War of the Worlds (2005)

As Earth is invaded by alien tripod fighting machines, one family fights for survival.

Director:

Steven Spielberg

Writers:

Josh Friedman (screenplay), David Koepp (screenplay)

Stars:

Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Tim Robbins

Nominated for 3 Oscars. Another 16 wins & 44 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Tom Cruise	...	Ray Ferrier
Dakota Fanning	...	Rachel Ferrier
Miranda Otto	...	Mary Ann
Justin Chatwin	...	Robbie
Tim Robbins	...	Harlan Ogilvy
Rick Gonzalez	...	Vincent
Yul Vazquez	...	Julio (as Yul Vázquez)
Lenny Venito	...	Manny the Mechanic
Lisa Ann Walter	...	Bartender
Ann Robinson	...	Grandmother
Gene Barry	...	Grandfather
David Alan Basche	...	Tim
Roz Abrams	...	Herself
Michael Brownlee	...	TV Reporter, Osaka
Camillia Monet	...	News Producer (as Camillia Sanes)

Storyline

An ordinary man has to protect his children against alien invaders in this science fiction thriller, freely adapted from the classic story by H.G. Wells. Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) is a dockworker living in New Jersey, divorced from his first wife Mary Ann (Miranda Otto) and estranged from his two children Rachel and Robbie (Dakota Fanning and Justin Chatwin), of whom he has custody on weekends. On one such visitation, looking after the kids becomes a little more difficult when, after a series of strange lighting storms hit his neighborhood, Ray discovers that a fleet of death-ray robotic spaceships have emerged nearby, part of the first wave of an all-out alien invasion of the Earth. Transporting his children from New York to Boston in an attempt to find safety at Mary Ann's parents' house, Ray must learn to become the protector and provider he never was in marriage.

---

Plot Keywords:

alien | survival | storm | tripod | fight | 

---

Taglines:

Sie sind schon unter uns.

---

Genres:

Adventure | Sci-Fi | Thriller

---

Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG-13 for frightening sequences of sci-fi violence and disturbing images

Details

Official Sites:

Official Facebook

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

29 June 2005 (USA)

Also Known As:

Out of the Night

Filming Locations:

Athens, New York, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$132,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$77,061,953, 4 July 2005, Wide Release

Gross USA:

$234,280,354

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$591,745,540

Company Credits

Production Co:

Paramount Pictures,DreamWorks,Amblin Entertainment

Technical Specs

Runtime:

116 min

Sound Mix:

DTS Dolby SDDS

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

This is the third incarnation of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds that Ann Robinson has appeared in, having played Sylvia Van Buren in the first film The War of the Worlds (1953), and then reprised her role for three episodes in the television series, War of the Worlds (1988).

---

Goofs

If a large jumbo jet crashes into a house, and the house catches fire just as it it did as everyone got into the concrete utility room, it would have burned considerably more than shown. The basement had some charring, but there were plenty of clothes and other flammable debris scattered around, unburnt after the fireball supposedly engulfed the basement.

---

Quotes

[first lines]
Narrator: No one would have believed in the early years of the 21st century that our world was being watched by intelligences greater than our own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns, *they* observed and studied, the way a man with a microscope might scrutinize the creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency, men went to and fro about the globe, confident of our empire over this world. Yet across the gulf of space, intellects vast ...

---

Crazy Credits

There are no opening credits after the title is shown.

---

Connections

Referenced in Bad Movie Beatdown: Half Past Dead 2 (2011)

---

Soundtracks

Infierno
Written & Performed by Santino De La Tore (as Santino)
Courtesy of Luke Eddins at Luke Hits and Anouk Zisa-Bongiovi

User Reviews

Disappointing

If you're going to rate a film on pure spectacle, this one would easily get a 10 - it's utterly astounding.

The acting is uniformly good, and the idea of showing the film purely from the perspective of Cruise's character - so the audience knows nothing that he doesn't know - works extremely well.

But there's no plot, no underlying logic behind *anything* that happens, be it human or alien-initiated - every single plot decision seems to have been taken from the perspective of 'wouldn't it be cool if...' or 'Let's shock people with the nastier sides of human nature now' or 'Now we must give our hero a tough decision'... this was plotting-by-numbers at its most obvious (and painful)

With a decent script, this should have been one of the best Scifi movies ever made. Alas, the only good parts are the eye candy.

Andy