War of the Worlds (2005) | Sci-Fi Saturdays

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Ride the lighting!

It’s time for War of the Worlds, again. But this time, the aliens are stronger, the destruction is more visceral, and the stakes are much, much higher. How does Steven Spielberg go from films about peaceful aliens like Close Encounters of the Third Kind or E.T the Extra-Terrestrial to a film where aliens attack wantonly?

First Impressions

The trailer lets audiences know that in the early days of the 21st Century an alien intelligence was watching us across space. And that humanity’s complacence had made us unable to defend ourselves against this invader. Explosions and clouds gather on the horizon over a hill as townsfolk leave their homes wondering what is going on. Suddenly an explosion engulfs the camera in green flame. This is not your grandfather’s War of the Worlds.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

During the introductory credits, the camera pulls out from the DNA inside microbes in a water droplet. The dulcet tones of the Narrator (Morgan Freeman) that Earth was being watched by “intelligences greater than our own.” Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) returns home after work to find his ex-wife Mary Ann (Miranda Otto) dropping off his teenage son Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and his 10-year-old daughter, Rachel (Dakota Fanning), for the weekend. Robbie is grumpy having to hang out with his Dad. A weird lightning storm comes through the city of Bayone, New Jersey, causing an electromagnetic pulse and power outage. Ray investigates a nearby strike where the ground appears frozen.

An alien tripod rises from under the street and uses a heat beam to disintegrate nearby humans. Ray manages to make it back to his house. He is visibly shaken, but gathers his kids and manages to get out of town in a minivan that still runs. He heads to Mary Ann’s house where they spend the night. They run into the basement of the empty house when a strange noise occurs. The next morning, Ray finds most of the house gone–burned from a plane that crashed in the street outside. He meets with a news crew that has seen the destruction of the alien vehicles up close.

Ray decides to try to take the kids up to Boston, where Mary Ann is visiting her parents. They lose their car to a mob outside a ferry. They board the boat, which is taking survivors across the river, but a number of alien tripods appear and tip over the boat. Ray, Robbie, and Rachel barely make it across. The alien vehicles are taking humans with their tentacle-like appendages. They come upon the Marines engaged in an attack. Robbie wants to get revenge on the aliens and see what the army is doing. Ray grudgingly lets him go in order to prevent some strangers from taking Rachel. An explosion occurs just over the hill, and Ray believes Robbie is dead.

A man at a nearby farmhouse, Harlan Ogilvy (Tim Robbins), ushers the two survivors in the basement–offering them safety. He has food, and wants to help them. But Harlan has gone a little mad in wanting to attack the aliens. Ray notices a red fungus growing outside, which is being sprayed with something from the tripods. Ray realizes it’s human blood! A tripod “eyestalk” snakes through the basement looking for humans. Ray prevents Harlan from hitting it with an ax, and shooting it with his gun. A group of aliens enter the basement, freaking everyone out.

Once the aliens leave, Harlan won’t lower his voice, so Ray has Rachel sing herself a song as he closes the door to the next room–taking care of Harlan. They are awakened in the night by the return of the eyestalk and Rachel screams. She is abducted by one of the tentacles. Ray runs outside and grabs a bandolier of grenades from a nearby military vehicle. He allows himself to be taken and put in a cage below the tripod body. He manages to get a grenade inside the alien vehicle which bypasses its shields, causing it to explode. He and Rachel, and others, escape.

The father and daughter make it up to Boston where Ray notices the red fungus withering. He points out to a soldier that birds are landing on one of the nearby tripods, indicating that its shields are malfunctioning. The army uses several missiles to blow up the tripod. It crashes to the ground and an alien arm slumps out of the small door. Ray and Rachel make it to his in-laws’ brownstone where they are reunited with Mary Ann. Against all odds, Robbie has made it back as well–having miraculously survived the destruction. Ray embraces his son as the camera zooms back into a droplet of water and the microcosm within. The Narrator informs the audience that even with all his weapons, man failed to stop the invaders. It was the tiniest organisms on the Earth that killed the aliens. Ones that mankind is immune to.

“This is not a war any more than there’s a war between men and maggots. This is an extermination.” – Harlan Ogilvy

History in the Making

The Steven Spielberg adaptation of War of the Worlds debuted 107 years after the source novel by H.G. Wells was released. It was his seventh sci-fi film and 23rd film overall. It also was the second, and last, pairing with Tom Cruise after the 2002 Minority Report. As many know, it was not the first adaptation of this book, nor the most regarded. But it may be the closest adaptation to the source book of anything released to date.

The first adaptation was the infamous Mercury Theater radio play from 1938. This was Orson Welles’ Halloween broadcast that caused distress amongst listeners who tuned in late, believing that an invasion might be underway. IN this radio version the aliens landed in Grovers Mill< new Jersey, a way off from the London setting of the novel. The story was then most famously adapted in 1953 as George Pal’s The War of the Worlds which set itself in the outskirts of Los Angeles. Another radio adaptation in 1968 was followed by two seasons of a syndicated television show in 1988.

While all these versions adapted the idea of Martians invading Earth and being overcome by simple germs (or in the case of the television show–a direct sequel to the 1953 film, lapsing into suspended animation to be awoken in the present day), Spielberg’s version is the only one that adheres more stringently to the text of the book. While taking place along the Eastern seaboard of the United States, it also was the first adaptation to include the actual horrors of the aliens using humans as fertilizer for their red fungus, and the single point-of-view of the main character.

Genre-fication

For many viewers that have never read the original H.G. Welles book, and only seen the 1953 film version, elements of War of the Worlds may seem odd. But rest assured, these all have basis in the 19th Century novel. Spielberg’s film changes from a simple alien invasion premise to a much more horrific tale. His first addition is the red fungus or red weed, which was described in the novel. It was an element of terraforming, introduced by the aliens (which also were never specifically identified as Martians, even though Mars was highlighted in the introductory montage). Whether this weed was necessary for the aliens or just a by-product brought with them, it provided a plot point to showcase the alien atrocities. Human beings were exsanguinated and their blood used to fertilize this quick growing plant is one of the more horrific moments in the film. Tim Robbins’ character, Ogilvy, was also an amalgamation of several other characters from the source book. Even Ray finding Robbie alive in Boston is similar to the Narrator of the book finding his wife alive after believing her dead in the attacks.

While this 2005 version of War of the Worlds more closely follows a single perspective of Ray Ferrier’s character, rather than showcasing various types of characters as in the 1953 version, it also has a number of visual references to that film. The first is the sequence in the basement where the characters avoid the alien probe. The “lens” on an articulated stalk is very similar to a sequence where Sylvia encounters a Martian “eye.” The other similar image is when the military destroys one of the tripods outside Boston. As they approach, the door to the craft opens, and an alien hand flops out, dead. But as Spielberg added elements from the novel and references to the 1953 film, he also strayed from standard alien invasion tropes. The aliens did not actually arrive in their spaceships. They were beamed into the already buried ships, arriving during the lightning storm. He also avoided some of the standard scenes of destruction that had been presented in invasion films since the 50s. Where The War of the Worlds had the Martians destroy Los Angeles City Hall, and Independence Day featured the destruction of the Empire State Building and the White House, Spielberg’s film kept the destruction local to where Tom Cruise’s character was. No big landmarks were toppled, even though there was plenty of destruction. I even see a small homage to Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks with a flaming train speeding by Ray and the onlookers, much the same way the flaming cows ran across the road in the previous film.

Perhaps the biggest change to this film is the realism that Spielberg adds to alien invasion. It’s not just chaos and destruction, since the camera tends to follow Ray throughout. It’s similar to his updating of the war genre in Saving Private Ryan (1998). Compare the beach landing on Normandy to a similar one in The Longest Day (1962) as an example. The attack on Ray’s town is much more horrific and visceral with the camera being handheld in the middle of the action. The footage has been compared, rightly so, to footage captured during the September 11th terrorist attack in New York. Being released only four years after that tragic event, War of the Worlds provides the same anxiety seen while watching news footage of that day. Spielberg seems to have taken what he learned during Saving Private Ryan and applied it to the sci-fi genre, as they are both examples of tragic attacks during a war; with only one being fictional.

Societal Commentary

Apart from the comparisons to 9/11, War of the Worlds creates a disaster film that allows Spielberg to showcase all sides of humanity. It begins with panic and uncertainty as unknown assailants attack population centers. Various characters are overheard providing contradictory information about the nature of the attacks (solar flares) or which country has been hit the worst (Europe). As the film progresses, Spielberg shows the best and the worst of humanity in moments with the crowds. First is the Ferrier’s vehicle being taken from them at gunpoint, only to have the assailant shot by another citizen. Panic and fear are shown to bring out the worst in people. Later at the river crossing, where citizens proceed in orderly columns onto the boat guided by calm military helpers, panic once again breaks out when tripods are seen approaching. Robbie runs towards the people that are hanging off the ferry’s ramp, helping them get safely onto the boat. He puts himself at risk to help people that he has never met. This is another side of society represented.

But perhaps the most personal societal element that Spielberg puts into the film, is a common theme to his films: fathers and sons. Robbie and Ray are estranged, which is putting it mildly. They’re rivalry is best represented by the baseball hats they wear at the beginning of the film. Ray takes his son outside to play a game of catch and puts on his New York Yankees hat. Robbie steps into frame, lifting his Boston Red Sox hat onto his head. This moment provides a laugh from audiences that understand the rivalry between these two East Coast teams, but it also represents the clash of ideologies between the father and son. Robbie wants to join with the Army and fight the aliens; to get some revenge. Ray is more concerned about taking care of his family and keeping them safe. Robbie doesn’t believe that Ray is that concerned, having not been a part of his life for some time. Their reunion at the end of the film provides some level of Spielbergian-hope, in an otherwise dark and grim story.

The Science in The Fiction

An open-ended question that the film chooses not to answer is about how the aliens set up their plan for invasion. The tripod vehicles are seen emerging from under the ground near lightning attacks. The news crew reveals to Ray footage they captured that shows aliens riding the lightning into the ground, like pilots being ferried to their ships. The ships were already underground, like Harlan speculates–before there were people here. When did they get placed here and why? Was this always a planned attack? Did the aliens know that human life–a source of food for them–would always emerge? Maybe they seeded the planet, as so many stories of alien visitation seem to suggest. Whatever the case, it’s one of the more upsetting elements in the film, indicating that this is not a spur of the moment or random attack.

As with the original story, and 1953 film, the aliens are defeated not by the greatest military on the planet (in the case of the movies, the perspective is that of the United States), but by the greatest power on the planet, microbes. The opening and closing narration is taken nearly verbatim from the novel, and indicates that humanity has “earned” its immunity to these tiny invaders as they–much like white blood cells in our own body–repel the invaders. An additional reference to this is Rachel showing Ray a splinter in her hand. He wants to pluck it out, but she tells him that her body will just expel it when it’s time. “Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is.”

The Final Frontier

War of the Worlds has an additional tie to the 1953 film, with a cameo by its two stars. Gene Barry and Ann Robinson (Doctors Clayton Forrester and Sylvia Van Buren in the 1953 film), play Ray’s in-laws, seen briefly at the end when he finally makes it to Boston. Ann had previously made a cameo in the War of the Worlds television series reprising her role as Sylvia. This marked the final film appearance for Gene before his death.

The 2005 version of War of the Worlds is not a typical alien invasion film. It draws from many previous genre films, but eschews some of the epic scale, for a more personal story. It also showcases Steven Spielberg’s evolving worldview with more serious and darker films, such as Schindler’s List, Amistad, and his follow-up film, Munich. This version still is very much a science-fiction film, but also includes elements of the war genre, making it a truly unique vision.

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