I’m guessing the vertical highway would be done with crappier CGI now than we got in 2002 but that’s just a hunch.

Spielberg reused the washed out look for a bit of War Of The Worlds which turns 20 this year and which is my second favorite Spielberg film and which has since become underrated and which I would definitely prefer to the book, but I was never all that wild about H. G. Wells anyway (classic ideas, but not very good as a prose writer.)

Forgot who Tim Blake Nelson played. When I think of him I think of the beginning of The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs.

I also have no idea where kids shop for clothes these days if it isn’t The Gap. Hot Topic seems to be still doing well? My local mall has been a pretty depressing place to visit since I was about 24.

I’d rather just as soon never watch Attack Of The Clones ever again. That movie never got better with me. What were the gross out gags? When Cruise loses his eye? I really like the bit with the robo spider and the runaway eyeball.

I didn’t know Tom Cruise had anything to do with Battlefield Earth, I thought that was all Travolta’s dream. Come to think of it I can’t think of any time I’ve seen the two actors together and in spite of his $cientology I don’t know what Cruise ever said about Battlefield Earth, if anything. I didn’t know that the COS had a problem with EWS, but EWS didn’t do all that well in 1999 and only in years since seems to have picked up much of an audience (and unlike Shining and Full Metal Jacket, the number of people who think EWS is a masterpiece isn’t as obvious, and I have no idea what more recent generations think of it, whereas plenty of kids from my generation loved the two 80s movies, though not always for the best reasons, e.g., thinking quoting R. Lee Ermey’s FMJ dialogue is funny.)

To answer your question below, the Starship Troopers-Young Adult lit connection never occurred to me, because that book is from like the 1950s and I didn’t know they had Young Adult back then–they had books written for younger audiences, and I knew ST was written for youngsters, but it didn’t have some big self conscious genre name now did it huh? I have not read the book, but I suppose I could.
I wonder if anyone ever thought of Vonnegut as Young Adult, hah hah, but that’s just a joke on my part. And nobody made any good movies out of Vonnegut’s work, hnmmm?