Despite not being completely sold on it by the advertisements, I went with my cousin to see War of the Worlds last night. It’s been years since I’ve read any of H. G. Wells’ works, so I wasn’t bothered the changes that were made to the concept.

As a whole, I very much enjoyed this movie. The invasion and the subsequent attacks by the Martians were suitably horrifying, and everything that happened to Tom Cruise’s character really gave a strong sense of the helplessness that the common man would feel in these sorts of situations. I was really struck by the acting of Dakota Fanning. If she can avoid the common traps that successful child actors/actresses fall into, she should have a very good career ahead of her.

The only real quibble I had with this movie was its ending. As near as I can remember, the actual end to the invasion is pretty true to what Wells originally wrote, but I would really have liked to have seen a montage of the cleanup, and possibly an epilogue explaining how the human race recovered. Still, that’s not a big quibble. I really enjoyed the movie, and I’d give it a 7.5/10.