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War of the Worlds (2005 film)

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War of the Worlds
File:War of the worlds Poster.jpg
Directed bySteven Spielberg
Written byJosh Friedman,
David Koepp
Produced by Kathleen Kennedy
StarringTom Cruise,
Dakota Fanning,
Justin Chatwin
Distributed by Paramount
Running time
116 min.
Budget$132 million

War of the Worlds is a 2005 science fiction film based on H. G. Wells' original novel of the same name. It was directed by Steven Spielberg from a script by Josh Friedman and David Koepp and stars Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, and Justin Chatwin. The budget for the film was $132 million (US).

The primary advertising tagline is: They're coming to our world...for our world.

Background

This film draws elements from not only the H. G. Wells novel, but the 1939 radio play and the 1953 film. Hence, to place this film in proper historical context as an adaptation requires some knowledge of all three previous incarnations of the subject.

As in the original novel, the story is told from the point of view of civilians caught up in the conflict. Whereas the novel portrayed the experience of a solitary British journalist in the late nineteenth century, this film is purported to show the war "through the eyes of one American family fighting to survive it," according to Spielberg. It is set in the early twenty-first century, and like the radio play, begins the action in New Jersey.

Plot

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Ray Ferrier (Cruise) is a crane operator living in New Jersey (the setting has been said to be Newark, New Jersey, but the house shown in the movie was actually filmed in Bayonne). He has agreed with his ex-wife, Mary-Anne (Miranda Otto), to watch their kids, teenager Robbie (Chatwin) and preadolescent Rachel (Fanning), for the weekend while she and her new husband (Tim) go to visit her parents in Boston. While Rachel seems almost too mature for her age, Ray's son repeatedly acts out against him, eventually taking Ray's prized Ford Mustang out for a joyride.

Meanwhile, in background shots, news networks have been reporting EMPs and freak lightning storms around the world which leave all electronic equipment in the affected areas incapacitated. As Ray leaves Rachel in his house to go search for Robbie, one such storm comes up just near Ray's home. He returns to watch, with Rachel, as 26 bolts of lightning, unaccompanied by thunder, hit the same spot just a few blocks away. Ray leaves Rachel alone again, and goes to investigate.

File:Tripod in action.jpg
Ray flees as a tripod unleashes its heat-ray.

When he arrives, the ground breaks apart and a massive tripod battle machine rises from the ground. It begins firing a heat-ray on civilians, vaporizing them on contact: when hit, people seem to turn to ash and 'vaporize'. Ray hurries home, shaken and covered with the ashy remains of his neighborhood and neighbors. He gets his kids together, brings food and his gun, finds and steals a newly-repaired minivan, which appears to be the only working motor vehicle in the vicinity, and escapes the city just as the tripod reaches their block (and apparently blows up the bridge behind the family's house, portrayed by the Bayonne Bridge).

The family hits the highway, trying to get to Boston, where Mary-Anne and Tim are staying with her parents. Along the way, they spend a night in the basement of Mary-Anne and Tim's empty house (somewhere in suburban New Jersey or New York), where they survive a plane crashing nearby. Ray goes upstairs to survey the damage, and learns from the crew of a TV news mobile unit that countless tripods have appeared near every major city of the world, wreaking havoc everywhere. The news team also shows Ray a video of a lightning strike from one of the mysterious lightning storms. The video shows one alien "riding" the lightning in a capsule to a tripod below, thus explaining how the aliens arrived. The news team also tells Ray that they watched a battle between the tripods and a National Guard unit. All weapons were ineffective as each tripod is equipped with an invisible deflector shield that protects it from damage.

Pushing on in the minivan, they drive across country where they witness further signs of the destruction, hundreds of bodies floating down a river. Infuriated by the sight, Robbie runs after a passing National Guard convoy, hoping to "get back at" the tripods, but Rachel pleads with him to stay. The family continues heading along the Hudson, only to encounter a mob of people converging on a ferry-boat landing. The minivan is taken from them at gunpoint, and they take refuge in a deserted diner. They trek from there to the ferry on foot, interrupted by a railroad crossing where a burning train rushes past. They arrive at the ferry dock, just as three tripods appear on the horizon behind them. They slip past National Guard troops who have ordered the ferry to cast off, although it could take more passengers, even as the tripods begin attacking the frenzied, stranded mob. Another tripod appears from under water, and capsizes the ferry. Tentacles from the alien machine whip into the water, abducting the survivors of the sinking vessel.

File:Tripods.jpg
Three tripods from the film.

Ray and his kids swim safely to the opposite shore after the ferry is sunk, and set out on foot, only to find another array of tripods engaging US Army/US Marine Corps units (the latter in new style MARPAT battledress uniform) on open farmland. Robbie impulsively runs after the troops, intending to join them in fighting the alien onslaught, and appears to be killed along with the others. Ray and Rachel take refuge in the cellar of a farmhouse at the invitation of its owner, an ambulance-driver named Ogilvy (Robbins), whom Ray discovers to be madly plotting a one-man assault on the aliens.

Not long after Ray and Rachel have entered the basement, an alien probe appears, searching the basement for signs of life. After the humans successfully elude it, several live aliens subsequently appear and examine the basement, fascinated with the human artifacts. Ogilvy finds his shotgun and hopes to kill one of the creatures, but Ray wrestles the gun away from him before the aliens are called back to their ship.

Later the humans are awakened by a mechanical sound outside. They look out to discover that the tripods have been harvesting humans as part of a terraforming project (or in this case, 'Xenoforming') by the aliens, where human blood is used to fertilize a red weed that spreads across the ground. Oglivy is thrown into madness by the sight, and begins raving loudly, "Not my blood! Not my blood!", after assaulting Ray. Ray has no choice but to kill Ogilvy in a tunnel he had been digging to silence him to avoid alarming the aliens, in order to protect his daughter. A horrified Ray then falls asleep with his daughter.

Moments later, however, Rachel awakens to one of the aliens' scanner mechanisms staring right at her. Rachel runs away screaming, and, after Ray had hacked apart the alien probe with a hatchet, he goes outside searching for her. Despite Ray's efforts, he and his daughter are captured by a tripod, but not before Ray has been able to secure a belt of hand grenades from an abandoned 'Humvee' military vehicle.

They are placed in one of the two metal 'nets' or baskets underneath the 'belly' of one of the tripods along with many other humans. Every once in a while, a 'tentacle' reaches into the basket and draws a person out to be the next victim to be drained of their blood. As he is being sucked into the machine through an orifice-like opening, Ray manages to pull the pins on the grenades, then is pulled out by others in the basket just before the grenades explode and bring down the tripod.

Ray and Rachel, and the other civilians and soldiers in the baskets, survive the explosion, fall off the tripod, and make their way to Boston, where they find that the red weed has begun dying and the alien machines have begun collapsing. As Ray and Rachel are being guided with a group of civilians away from a functioning tripod by soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division (who can be identified by the divisional insignia on their sleeves), Ray sees that the machine's shields are defunct (by noticing that birds were landing on the still walking tripod), leaving it open to attack, and takedown, from Javelin anti-tank missile attacks by the soldiers. After the tripod falls to the ground, a hatch opens up. As the troops surround the hatch, an alien slides one arm and part of his body out of the tripod, and dies.

Ray arrives with Rachel at Mary-Anne's parents' house in Boston, where Mary-Anne, her parents, and Tim are all together and safe. They discover that Robbie, too, has survived and made his way to the house, and happily reunites with his real "Dad".

As in the original novel, over the final shot of the collapsed and immobile tripods, a narrator (Morgan Freeman) reveals that the aliens were defeated by exposure to Earth's native bacteria and other microorganisms "God's littlest creatures" — to which they were not immune.

Spielberg on the adaptation

Spielberg told the web site Dark Horizons:

"I'm more interested in concept shots and money shots than I am in tons of MTV coverage, which certainly takes a lot of time. But if I can put something on the screen that is sustained where you get to study it and you get to say, 'How did they do that?' That's happening before my eyes and the shot's not over yet, it's still going and it's still going and my God, it's an effects shot and it's lasting seemingly forever. I enjoy that more than creating illusion with sixteen different camera angles, where no shot lasts longer than six seconds on the screen. To pull a rabbit out of a hat, because you are really a smart audience and you're in the fastest media, the fastest growing new media today and you know the difference between sleight of hand visually and the real thing. I think what makes War of the Worlds, at least the version that we're making, really exciting, is you get to really see what's happening. There's not a lot of visual tricks. We tell it like it is, we show it to you, and we put you inside the experience. "

And this about the story:

"It's nothing you can really describe. The whole thing is very experiential. The point of view is very personal - everybody, I think, in the world will be able to relate to the point of view, because it's about a family trying to survive and stay together, and they're surrounded by the most epically horrendous events you could possibly imagine."

Box Office

Despite the controversies detailed below, the movie received rather positive reviews and made an impressive box-office performance. As of November 4, it has earned $234 million domestically and approximately $590 million overseas, making it the second most successful movie of summer 2005 (next to Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith).

This is considered to be good news for both Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise. First of all, Spielberg has not seen such a massive success since Saving Private Ryan (1998), and the $100-million Minority Report (2002) — his first collaboration with Cruise — earned a reasonable $132 million. In case of Tom Cruise (whose film release coincided on the weekend of his 43rd birthday), this movie is the biggest blockbuster of his career, since the movie opened its first weekend with $65 million (which is a record-high for Paramount), beating Mission: Impossible II's nearly $58 million (also from Paramount Pictures). By July 31, it has surpassed Mission: Impossible II in terms of total domestic box office receipts, a movie that earned $215.4 million.

Budget

In August of 2004, the Internet Movie Database reported that the film was "poised to make history in Hollywood as the most expensive film ever made — surpassing Titanic's $198 million budget." The report quoted an unnamed source that said, "No expense will be spared. Spielberg wants to make it the film of the decade." The New York Times, the original source for this number, ran a correction a few days later that the budget is actually $128 million. The final budget, however, has been confirmed to be $132 million.

Criticism and Controversy

Tom Cruise, Scientology and the film

Though there is no apparent Scientological ideology represented in the film — which was not written, produced or directed by anyone associated with the Scientology movement — press coverage in May and June 2005 leading up to the film's release focused on Tom Cruise's proselytizings for Scientology. Around this time, Cruise had changed publicists, from Pat Kingsley to his sister, Lee Anne De Vette, and spoke to interviewers more frequently about Scientology — and his sudden engagement to actress Katie Holmes — than about the film itself. Some press coverage noted[1] the similarity between the film's promotional poster and the front cover of The Invaders Plan (volume one of Mission Earth) by L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology. This similarity is not singular to the film, however, as the image of a hand grasping the Earth is a recurring one in science-fiction: it was used, for example, for the 1975 movie Rollerball.

Critical reaction

Though the film has garnered a positive box office response, reviews have been mixed. Critic Roger Ebert regarded it: "...a big, clunky movie containing some sensational sights but lacking the zest and joyous energy we expect from Steven Spielberg.". Most reviews have praised the movie for spectacular sound and special effects, as well as Spielberg's direction. But many reviews have found inconsistencies in the film's logic and unlikely coincidences in the storyline. Other critics felt the movie's characters, such as Tom Cruise's Ray Ferrier and Dakota Fanning's Rachel Ferrier, were simply not likable characters.

Many reviews praise the portrayal of human reaction to disaster, especially during the first hour, but say the pace of the film bogs down when Ray, Rachel, and Ogilvy are trapped in the basement playing a cat-and-mouse game with the aliens.

Press coverage and anti-piracy controversy

The press preview of the movie raised severe criticism, as every journalist who wanted to take a look at the movie before it premiered had to sign a non-disclosure agreement. This NDA stated that the undersigned could not publish a review of the movie before its world-wide release on 29 June 2005. Many people have argued that the movie might not be able to catch up with the great expectations that might have been postulated by such reviewers.

Furthermore, at the New York premiere of the film at the Ziegfeld Theatre, all members of the press were required to check all electronic equipment — including cell phones — at the door, as part of a larger sweeping anti-piracy campaign by the film's producers hoping to keep the film from leaking on the Internet. As usual, however, these methods have failed, as evidenced by the availability of the movie online a day before the movie was released.

Among other efforts to curb piracy, the producers also prevented theatres from screening the movie at midnight the night before 29 June, despite the recent success of midnight screenings of such films as Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. The producers also chose not to screen the film in any DLP-equipped theatres, despite the technical superiority of digital projectors. Some viewers saw these efforts as overreactions, especially the more hardcore movie fans who enjoy seeing blockbusters such as War of the Worlds early and at the highest quality possible.

Trivia

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  • There are a few references to the original 1953 film. There is a scene with an alien camera searching the house, and one at the end with one of the aliens sliding an arm and part of his body out of his tripod and then dying, just as at the end of the 1953 film. Also, several lines of dialogue, especially those spoken by Tim Robbins' character, are taken directly from Orson Welles's infamous radio adaptation of the novel. Also, the plot device that the aliens had been to Earth before and left behind their tripods is similar to a revelation in the TV series in which a tripod (an "older model" of the war machines in the 1953 film) is unearthed, having been left behind for hundreds to thousands of years.
  • Actors Gene Barry and Ann Robinson, stars of the original film version, make a cameo together at the film's end, playing Mary-Anne's parents.
  • There are also references to Spielberg's earlier films about alien contact with Earth E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (the synthesizer "note" sounded by the alien tripods [NOTE: This 'sound' from the tripods is in the original H.G. Wells novel, and should not be considered a rip-off of Close Encounters]), as well as The Day the Earth Stood Still (the mass stoppage of electrical power) and Quatermass and the Pit (Martian machines buried underground since prehistoric times). Some find also that shots in the diner, where Ferrier and the kids take refuge after the mob captures the minivan, evoke memories of the diner in the original The Blob.
  • The plane in the crash scene is a All Nippon Airways (Japan) Boeing 747. The plane-crash set was built on the Universal Studios backlot, right next to the famous Bates house from Psycho. Despite great demand for the location, the studio has decided to keep the crash set intact as a permanent installation on the backlot tour.
  • At the hill scene in the middle of the movie, when Ray Ferrier and his two kids are walking on a deserted farm with other refugees, U.S Air Force jets streak overhead firing at a nearby tripod. If you watch closely, the first jet that flies over is an F/A-22 Raptor stealth fighter, followed by two F-16 Falcons and an A-10 Thunderbolt. The tanks that mount a ground offensive in that scene are M1A1 Abrams utilizing depleted uranium armor that was introduced in 1980 but not equipped until after 2001. The helicopters that bombard the tripod are AH-64 Longbow Apache attack helicopters and AH-1 Cobra Light Attack helicopters. They are both missing landing equipment: landing wheels on the Apache and landing struts on the Cobras. The AH-1 Cobra was introduced in the 1970s but has remained a faithful part of the U.S Army and several other select armies around the world. The shoulder-portable anti-tank missile launchers seen in both the hill scene and at the end of the movie are FGM-148 Javelin missiles, first used by the U.S. military in 2003, the SMAW and the Carl Gustav recoilless rifle.
  • The name of Tim Robbins's character, Ogilvy, is the name of one of the narrator's friends in the book.
  • There is a poster advertising Jaws in Ray's house.
  • There is a subtle reference to the book when a couple of aliens, descended from their tripods, explore the basement that Ferrier and Ogilvy are hiding in. One of them pauses to spin the wheel of a bicycle hanging on the wall. In the Wells novel, the narrator explains the Martians did not use wheels in any of their technology. The moment is also intended to be both a reference and a contrast to the alien creature in E.T.
  • The aliens in the movie appear to be similar to the aliens in the 1996 movie Independence Day. Their head shapes are exactly alike, but the aliens in the movie are smaller than the ones in Independence Day.
  • The famous 1938 radio broadcast and the 1953 film also shifted the story's focus to the United States, as opposed to the book, which set the location in Southern England.
  • There is a widespread agreement in Japan that Spielberg has made a kaiju movie, in which, unlike American monster movies, indestructible giant monsters beyond understanding kill people mercilessly. At the world premiere in Tokyo, Spielberg said, "Well, certainly the first tripod was taken down in Osaka, because Osaka has so much experience with Gamera and Godzilla." This explains why tripods appear from under earth after a million years of hibernation, why they are as tall as Godzilla, and why they roar. In fact, one scene in the movie with a tripod looming over a hill crest almost perfect parallels a scene in the original 1954 Godzilla movie where the monsters enormous visage is seen emerging from behind a hillside as people flee in terror.
  • Spielberg made adjustments to the film to add a touch of realism. First, it shows no coverage of Washington, D.C. or New York (going with the fact that most likely, if aliens invaded the earth, they would randomly kill everything that moved, and not know the specific people to target), also, unlike other movies, the badges were not taken off of the cars and labels taken off of the food products, and used a well known network to show coverage of the alien attacks, making the set resemble our real world, and add that special touch of realism, a feat that was also successfully done in the movie Signs, and avoided the movie from ending up looking very fake like Independence Day.
  • There is a similarity to a novel in the Tripods series, which draws heavy inspiration from the original War of the Worlds. In the novel The White Mountains, the main character is picked up by a tentacle and drawn towards an opening in a Tripod; using a grenade he and his friends salvaged, he throws it into the opening and kills the machine. In the movie, Ray is similarly grabbed by a tentacle and begins to be drawn into an opening in the alien machine, leaving hand grenades inside when he is pulled out.

Differences from the book

  • The film's most obvious difference is that it takes place in early 21st century northeastern United States rather than late 19th century southern England.
  • The film's aliens do not land on Earth in giant meteorites before unleashing their war machines, since this kind of scenario has been used recently. Instead, the tripods had already been buried underground, and the alien beings arrive in capsules transported via lightning bolts from their ships. The lightning may actually be a teleportation device in disguise.
  • The aliens’ war Tripods are more formidable in combat than their novel counterparts: the latter, although deadly, are still susceptible to conventional weapons and can be defeated in combat. The film counterparts are fitted with a ‘shield ’ that makes them impervious to attack making conventional attacks suicidal. Cf. Independence Day, where a similar shield protects the alien flying saucers, and must be negated before a conventional assault can take place.
  • The film omits a prominent element from the novel: the Black Smoke, which was a part of the Martians' deadly arsenal. (Writer David Koepp has explained that this was dropped more or less due to lack of time and didn't make it past his first draft, so any sightings of a similar substance are purely coincidence and can be attributed to other sources.) The film also does not include the Thunder Child, whose symbol of power but ultimate failure to stop the invaders was represented in the 1953 film by the atomic bomb; however, there is a vaguely similar scene taking place on land in which military forces fight valiantly in an effort to hold back tripods until refugees make it to safety.
  • The film's aliens are drastically different in design, featuring more humanoid mouths and also being tripedal, where Wells' Martians have lipless v-shaped mouths and tentacles. Also, the Martians of Wells' book feast on the blood of humans (Wells described the clean skeletons of humans and other animals) rather than use human blood as fertilizer for their xenoforming project. In the movie the invaders also are uninterested in animals (rats, birds).
  • In the film, Tim Robbins's character, Harlan Ogilvy, plays a synthesized dual role of curate and artilleryman from the novel, while sharing the family name of the novel narrator's friend. The film's Ogilvy has the qualities of the novel's increasingly mad curate, who drives the narrator to fight with him frequently. In the book, the character named Ogilvy is one of the first people killed by the alien's Heat-Ray. The film's Ogilvy has the qualities of the novel's artilleryman in that he is digging a tunnel for an underground city with the goal of resistance. The novel's curate is taken, and presumably "eaten", by the aliens after being struck in the head and left for dead by the narrator. In both versions, the story does not state outright that the main character killed the man, but the novel narrator does say "the killing of the curate" was "a thing done, a memory infinitely disagreeable but quite without the quality of remorse."
  • The film never says where the aliens are from, unlike the book, where they are from Mars; in 1898, when the book was written, the possibility of life on Mars was considered realistic. This difference in origin shrouds the motive for the attacks on the Earth. In the book, the Martians are escaping from their dissipated planet, searching for a place to continue their civilization, rather than the apparently plausible "extermination" explanation given by a character in the film. It may or may not be coincidence that the red weed produced by the invaders would, if multipled on a large scale, duplicate an environment of much the same red hue of Mars.
  • H.G. Wells never had the narrator play the hero. In fact, the story is told as a recount of the war, thus eliminating any doubts about the welfare of the narrator. In the film, the main character, Ray, succeeds in blowing up an alien tripod, creating the idea that heroes can be made in the face of an unbeatable foe, an idea Wells clearly passed by.
  • Much like in the 1953 film, the unnamed narrator and the main character are not the same as it was in the novel. Also, he is not divorced, although Ray shares a very similar goal of getting to the wife, nor does he have a son or daughter to look after.
  • While Ray has a brother much like the book's narrator, the film does not touch upon anything from this character's point-of-view, as the narrator recites some of what the brother witnessed during the invasion.
  • In all versions of the story, the protagonist and whoever he's with become trapped in an abandoned house when an alien cylinder lands close by. Here, Ray, Rachael and Ogilvy are trapped in the house because the tripods are still outside.

Errors and inconsistencies in the film

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Much controversy regarding the plot of the movie centers around the power outages surrounding the aliens. Several alleged errors in the movie have to do with the EMP-related outages caused by the lightning bolts in which the aliens beam down. However, it must be noted that the film never explicitly states the specifics of alien technology. The alien lightning could have specifically disabled certain "types" of electronics, it could have only worked on currently running electronics (something that relied on an unattached battery for power could have been unaffected), or it could have only affected specific areas. The movie thus technically avoids technology related plotholes by never providing an explanation for much of the technology or the complete effects, mainly due to the entire movie occuring from an everyman's perspective (who is not privy to all of the details).


For instance:

  • After the electromagnetic pulse stops most electronic equipment from working, we see a man using a small, flash based camera and another man using his video camera. Later in the film they also show video clips taken of the aliens landing. Also, throughout the film, lights such as at the grade crossing and outside the diner work, as do the train and ferry, while cars in the same area do not.
  • After the major lightning storm, all motor vehicles in the area are dead, but Ray has coincidentally, earlier, told Manny how to fix a Plymouth Voyager by telling him to replace the Solenoid, a device which happens to be immune to the alien lightning, and Manny apparently has done this, allowing Ray to have a working vehicle to commandeer. There are multiple conclusions that can be reached from this; either, apparently, it is the only vehicle in the area with a Solenoid, as no other vehicle is operable, or the solenoid was replaced after the pulse, supporting the "connection" argument. Also, Chrysler vans (Dodge Caravan, Plymouth Voyager, Chrysler Town and Country) have their solenoids built into the starters and earlier still Manny has said that he replaced the starter - so then, Ray's subsequent advice was both redundant and incorrect, and Manny should have corrected him rather than "replacing the solenoid".

Continuity

  • Repetitive and glaring continuity glitches seem to occur in the scene where the first tripod appears. Scenes of Ray on his own are spliced into scenes where he is accompanied by his two friends.
  • As Ray prepares to leave his home in New Jersey, for the last time, to flee the aliens, he unpacks a revolver pistol, reaches behind him, lifts his jacket and shirt, slips the gun between his pants and skin, and releases the jacket and shirt, not tucking in the shirt. Later, when he is about to go to sleep in the basement of Mary-Anne and Tim's empty house, he lifts his jacket, and the gun is between his pants and shirt, now neatly tucked in, the gun is not touching his skin.
  • Watch the Ford Escort wagon and the Toyota Prius during the scene on Ray's block. Those cars appear many times driving by showing that they are on a loop.

Other apparent inconsistencies

  • While Ray and his family are mobbed for their car, other cars in the area seem to be working, such as those waiting on the ferry, as evidenced by the fact that people were riding in their cars for the trip across the Hudson
  • Ferrier's mechanic friend seems oblivious to the tripods and their massive destruction and carnage, even though his service station is within walking distance of the strike and initial disaster scene.
  • The type of train (A General Electric 'Genesis' locomotive and 'Amcan' passenger cars) that interrupts Ferrier and his family during the ferry sequence is used for services on the eastern shore of the Hudson River, but is instead seen engulfed in flames on the western shore of the Hudson (the old New York Central West-Shore line), where there has been no passenger service for decades.
  • After the aliens begin to succumb to the Earth's bacteria and the tripods start behaving "erratically," it is unclear why their protective shields should be lowered. Some suggest that the tripods are living organisms, and thus may be vunerable to the bacteria. This may also suggest why the tripods were placed underground thosands of years ago, as they needed to be "planted" and required time to "grow".
  • When Ray throws the ball towards Robbie, there is no ball visible in his hand before the throw.

Cast

See also

Wikiquote has quotations related to War of the Worlds (2005).
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