I’m very forgiving to big, stupid, explosion-laden blockbusters. I have found that I’m able to enjoy movies like Independence Day. I’ve defended Underworld against the haters. I’ve been able to tolerate the cheesiness of Day After Tomorrow. And when in the right frame of mind, I can even shut off my brain and enjoy the schlockfest that is Armageddon.

So when I say that War of the Worlds is bad, I really mean it. It’s worse than ID4. It’s worse than Signs. It may be the worst movie I’ve seen all year. Even with a few drinks in me, I could not ignore the stupidity seeping from every pore of the movie.

As a helpful explanation of why, I’ve provided my notes on what we’ve learned about making decisions from War of the Worlds. Warning, lots ofspoilers after the break.

  1. The story of an unlikable man with no real goals who accomplishes very little is much more interesting than, say, that of politicians and soldiers that are actually making decisions that have a chance to matter.
  2. When invading a planet with 6 billion members, there’s nothing inefficient about killing them off one at a time.
  3. If you need to gather up your human livestock to begin the harvest, it’s really helpful to start disintegrating stuff so the ones who survive run as far away from you as possible.
  4. An Electromagnetic Pulse will wipe out any and all electric devices except camcorders. These are immune.
  5. Explaining to your kids what’s going on will only slow you down. It’ll be far more impactful simply to let them experience the horror first-hand.
  6. When fleeing an alien attack, if you finally hit a part of town with electricity, there’s no need to turn on a television or radio to find out what the hell’s going on.
  7. Also, when trying to make food for your children in your responsible ex-wife’s fully stocked kitchen, it’s probably a waste of time to look in a refrigerator.
  8. Why waste time on planning a strategic attack on a planet when you can bury your army below the surface of the earth and just hope that someone builds a population center on top of them?
  9. Obsolescence be damned. Go ahead and bury those attack units now, your highly advanced alien race can’t possibly substantially improve that technology in the next million years or so.
  10. Brattiness is hereditary.
  11. When the crowded population center you live in is under attack, probably the best place to head to is another major population center.
  12. Even after dad has warned you that nearly any human being would consider killing you for your car, it’s perfectly reasonable to drive slowly into a restless, panicked mob.
  13. Restless, panicked mobs want minivans. Other cars are apparently allowed on the ferries unmolested.
  14. This may be because minivans are apparently immune to airplanes that drop out of the sky.
  15. If you have machismo, running into a front line unarmed is a perfectly logical course of action.
  16. Walking into a wall of fire where aliens are incinerating anything that moves is not, as you might expect, instant death.
  17. Even though the earth shakes with every footstep, only Tom Cruise and his Daughter can detect a tripod before it it standing on top of you.
  18. Humans are the only ones smart enough to invent sensors capable of detecting heat or motion, or for that matter, being as good as the naked eye or ear.
  19. There are many ways to attack your human enemies – disintegration, sucking the blood dry, or capture in your basket to become a human suppository. Aliens will leave the exact method to the whims of the tripod driver.
  20. It’s okay to kill people for being noisy. Knocking them unconscious and/or restrainting them is for the weak. Note: the ‘killing the noisy’ rule does not apply when ‘the noisy’ is your daughter.
  21. An alien invasion is a perfectly acceptable situation in which to turn into a dick. It’s also a perfectly acceptable situation to try to attack them with a shotgun, or perhaps even unarmed!
  22. Earth is the only planet in the universe with the concept of bacteria and immunities.
  23. If a robotic arm extension of a gigantic tripod meanders through your living room, the best course of action is to run outside where the rest of the tripod is, and then just stand there waiting to be picked up. If you prefer to spice things up, you might consider screaming to ensure you have it’s attention.
  24. Bacteria not only kills aliens, it also lowers their force fields.
  25. The townhouses of the Massachusetts Liberal Elite are sturdy enough to withstand alien invasion with no more hardship than an early autumn leaf drop.

Here’s what I liked.

  • Anytime the tripods were on screen, I was able to enjoy the film.
  • The flaming train was cool.
  • The New York/Boston snipefest between father and son made me laugh out loud.
  • I was left with the impression that not only were the robots planted here millions of years ago, so were we, and as such the invasion was really just a ‘harvest’ of their planted human crop. But this is probably all in my head, and while cool (an interesting answer to ‘why are we here’), makes the ending of death by bacteria all the stupider.

Overall, either get liquored up for this one, or go see Batman again instead.

Original comments thread is here.