War of the Worlds was Retarded.

If you plan on seeing War of the Worlds, don't read this. If you'd like to save yourself some money, by all means, read on.

My friend Brando brought up a good point once about movies - they have to follow their own internal logic. I can't really explain this, but it makes sense. Even when something is totally unrealistic or futuristic or clownish, it has to follow its own little set of rules set up by setting/time/characters/etc, or it doesn't work. War of the Worlds was probably the biggest violator of "internal logic" that I've seen in quite a while. Pretty much from the get-go I started having some questions.

EMP-proof Video Cameras

OK, so these lightning bolts come down and zap everything, except for some dude's video camera on the street. Thank god, cuz then we were able to get the dramatic "drop camera and see everyone running away" clips.

Super strong clothing

I'm not sure what year this was set, but it seems modern-ish. However, these beams that the alien tripod thingies were shooting around were destroying bridges, buildings, and highways, but for some reason people's clothing was unharmed by it. It was pretty cool looking I guess, but c'mon.

Advanced Aliens making really bad decisions: A Case Study.

I like it in movies when super advanced and intelligent races come down to earth and make enormous blunders, enabling the feeble humans to face them head on and win with their resilience and ingenuity! At the beginning of the movie it's spelled out that the aliens have been watching us carefully, and apparently they buried these huge tripod machine things a million years ago. So they've had a million years to "study" the human race, much like a scientist studies something under a microscope. Apparently they were looking at zebras and chimps when maybe they should have been minding the plague in Europe or in the New World, cuz the whole "microbes in the air" thing didn't really catch their attention. I can just see the alien scientists showing up to the alien president's office.

President: OK Professor Zork, what the hell happened?

Zork: Uuh, well sir, we kinda over looked the whole "air" thing. You know, we were so busy thinking up death rays that would keep their clothing intact that we forgot to research microbes contained in earth's air, so all our guys died.

President: But the death ray worked, right? Cool...

Ok, let's cut to another scene, where the aliens are going over their strategy for invasion.

Invasion Strategist: Ok, fellas, here's how we're gonna do it. First, we're gonna immerge from the ground and just start annihilating EVERYTHING. Even though we are a super advanced alien race capable of space flight and whatnot, we're going to kill people in a really inefficient manner, using inappropriate amounts of energy on individuals, and we're not going to be able to hit Tom Cruise's character for some reason. Once we have everyone completely terrified, freaked out, hiding, and really difficult to get to, we're gonna change strategies and start using them for their blood. Again, bear with the tripods - they're about a million years old, so you can only pick people up individually, 1 by 1. Any questions? OK, let's get it on!

Gay.

Very disappointing movie. The middle was really slow too - the whole scene with Tim Robbins was weird, and there really isn't any hero in the movie except for our good old friend 'disease'. Wow, that's some brilliant writing there. Nice stupid little moral message at the end there, too. Billions of humans have died so that we can be immune to microbes that will eventually kill aliens and save the planet. Yippee! Black Death should be called White Life!! In the meantime I'll be hoping to christ that the next invasion force doesn't come armed with surgical masks and air filters on their tripods. Jeepers.