War of the Worlds and Imperialism

It was only to be expected, I suppose, that when the American obsession with being a good father came into contact with invasion that it would produce the Tom Cruse character - someone who is so obsessed with protecting his daughter that he's totally uninterested in the welfare of anybody or, indeed, everybody else, won't help anyone, won't resist the invaders, will, when pushed, kill people who are resisting (well, one person), and who would collaborate like a shot if he was promised that his children would be OK.

For the rest of it, it can be made remotely interesting only by making the obvious Wellsian link between what the Martians are doing to Americans and what we did to the people who were less technologically advanced than us. It maps reasonably well on to Iraq, except for the happy ending (and the quite unnecessary pre-placement of the tripods - how deep were those things? Why would anybody looking at the earth a million years ago have thought they were going to be needed? Why didn't they just come a million years ago?).

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