Written by Old Bluffer 24th Nov 2005

This teenage fool deserves his death so much. In the midst of a battlefield swarming with human militia and alien tripods, he throws a childish tantrum and runs towards the front line. His father drags him down, and points out they need to look after his 10 year old sister and there's nothing he can do anyway against indestructible 200' tall robotic killing machines. The obstinate youth is adamant though, yelling that he "has to see" and that it is something he "must do". Realising he has sired a waste of space deadbeat, his dad reluctantly lets him run off to get blown up and, sure enough, within moments a mighty explosion which must be some kind of tactical nuke takes out the whole area.

Presumably Spielberg must have received feedback from some pathetic Focus Group for Mothers though, as it was obviously too upsetting to have a young lad die because he stupidly ran into a warzone to "have a look". So we are treated to the age old cliche of having the little oik pop up at the end of the film, without so much as a scratch. The scriptwriters don't even bother to contrive an explanation for how he survived - they probably felt the uplifting ending was more than worth the sacrifice of logic and believability. Which is a shame, as if they'd done their surveys outside of bible belt America, we suspect they would have discovered that at least 95% of people considered it Darwinian Justice that the silly sod got blown up.