As pointed out by better minds than mine, Science Fiction is large a modernization of Gothic, part romance, part realism - with most critics agreeing beginning with Mary Shell's Frankenstein. In more modern times, instead of the cruel father of traditional Gothic, we get the mad scientist, and instead of haunting spirits, we get aliens.

Many of Spielberg's better movies are a kind of re-telling of the same tale, of science out of control, and this break from nature to which the main character is desperately seeking to return. But in order to get there, the main character must do as Dante did, take a quest through hell in order to find salvation on the other side. In Close Encounters, the Dryfus character comes into contact with something bigger than life, something he cannot explain - and finds he can no longer be satisfied with life as it is until he resolves this dilemma. In many ways, the archeologist in Jurassic Park is on the same quest, but the movies differ in one important respect. Dryfus wins out, discovers his dreams and his taken to a better place (ie SF's version of Heaven). The archeologist gets to see the perversion of reality as a flea circus ringleader turned amusement park host recreates it, in the very fashion in which Dr. Frankenstein created his monster. In ET, science becomes the means of destruction, of reckless disregard for life in a perverted effort to understand it. The metaphor of frogs and ET, along with the early and later chase scenes, slows how closed-minded science really is in the truest sense - or as the JRR Tolkien Wizard Gandalf points out: he who takes apart a thing to understand it has lost the path to wisdom.

There is a good reason for Spielberg to be making War of the Worlds, because in many ways H.G. Wells became the father of the modern Gothic, a connection he was well aware of at the time he was writing his works.

Since the concept of evolution plays such an important part of War of the Worlds (as it did in Jurassic Park) and it considered an essential piece in the development of the Gothic Genre, Spielberg's interest is natural - since the novel plays into his themes.

The novel explores the gothic concept that man when stripped of the civilized veneer may be as savage as the beasts he fears and hunts, doing as much damage to other human beings in the name of self preservation as the aliens do in their attack.

Spielberg's themes often deal with the concept of who really are the aliens - or are we aliens ourselves?

Gothic, as some critics point out, evolved out of the reaction to industrial development, and while some fiction often looked back longingly for better times in the past when humans were closer to nature, more modern fictions deal with the concept of alienation human's feel when forced to live out the rituals of everyday life. In other words, our supposed progress has only caused us to be separated from nature, and often, the battle Spielberg's heroes wage is against those things that keep up from re-establishing that connection.

In Spielberg kids appear to be closer to nature than adults are, because they have suffered through less civilizing experiences. In ET, for instance, Spielberg's camera stays waist high in order to simulate the alien's point of view as adults lumber dangerously like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park do in their effort root ET out. Yet once ET encounters the central character, a young boy, the world changes. Not only can he look in the eye of a human not yet fully developed, but can make connections with a mind whose inner doors have not been slammed shut to new experiences by the worst aspects of civilization: science.

While the novel World of the Worlds does not completely fall into line with Spielberg's anti-adult philosophy, it plays with the post industrial revolution themes typical in Spielberg. And since Spielberg deliberately selected two important backdrops to his film, we can expect him to endow the film with themes of distrust for civilization. In Bayonne, his crews worked to create a more working class industrial home settings, in Newark and other places, many action scenes were filmed in places with significant industrial backdrops. On the other hand, he also developed elaborate sets in pine woods, suggesting similar action as we saw in the wooded areas of Jurassic Park.

More importantly, Spielberg injected two kids into this film that were not in the original book, playing perhaps a similar game that he played in Jurassic Park where the main character was forced to refocus his attention from past to the present in order to survive the monstrous results of science's manipulation.

What role will these kids play in this film remains to be seen. Will they some how managed a better connection with the aliens as they did in ET. Or are they merely the foil to give growth to the Cruise character who - like the mad scientists in modern Gothic tales - spends his life struggling to rebuild in Frankenstein in the guise of a 1968 Mustang?