War of the Worlds (2005 film)

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

Plot

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.

Related Topics:
Newark, New Jersey - Bayonne - Miranda Otto - Ford Mustang

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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.

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Then, all hell breaks loose.

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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).

Related Topics:
Tripod - Heat-ray - Gun

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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.

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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,

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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.

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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.

Related Topics:
US Marine Corps - MARPAT

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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.

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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.

Related Topics:
Terraforming - Red weed

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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 military vehicle.

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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.

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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.

Related Topics:
Civilian - 10th Mountain Division

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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".

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As in the original novel, over the final shot of the collapsed and immobile tripods, a narrator 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.

Related Topics:
Bacteria - Microorganism

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