War of the Worlds (2005 film)

:{{Otheruses3|The War of the Worlds}}

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 former, 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.