Movie Revisit: War of The Worlds

I remember seeing War of the Worlds in the theaters when I was 7 years old and thinking it was one of the scariest movies I had seen. The scene when the airplane crashes into the neighborhood might have been one of the loudest sounds I have ever heard. I remember that night my alarm went off and I leaped out of bed and couldn’t get back to sleep the rest of the night.

Even though War of the Worlds isn’t necessarily considered a horror movie, I believe that the events in the movie and the world that it creates is something that you would see in most horror movies. Aside from those few moments, the movie overall would be considered an action thriller. I definitely think it’s an underrated movie, but I believe that the reason most people might not like it or have a negative memory of it is because of the ending and I do agree that the ending is bad, but I’ll explore that later.

War of the Worlds was released to theaters in 2005 and stars Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning and is directed by Steven Spielberg. The film follows Tom Cruise’ character Ray as he tries to protect his son and daughter while an alien species is trying to take over the Earth. The story is of course an adaptation from the classic story of the same name but with a modern spin. The films story is more of a way to put characters in various action sequences, and they are by far the best part of the movie. Spielberg has directed several movies in his career that have pioneered great visual effect techniques such as Jurassic Park and just like Jurassic Park, the visual effects in this film hold up just as well.

The first big action sequence is when the alien machine or what we’ll call them “The Tripod” comes out of the ground in a small town and starts attacking the people. It starts with one big wide shot of the ground collapsing then a close up of the tripod as it rises from the ground. It then cuts to a high angle shot of the tripod as it towers over the crowd of people before blaring one of the most iconic sounds that could be described as if a machine could speak. The sound is very ominous and alerts the crowd that it doesn’t come in peace. The tripod then starts shooting laser beams into the crowd which turns them into dust. There is one close up shot that’s really well executed where it shows a close up of a woman being blasted from the laser that still holds up to today.

The next big action sequence takes place when Tom Cruise’ character and his family are trying to board a ferry. The ferry is at capacity with a large amount of people still trying to board. The crowd notices one of the tripods far in the distance and the ferry tries to flee in a hurry. While the ferry is fleeing, one of the tripods comes out of the water and flips the ferry over. The shot when the tripod rises out of the water is probably one of the most impressive shots in the whole movie and despite the movie being made in 2005, it looks just as good as any movie made today.

There are many other impressive scenes throughout the movie including one set where the production team dismantled an airplane and scattered it throughout a neighborhood. One scene that is most likely the most tense scene in the entire movie is when the tripods deployed this snake-like machine that weaves through the basement of a house trying to look for them. In this scene, not only does Tom Cruise have to hide from the machines, but he also has to prevent one of the other people that he’s hiding with from trying to attack the machine and alerted them to their presence.

This is the part where the movie starts to fall off in my opinion. This scene is one of the best scenes in the movie, but the movie was starting to fall off well before this scene occurs. Not too long before this, there’s a moment where they run into the military fighting the tripods in an open field and Tom Cruise’ son decides he wants to join the military and fight. Tom Cruise decides to let him go and like an idiot, the son runs straight at the tripods without any weapons and while we didn’t see him die, it is presumed that he died in this scene.

While about 80% of the film is pure gold in my opinion and some of the best work Steven Spielberg has made, the ending is a massive stain that leaves the viewer with a bad taste in their mouth. During the scene when Tom Cruise is hiding from the snake-like machine, his daughter gets caught and is abducted and through a series of events, Tom Cruise rescues his daughter and destroys one of the tripods. After this scene, Tom Cruise and his daughter are walking through the city, and they notice that the tripods are starting to collapse for seemingly no reason. The reason that the aliens are starting to die is because their bodies aren’t biologically able to function on Earth because their immune systems can’t handle the germs and bacteria that are on Earth.

I think this ending would be perfect for what the story was originally intended to be which was a science fiction story and the idea that bacteria are what defeats the aliens makes sense since that’s what would probably happen if an alien attack happened in real life. The problem is that the majority of the movie was a Hollywood blockbuster action movie, and those kinds of movies have endings like “Independence Day” where the humans defeat the aliens by blowing something up.

It’s a shame that they decided to go with this ending because I believe that if the movie had a better ending, it would be more fondly remembered. My advice for anyone deciding to watch this movie for the first time is to shut the movie off as soon as Tom Cruise destroys one of the tripods and pretend the movie ended there.

Illustration work done by Gab K De Jesus