This comment may strike many as off-topic, but if you glance over my other 600 reviews (almost all of non-fiction about global issues), you might see the logic. Toward the end of the movie, with a bow toward Huntingon's “Clash of Civilization,” I saw the “aliens” as the U.S. and the humans as “everyone else.” The aliens crashed through, sucked blood (oil), destroyed everything in their path. In the end, they were undone by a suicidal terrorist (Tom Cruise) who was willing to go into the bowels of the beast to explode grenades, but was saved by a uniformed pal so we could have a happy ending.
I do not know if H.G. Well intended this (his book, “The World Brain” is one of the most important books anyone could ready right now as we prepare to create that World Brain and empower people), but all the reading I am doing is putting forward multiple world wars: between humans and bacteria; between individuals and corporations; between reality-based policy and zealot faith-based policy; between radicalized Islam and radicalized Judiaism that has merged with extremist evangelical Christianity.
At the end, I gave the movie four stars instead of three because it did cause me to think and reflect on the modern implications of man versus machine.
