Corrected entry: When the lightning storm begins, it is made very clear that an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) has disabled all electronic equipment, including Tom Cruise's watch. However, when the aliens begin disintegrating people, one man is seen holding up a video camera recording the events before being disintegrated himself. An EMP effectively destroys electronic equipment, causing circuit breakers in the device to overload, making such an "instantaneous" repair impossible. In fact the effects of the EMP are never even referred to again throughout the rest of the movie, with people using lights, televisions, phones, cameras and radios as if nothing happened to them. Can't be due to things being turned off - every car we see (except Tom's) is broken, and they can't all have been running during the storm.
Joshua Skains
1st Jul 2005
War of the Worlds (2005)
14th Jul 2005
War of the Worlds (2005)
Corrected entry: When Tom and Dakota are sleeping in Tim Robbins' ruin, an eye-alien watches them. Rachel wakes and gets out from under the stairs screaming. Ray destroys the eye and straight away he goes out to search for Rachel. Where is the destroyed eye? We suppose we should see a huge tripod with a hundred eyes and one destroyed.
Correction: Why are we supposed to see this? Other than the basement scene, we do not see these things elsewhere. We have no clue how it attaches, how many of them a tripod has, or if it is even part of a tripod (rather than some independent probe).
13th Jul 2005
War of the Worlds (2005)
Corrected entry: In the scene where they look at Tom Cruise's watch after the EMP, it has stopped. However, his watch (an Omega Speedmaster) is a wholly mechanical watch, and would not have been affected by the electronic storm.
Correction: Some models are battery powered.
13th Jul 2005
War of the Worlds (2005)
Corrected entry: The 'aliens' buried their vast army of complex machines thousands of years ago in many different locations throughout the planet. With all the mining and tunnelling we've done, and all the seismic and geological activity that has gone on, and all the scientific investigation of the Earth's crust by oil and mining companies (amongst others), not one was ever found? Exploration for oil reserves is carried out by bouncing extremely low frequency shock waves off the mantle which can be 3,000 kilometers deep, and that is just one industry carrying out one type of research - and not one of the Martian machines was ever detected? Given the size of their craft and the sheer numbers involved, that is utterly impossible.
Correction: How deep were these things? What were they actually made of? And where WERE they buried? Certainly in some cases they could have moved to the right position before the aliens transported themselves in. Maybe they were all buried under the ocean and they burrowed themselves into position when they received a signal from the aliens when they arrived.
Nonsense. Exploration for oil reserves is carried out by bouncing extremely low frequency shock waves off the mantle which can be 3,000 kilometers deep, and that is just one industry carrying out one type of research - and not one of the Martian machines was ever detected? Given the size of their craft and the sheer numbers involved, that is utterly impossible.
The correction simply ignores the facts. Oil companies routinely scan deep beneath the ocean for potential drilling sites, and mining companies do the same on land. They scan huge areas every day of the year. The chance of every single one of the Martians' huge vehicles and other machinery escaping undetected is absolutely zero.
Unless the aliens added special technology that helps avoid detection. Also the average thickness of the earth's crust is about 15 KM. Way too deep to be detected by those surveys.
1st Jul 2005
War of the Worlds (2005)
Corrected entry: Near the beginning, it's revealed that all electronic equipment within about a mile of the lightning storms stop working. Yet a camera crew was able to film lightning striking the ground multiple times during such a storm.
Correction: The recording merely caught a portion of the lightning storm, which they rewound and repeated multiple times. We don't know how stable this EMP is, if it is intentional or just a byproduct of their transportation system. If it isn't a weapon, and just a byproduct, perhaps it doesn't project evenly. Many news crews must have tried. Perhaps this is the one that lucked out and their equipment survived at least SOME of the recording time.
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Correction: The EMP seems to be caused by their transportation systems. It is likely this is a byproduct of their system, not an intentional weapon. This puts to question how constant it is. Does it really burst evenly out? Or does it fire off in different waves in some unstable pattern. It is likely that some equipment sitting in the right place at the right time could be spared. This would explain the news crews who were able to photograph at least some of the events (most likely using long range zoom).
Joshua Skains