War of the Worlds

Ok, so I finally saw the movie for the first time a few days ago (after Wipert pestered me to see it about 6 months ago), and for the most part I was pretty impressed with the cinematography. The scenes of people being zapped into nothingness was gripping to say the least, and it's about as good a Spielberg movie as he's made in the past 10 years (*hack* A.I! *cough) I still can't get over the scene of people going crazy and ransacking the van, stuff like that. The pyschological impact of the apocolyspe.

But still, the one thing that annoys me the most about films that most people probably never notice is the goddamn errors in the logic of the film, or the science of the film.

Example number 1: When the aliens first start raining down near Ferrier's house, we see the EMP, and they go on about how the EMP is supposed to fry all electrical applicances from within a certain area. Fine, well enough. But why, after the EMP fries everything, including phone lines and car electronics, does that one asshole with the video camera have one that works? Certainly it would've been fried by the EMP? Unless he has some special wood-burning video camera that they used to make back in the 70's. Go figure.

Example number 2: When the cars are all shorted by the EMP, Tom Cruise brazenly advises his friend (the guy who runs the garage, Cruise later steals his car and the guy gets fried as a result) that all he has to do is "CHANGE THE SOLENOID!" Whatever the hell the solenoid is, it must be something magical and amazing, because it's immune to an EMP blast. Certainly, the EMP would just fry all of the solenoids, whether they were being used in cars or not, to the point where replacing one solenoid with another wouldnt' make a difference, they all would've been fried anyway. Maybe I just need a more specific explanation of how an EMP blast would affect all solenoids ina ll cars, except the ones being used?

Example number 3: We see Tom Cruises' house and city destroyed to rubble, and then, as the machines follow him out into the country, spend ALL this time and effort to destroy and turn farmland into rubble and this giant red wasteland. Ok, fair enough. But then when Cruise comes back into Boston, 90% OF THE FUCKING CITY IS STILL UNTOUCHED! Why would the aliens spend all this time destroying every city in the world (as they claim in the film, specifically "Europe got the worst of it"), and then to spend precious alien(man)power to raze and loot the countryside, yet would just conviently ignore one of the major cities in the United States for the sake of plot resolution?! What the fuck?

Example number 4: (ties in with number 3) When Tom Cruise was in the aforementioned countryside, and we see the military stepping up its assault on the machines so that the refugees could get to saftey, Ray's son Robbie chooses to "fight" the machines, and claims that he needs an emotional experience of being "let go". Whatever. In any case, we're to believe that he's going to go off and die for his country and blah blah blah. So ok, he's dead. But no, at the end of the film, in a miracle of divine intervention, he's alive. He only managed to survive all those GIANT fireballs, machines laying waste to everything, and going about capturing every person they could find. But I guess all of that didn't matter, because he got out ok, and then manages to get back to Boston before Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning. WTF?

You gotta lotta 'plaining to do, Senor Spielbergo.