What was Spielberg thinking with the son character in War of the Worlds?

the son character is even worse than I remembered. Acts like a total brat during a disaster situation, says absolutely idiotic things like "we should try to find one of these things and kill it", and then abandons his dad and little sister to run off into a war zone and miraculously manages to survive and even get to Boston before Cruise and Fanning do. I mean, what’s this punk ass dork think he's gonna do against aliens?it's funny that apparently the Cruise character is supposed to be the unsympathetic one because he is supposedly a bad father, yet all I saw was a man putting up with these two ungrateful brats desperately trying to get them to safetyI have no problem in saying the son character ruins the entire film via /r/movies https://ift.tt/Ho3EMdv