Does it seem like they went out of their way to make a bad movie here?

I admit, some of this movie was interesting and engrossing, until it starts to come together in what is a pretty blah and kind of silly plot.

Hollywood can put together some pretty amazing visuals and effects. It really started in 1968 with 2001 when Stanley Kubrick opened whole new universes of movie fantasy with what was really a science fiction movie that was made deliberately impossible to understand.

Out of that movie came this whole subsection of cinema that was more about the effects and especially effect that appealed to the viewers subconscious mind that could formulate a feeling and a story about that, ignoring what was in the movie plot for the most part.

Some of them were absurdly silly like Barbarella, some of them were coldly real like Alien, but mostly all, with the possible exceptions of 2001, really were empty movies that did not require writing of acting skill, just off-camera nerd model-making and special effects conceptual talent.

War of the Worlds since the time of the Gene Barry movie, was a good story. Even though it could be easily described and was a simple kind of story, it was a good one. Rather than develop something deeper and more interesting here they just made something faster and more confusing, not necessarily better or more meaningful or memorable.