War of the Worlds

I recently rented the War of the Worlds version directed by Steven Spielberg and watched it with my oldest son. When I asked him how he liked it he responded enthusiastically, raving about the special effects which were in fact quite “special”. And yet I found the movie to be very disappointing, especially given Spielberg’s involvement. I explained to my son that while Spielberg has always worked magic with “effects” his movies usually have a decent story to propel the action. The WotW’s story must have been written by someone under 30 who read the Cliffs Notes on the original movie. In the original WotW the aliens land on Earth and start their invasion by marauding the countryside. In Spielberg’s WotW the aliens are transported to ships buried underground via lighting strikes where they activate their ships, arise from underground and start with their mayhem. This begs the question, Why would anybody bury ships underground hundreds or thousands of years before they are needed? What a colossal investment in machinery buried on a planet that may not be needed. What if the planet never developed the resource they were planning to harvest? What if you solved the problem these machines were designed for so that you needn’t have invaded? What if your technological advances rendered these machines obsolete? What if we had developed superior machines in the interim? Why not save your time and money and simply invade when you needed or wanted? Where was the adult supervision of these writers?