** WARNING War of the Worlds Spoilers ahead **
Quote:
Originally posted by TerryBPP
It happens in about 30 sec. The alien are killing everyone and the they are all dead in the blink of an eye. You would think they would have done a different take and put some story behind it.
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You're missing the whole point there, Terry!! The 'quick and sudden death' of the aliens acts like a bookend to the story -- they invaded quickly and without warning, and their tyranny ends just as quickly as it started.
As H.G. Wells wrote in his original work, that was a significant part of the message -- sometimes even well planned 'attacks' will fall short of the desired goal.
I read the book years ago (highly recommend it to all sci-fi folks - it's far better than some of the crap they're writing today!), and also saw the original movie.
IMHO, the new War of the Worlds movie did a good job of balancing the original elements and message with a more modern story. The 'splinter scene' in the beginning of the movie was an excellent use of foreshadowing. ("Don't worry dad, my finger will simply push out the splinter on its own") The sound effects were well done -- as were the special effects. They kept the gore to a minimum.
In the original movie, you never really see the aliens up close. I thought that gave the original a more suspenseful element - in the new movie they shouldn't have shown so much of the alien beings. In the original, all you see of the alien in the end is his three-fingered hand slowly dying. In the new movie, it looked like that was going to happen, but then they showed the upper body of the ET -- it would have been better to just show the hand again, IMO.
Does anyone else here remember the short-lived "War of the Worlds" series they produced back in the late 80's?
-Z.