War of the Worlds [Spoilers]

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

The end was wrapped up way to fast. I mean, one minute these things are on their way to destroying mankind (and everything mankind has built) and are unstoppable the next they are being brought down by a canon sitting on a soldiers shoulder? And the whole reason is some microbes or something like that?

That just doesn't do it for me. I know the makers of the film didn't write the story, but I thought there would be more to it. I'd call it a good exhibition of special effects capabilities, nothing more.

I think the point of the story was to illustrate just how powerless humans were against these things and just how lucky we were that something so simple as the common cold could bring the entire thing to a halt when the combined power of the earth's military forces could do nothing. The only reason we were spared was we were lucky enough to have inhabited this world for thousands of years and had therefore "earned" the right to live here (although the armed fight over the minivan makes you wonder - naturalistic survival tendencies aside, humans like to revel in violent arguments over such petty things on a daily basis - can't we all just get along?).

You'd certainly think, however, that a technologically-advanced Martian (or whatever) species would have taken indigenous pathogens and diseases into account during their lengthy study of the earth and its people prior to the attack. I'm sure they had to deal with their own strains of sicknesses back on their homeworld. But that's not the way H.G. Wells laid it out.