with FTL drive? Although that is never actually stated), and they don't take Earth's microbial life into account? They even leave their ships without any special containment suits? But to be fair, it's plausible that their physiology is simply too different for anything earth-bound to survive and thrive in, and so human diseases don't affect them.

-An EMP takes out everything electrical in the vicinity, and yet somebody has a working camcorder to take pictures of all this shit going down? (It's entirely possible that it was kept in some sort of Faraday cage-like compartment beforehand, but it's unlikely, and it's never shown and so we can't say that this is what actually happened)

-Cruise and his bastard children swim to shore through a river in the middle of fucking winter and don't suffer from hypothermia?

If there are more, I can't remember them/think of them offhand.

7/31/2006 10:55:52 PM

the ice of boston is muddy

[Edited on August 1, 2006 at 8:46 AM. Reason : or so i've heard]

8/1/2006 8:46:28 AM

Quote :

"The ships were placed underground millions of years ago? If the aliens were already here by then, why didn't they take over the planet at that time? And how the hell did we not manage to find even one?"

THEY RODE THE LIGHTNING

8/1/2006 8:50:38 AM

a movie about aliens that requires me to susbend belief about EMTs/hypothermia/plot???????

8/1/2006 8:58:51 AM

yea, they are aliens! you can't really make a sensical movie out of it

8/1/2006 9:05:02 AM

I saw it at the theatre and people starting booing when the son was still alive. lol

8/1/2006 9:28:42 AM

I liked it when tom cruise opened the grenades with his mouth while his body was in the super tight alien sucking contraption. he's such a badass.

8/1/2006 9:30:48 AM