If he’d been born a century later, HG Wells might well have exploited the cinematic resources of a Steven Spielberg in telling his celebrated story of voracious invading aliens. As it is, Spielberg’s own War of the Worlds promises to be another blockbuster delivering the director’s signature spin – outsize special effects and the kinds of thrills and emotional touchstones that worldwide audiences can’t seem to resist.

It’s a world away from ET: The Extraterrestrial and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, since the alien visitors in those films were essentially benign, not to mention relatively warm and cuddly. The aliens of Spielberg’s latest, though, are a different matter.

In a group interview Paramount Studios granted to a few journalists earlier this year, Spielberg and megastar Tom Cruise sat together, answering some questions but giving little away.