War of the Worlds

I went to see War of the Worlds last evening (in golf shirt and shorts; sorry to disappoint anyone contributing to the "what should clergy wear" thread below), and I enjoyed it, despite the supposed political subtext to it, about which John Leo, of U.S. News & World Report, writes hilariously here (thanks to RealClear Politics for linking this).

*** warning ***

Read no further if you don't want to read my description of the movie, or have my negativity influence your decision...

I liked War of the Worlds despite its many improbabilities; yes, I know--"it's science fiction," you say -- inherently improbable. But there are different improbabilities. Sci-fi, at it's most intriguing, poses things that could be. In this case, the invasion from outer space is inserted into our present day. Certain assumptions about what the aliens can accomplish and try to accomplish strike me as inherently implausible. They planted machines here, eons ago, all over the world, then left, and waited for however long, to return and take over? Why didn't they stay in the first place?

And why in the world do the aliens feel the need to hunt down each and every human? If to kill them, wrecking the infrastructure and then letting chaos and starvation do the trick would be a lot more sensible; because they're raw material? Again, not a very sensible strategy. These aliens are supposed to be smarter than we are?

(Speaking of invasion from outer space, I recall reading once an intriguing, but rather dense argument about whether there's intelligent life elsewhere, able to come here, making reference to probabililities, and the nature of time, etc., etc.--and though I got kind of lost in it, the fairly convincing argument boiled down to something like, if there's intelligent life out there, and its possible to get here, someone would have done it already. Or something like that; it's been a few years.)


Today's movie? Either Fantastic Four or Batman Begins.