Continuity mistake: When the ferry casts off in the wideshot, there are only six people hanging off the outer edge of the ramp as it's being raised. When Robbie and another gentleman help these people over, in the close-up one of them wears tan pants, a long blue coat and knit hat, but this person was not amongst the six in the previous shot. (01:01:55)
War of the Worlds (2005)
Ending / spoiler
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Tom Cruise, Tim Robbins, Dakota Fanning, Miranda Otto
Rachel (Dakota Fanning)) and Ray (Tom Cruise) get found by a tripod in the basement. They both get captured by it and are held in a metal holding pen with many other survivours. They soon discover that the tripod is intending on devouring them. It tries to take Ray but he gets pulled out by the others and he spits out two pins of the grenades he found earlier. The grenades destroy the tripod from the inside and the remaining survivors escape to Boston to discover that the tripods are dying for unknown reasons. They encounter one last tripod but the army blows it up because it no longer has a force field. Finally Rachel and Ray make it to where Rachel's mother is staying and they find that no one is hurt and by some miraculous event Robbie is there. In the closing scene we are told that the aliens were doomed from the beginning because they weren't immune to Earth's micro organisms; humans earned the right to live on Earth because many died before we were immunized.
Hazax of Rodmore
More mistakes in War of the WorldsMore quotes from War of the Worlds
Trivia: When a group of aliens are exploring in the cellar, one of them spins the wheel of an overturned bicycle, and all are startled when the bicycle falls, making for a moment of comic relief. There's more to it, though. The H.G.Wells book mentions that the aliens probably had no concept of the wheel, as not a single rotating part was found inside the captured tripods. So an upside-down bicycle must have puzzled them a great deal.
Question: Is there any indication as to where the aliens come from and what exactly they want?
Answer: Maybe they were waiting for use to get up to very high number in population. Before we didn't have over 7 billion people in the world. More people more food.
Answer: All versions of "War of the Worlds" are based on the novel of the same name written by H.G. Wells and published in 1897. Wells explained that the aliens are from the planet Mars, and they came to Earth for the natural resources.
But that still doesn't answer why did they wait till then to attack when they could have done it years ago with less resistance. The natural resources were still here.
Perhaps the Martians considered the technological advances of Mankind as "resources," also. The prologue states that the Martians had been observing humanity on Earth for a long time before they chose to attack. Why? Possibly observing our advances in engineering (dam building, for one example, mining for another). It could be viewed that the Martians allowed us to perform the hard work of making natural resources more accessible and consolidating those resources. Personally, I always thought the Martians intended to come exploit the fruits of our labor, allowing us to advance as far as we could without becoming a physical threat to them. If the Martians had waited a few decades more, they could be dealing with a technologically-dangerous human species.
Answer: The alien homeland is never described in the film, but is described in the script as a lifeless, barren place, unfit for life.
Join the mailing list
Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.
Chosen answer: In the original George Pal version they were Martians and the reasoning for what they were doing was never explained. In this version, it's never explained where they come from, but their mission is simple, to eradicate human life from Earth, and use our bodies to fertilise the planet, probably so that they can colonise the planet for themselves.
GalahadFairlight
If it was to eradicate us they could have done that millions of years back, why now, so that doesn't add up.
You want to grow the substance (people) that grows your food source before using it. If they waited too much longer, they'd have a harder time because we'd have the technology to fight them back.
The reason which was apparently provided by Wells was that Mars was dying by lack of natural resources and that Martians needed a new home and food source.
They were waiting until the population grew large enough to sustain terraforming efforts. As they used our bodily fluids seemingly as a primary material for their terraforming.
It's an assumption that they could have eradicated us millions of years ago (which by the way would be long before we even existed). Maybe they didn't have the ability to transport themselves, only the machines. Maybe the original aliens all died. Lots of other options why they couldn't have done it.
They probably needed to wait for us to produce enough humans to use as fertilizer. Doesn't make sense to try to use several million bodies as fertilizer back then vs now with billions of people.