War Of The Worlds (2005 Film)

Hi All, today I am reviewing the war of the worlds film released in 2005, whilst linking it to the 1898 original novel by H.G Wells’.

The film begins with an opening narration that explains the Earth was being observed by extra-terrestrials with immense intelligence and no compassion. As man dominated the world without doubt, much like microorganisms swarming in a drop of water, these beings plotted to take it all from us.

The story follows a Divorced dockworker, Ray Ferrier  (Tom Cruise), who works at a dock site in Brooklyn New York, and his daughter Rachel and son Robbie. Ray's pregnant ex wife, Mary Ann, drops the two off at the beginning of the film.

Later in the night, there is a a strange storm and lightning strikes into the middle of a local intersection, disrupting all technology and electricity. 

Ray joins the crowd at the scene of the impacts, where a massive alien war machine emerges from the ground and uses powerful energy weapons to destroy the entire area, with almost everyone around being incinerated. 

Ray goes back to his children, and steals a van that had just been repaired, in order to get the kids back to their mothers home for refuge.   

That night, they take shelter in the basement, but they soon hear a strange roaring noise followed by an explosion, which destroys the house, he eventually finds that this was an aircraft that had been crashed in the night and eventually learns that this type of event is happening everywhere.

Ray learns that the attacks are coming from alien war machines “tripods” which have are covered by a protective shield that renders all human weapons useless, and also learns that the aliens have travelled through lightning into the tripods in order to protect themselves from human weapons. This makes it very clear how advanced the planning was from the aliens, and the fact that they had studied humans very well before the attack.

The story carried on with Jack encountering the tripods several times, only to witness that the humans are fighting a losing war, and on this journey learns that the aliens are trying to make the earth inhabitable like their home planets with masses of red coloured vegetation starts to appear everywhere, whilst harvesting humans to feed their crops.

Towards the end Ray is captured by one of the tripods but eventually manages to escape, and later on it becomes evident that the aliens become sick and weak, due to what is explained as their immune systems being unable to handle the countless billions of microbes that inhibit the earth.

I enjoyed this film in particular, as the original idea goes much further than a basic alien invasion movie. In fact one of the earliest stories detailing a fight between mankind and extra-terrestrials, with the original publishing of the story being in 1898.

In fact the author H.G. Wells said that the plot arose from a discussion with his brother Frank about the catastrophic effect of the British on indigenous Tasmanians. What would happen, he wondered, if Martians did to Britain what the British had done to the Tasmanians.

And if you look into the film/story very closely, the details of British imperialism are everywhere. From the very well planned invasions after observation of the inhabitants of earth, to the aliens (British) trying to turn the  new land into their own by planting their own vegetation, whilst disregarding the indigenous settlers as nothing more than pests (intelligent being with no compassion), and we all know that the key failure of the British empire was down to being incapable of handling the environmental factors of the lands that they invaded.

I believe the film is more interesting when you look at the film with the perspective of the aliens playing the role of the British empire, which invaded so many parts of the world with such strength and force, whilst showing little to no compassion to the people who originated in those lands.

Thanks for reading, please subscribe and let me know your thoughts on this film.