Unveiling the Darkest Secret of 'War Of The Worlds'

[@pupbenny]

The reason the Tripods were buried adds such a disturbing dynamic to human history in what is already quite a grim film. It's quite a fantastic idea!

[@rapatacush3]

No, it make them the dumbest aliens on science fiction history. Even dumber than the orks from warhammer 40k. Are you expecting me to believe that advance aliens came to earth to bury machines and study the enviroment but they never noticed this micro creatures crawling all over their skin?

[@DrBagPhD]

I personally hated this change. Call me a purist but it left me really disappointed when the cylinders are such a creepy concept- they're obviously alien but are impregnable and we have no idea what they are or their intent is until the Martians decide to exit, and by that point it's too late. I adore the idea of Earth being a human farm that gets harvested millennia apart with the farming equipment being left deep deep underground for next time but I feel WotW wasn't the film to explore it.

[@sbaptiste7943]

I did hear the author said that the aliens were watching humanity with envious eyes which means the aliens were jelous of humanity which means humans had something the aliens possibly didnt have. That's just a theory.

[@sbaptiste7943]

However I have another theory. If they use people to fertilize their blood, then why do they use lasers to turn people into ashes. Theres 3 different types of tripods. one of which lacks tentacles and instead only has heat rays, while the other has their tentacles deployed and visible cages on the under-behind of their hood, but with the third model shown later in the film as it has Four headlights along with the central massive headlight leading to the design of it more Heavy-duty as it used both tentacles and heat-rays.

[@ryanreyes4622]

I saw one alien drinking from a sewer pipe in the film during the house scene

[@Soon_To_Be_Gone_Acc]

This film traumatized me when I was a little kid. LOL, but it was my first exposer to War of the Worlds. So I guess I can thank my dad for showing this film to me.

[@pupbenny]

Haha, I remember watching it when I was a kid too. It really is quite a terrifying film!

[@RadioSnakeInvasion6333]

Same for me, but it was my mother who showed it to me

[@douglasallar9176]

Same here

[@FanqrBFDI]

My dad and mom showed it to me, this movie was a huge idea for my docs, no wonder this well written for me. It’s a huge influence

[@regulate.artificer_g23.mdctlsk]

The "buried in the ground" thing reminds me of Playstation's _Resistance_ franchise, where the alien race known as the Chimera building/burying their superstructures deep beneath the earth, but their method of invasion is certainly unique: instead of coming to earth themselves, they designed a virus that infects humans to turn them into, well, Chimera.

[@lordhenrykillingbelow8330]

Or the Ceph from Crysis.

[@troin3925]

I was about to make that comparison! That's exactly what I was thinking!

[@rburns9730]

The disease plot hole can be filled by the fact germs and viruses mutate and evolve all the time. I doubt caveman had to worry about COVID 19.

[@pupbenny]

That's a good point!

[@rapatacush3]

In that case they would have taken precautions, or sterilize the planet before coming in like those dumbasses in prometheus.

[@ominous-omnipresent-they]

Our ancestors weren't aware of viruses or germs, much less their vulnerability.

[@rburns9730]

@@ominous-omnipresent-they Who cares? It isn't like the people in the movie knew aliens were susceptible either. That wasn't figured out until after the aliens died. My point is that germs and viruses aren't static over time, especially for long periods of time. The aliens could have seeded the planet with machines before whatever killed them existed.

[@Sean-hn1vt]

That is an amazing point!

[@GenericOceanLinerHistorian]

I think it’s pretty cool to think that the tripods might be super outdated technology to the martians, because if they planted the tripods here long ago, they must have invented new technologies. It’s as if we went to mars and fought tribes of a lower intelligence species with catapults and trebuchets, and absolutely demolished them.

[@pupbenny]

Yeah it's a really interesting idea, I plan to look into doing a video about that eventually, talking about how advanced the aliens must be at this point. It's so fascinating that these tripods are so old to them.

[@cmac3446]

Yes but time isn't linear. These beings are traveling faster than the speed of light presumably. This means very little time would have passed from the perspective of the Aliens, even though the machines were planted in our time frame for thousands of years. Sounds Sci-Fi eh? But it's not. This comes from the mind of Albert Einstein's 1915 theory of general relativity. Science is fun :)

[@GenericOceanLinerHistorian]

@@cmac3446 Oops I forgot that the aliens in the movie aren’t from mars like in the book lol

[@dynestis2875]

Your entire comment is based on a presumption therefore we cannot speculate about your point ​@@cmac3446

[@lvlc6023]

@@GenericOceanLinerHistorian No problems you can call them martian even if they are not from Mars. Even if the fact that they set foot on Mars as a colony or even if they left tripods on Mars back a long time ago when Mars still got oceans. Well we left that to the future archaeologist.

[@chissstardestroyer]

It is hinted at in the movie *billions* of years ago that they were here and burried their tanks last, not millions or even thousands of years ago in the storyline; so I guess they were planning on settling here all along, but wanted to terriform the planet, and likely they age at a different rate than we humans do.

[@starscream4282]

In the movie, Ogilvy said, “a million years ago.” But he doesn’t actually know. Everyone is just making educated guesses in the movie. But Spielberg said in an interview that the Aliens did bury them a long time ago.

[@chissstardestroyer]

@@starscream4282 Really, this story makes some sense; as far as how come they would've gone away: they didn't want to wipe out their livestock.

[@3piper]

This is a good theory . May I add to this?? When they came they took the large dinosaurs ,that is why they became extinct at roughly the same time. They decided to come back later to harvest what evolved next

[@ariesdemiurge]

As if the 05 Tripods weren't terrifying enough...

[@pupbenny]

The horror of them just keeps increasing! xD

[@LadyYautjaSpacePirate]

​@@pupbenny I find humans scarier! 🤣

[@bobbybigelow7175]

the idea that every human in history has been bred as a livestock animal for aliens is honestly terrifying. good analysis!

[@AmicusAdastra]

the thing is irl its kinda what happen

[@Sean-hn1vt]

I don't think they actually went to Earth and buried the Tripods. They used lightning to transport themselves through the ground, so they might be able to do the same for the Tripods as they are very advanced. Because of this they may not have ever stepped foot on Earth before and therefore had no idea about the harmful bacteria and never succumbed to it.

[@matyasfried8510]

I was thinking the same thing. That the capsule the reporter showed Ray on TV was some form of machine that would teleport the tripod with the alien crew underground.

[@Bingus0143]

Fun fact: Steven Spielberg actually made his version of war of the worlds because he got the inspiration from the 1953 war of the worlds and he took some of the lines from it to.

[@trekkieraccoon3343]

There's a few little Easter eggs to the 1950s version one is a street sign that says Van Bruen which is the female characters last name and the grand parents at the end of the movie are the lead actors from the older version

[@Bingus0143]

@@trekkieraccoon3343 that's a good one too

[@chissstardestroyer]

I really like the fanart; and I have read a tale along similiar lines; years ago; by the name of "Closer to Them" that appears to have disappeared from the website it was on in the intervening years... it was a good quality war-story about this conflict from an alien soldier's eyeview... but I really liked the idea of the alien biologist in the biology coat observing the microscope you've got in the pictures in this.

[@Bdiorio526]

You also have to remember that this movie was released in the aftermath of 9/11. Much of the imagery in the movie (missing persons posters, etc.) had 9/11 in mind. One of the reasons of the buried machines was the sense of "they were here under our feet the whole time" that terroism provoked.

[@Owen_14611]

I know not many think about how the aliens came down into the tripods, if they came down through lightning, we’re did the lightning come from, did they open up some portal, or was there really some sort of mothership disguised as a storm?

[@pupbenny]

I'm not sure, I suppose by this point in time they have such advanced technology and abilities, but specifically how they were able to do this I'm not sure. Definitely interesting to think about though.

[@reidpilkey3214]

I believe the original book had the martians being shot through a cannon sort of machine from Mars. Perhaps something similar in this remake where they shoot out from their solar system, going faster than the speed of light and when it hits our atmosphere, it becomes an electromagnetic storm.

[@alexcarter2461]

I wanna say mothership because the storm abruptly stops and the wind stops as well and then the lightning commences but also wormhole or some kind of portal as the storm creates intense updraft, storms can do this in the event of a tornado but obviously no tornado was present.

[@albertrandall2271]

​@@pupbennyhey people, you can come up with all kind of theories as to how the aliens do the things that they do just remember it's a story. 😮 If it is not explain in the movie 🎥 then you are not going to come up with any explanation that would be satisfying because it's just a made-up story. I say come up with any conclusion that satisfies you if you believe the Martians did it the way you think they would do it then I say go with it. 👍

[@xyreniaofcthrayn1195]

@@alexcarter2461 Supercells are quite capable of doing so which is more typical of big and swirly cloud they can have lightning occur in them too as they are basically the swirly bit before it goes to ground and officially becomes a tornado. so yeah big mothership probably looking like a massive tripod but with no legs using a supercell as cover makes sense. Edit: didn't realise till posting that it read nig mothership instead of big mothership.

[@malchiahratcliff4936]

Well another explanation was they buried them during the main part of ice age when most viruses were frozen or in effective enough to notice when one or 2 died every now and again and they found humans were a good food source and burried tripods so they could as they said swarm and multiply for a some food for later

[@BrianWelch-vc7xy]

The idea that the aliens were here all along, lurking just beneath the surface, brings up some very important questions that were not addressed in the movie: Why did the aliens pick "now" to begin their invasion? What triggered their appearance? How did they go unnoticed by construction crews and diggers? Why were they vulnerable to microbes when they had already been living here for such a long time?

[@LegioXXI]

Well i have some plausible theories for that: Why did the aliens pick "now" to begin their invasion? -> They waited for a critical mass of humans to exist in order to fulfil their terraforming plans. Why were they vulnerable to microbes when they had already been living here for such a long time? -> Well in the movie the aliens weren't here all along, they just placed the tripods (and maybe even just from orbit). But also never forget that life changed drastically over billions of years on Earth, so maybe their microbiology analysis was just outdated. Another fun explanation would also be, that not even all Aliens attacked - only their "Anti-Vaxxing"-faction. Like the invading force was warned to not leave their capsules and later tripods to wonder around Earth before the terraforming was completed, but they got arrogant and did it anyway. I mean we humans also landed on the moon and achieved so much scientific progress yet we still have flat earthers, creationists and anti-vaxxers. So why shouldn't Aliens have the same issues? Technological progress alone (sadly) dosen't cure ignorance and stupidity, we humans are the living proof of that.

[@-Miguelzim-]

​@@LegioXXI I loved your answer. The idea of them just refusing to obbey orders and feeling the consequences makes them more like us, and one of them leaving the tripod only to look for humans is peak arrogance and idiocity. They think they are invencible, since they think they are superior enough to (maybe) believe that not even our bacterias could harm them just make them more realistic, since in most of alien movies, the aliens basically never commit any mistakes beside missing shots trying to hit the protagonist, and in a "real" alien invasion, they would commit other mistakes too.

[@omorigaming7107]

I’ve always wondered did they ever return the machines to work on them or have they been there since the start. For all we know these could of been a prototype machines from prehistoric times. But that’s just my thoughts good video as always

[@CrateEmpire]

the tripod dancing at the end got me but also thanks for the explanation

[@transformersrevenge9]

I have a fan theory. The tripods are buried in strong cylinders. When the first tripod emerges, we see the ground unscrew. The reason why humans never dug up Tripods, is because by 2005, we would not have had technology to dig up something that big if it's buried that deep. Most likely they hit a cylinder, saw that it's impassable, and dug elsewhere. But what if in that universe, Area 51 is america digging up a Tripod and being confused by it for years? Also, that cloud thing up there, that sent the lightning down? Most mysterious thing in the movie. It shows up twice (at the start, and after the ferry scene), and never again. Is it still in orbit? Did it go away? And finally, Ray did say that wind was blowing towards the storm. I think that was a portal opening, hence the vacuum of space sucking air towards the portal.

[@ChumpSeason]

My solution to the "why bury the machines" issue is that the machines were drones sent ahead of time. Their motive for colonizing earth was to solve a future problem (overpopulation/resource scarcity) and they wanted the planet prepped for their arrival.

[@DinoRicky]

1:49 actually they say they been here *millions* of years ago, before possibly the first human ancestors split off from apes 6 million years ago

[@PrinceWelch-te5lk]

or 2 millon years ago with homo habilis

[@protama-kun]

a new theory on my favorite movie? hell yeah

[@blackbelt2000]

What doesn't make sense to me is that in the movie the aliens vaporized vast amounts of people in some scenes and in other scenes they were harvesting them for consumption. Why kill off your source of food? They are going to need all the humans they can get if they are using the byproducts for terra-forming (or alien equivalent) the earth. They didn't seem to have a criteria of who to eat and who to vaporize.

[@LegioXXI]

I think one reason they used their "lasers" at all is due to the side effect of destroying buildings, making it easier to find and gather humans due to the creation of masses of refugees. Without destruction of buildings, many humans would have hidden in their cities (especially within the first hours of the invasion), making it really tedious to harvest them. They always seem to harvest people if there are either no large buildings the humans could hide in, or if there are masses of refugees concentrated in one spot. We even see on the reporters tape that they seem to intentionally destroy large buildings. Technically a 2nd wave of tripods could still harvest the dead people who died in those collapsing buildings. If they only did harvesting, humans would have enough time to first hide and later flee and spread. I also think they calculated their invasion in a way, that even just harvesting 50% of humanity would have been enough to terraform earth. It's never established that they really need 100% or even just 90% of humanity to do that, otherwise the vaporizing would have indeed been a plot hole. So only needing around 50% is the only plausible explanation.

[@derekhofstetler3998]

​@@LegioXXI I have a theory. They target blood types. Ray and his daughter are hunted. Father and daughter. Descendants usually have the same blood types, and Ray's son was captured and held off in the cage until the virus killed them.

[@aaronrodden8121]

Some people like their food burnt! Literally 😂

[@maciekgrodzinski9133]

Alternatively there are other options: 1.They planned the invasion earlier, and launched the tripods, but then encountered some sudden and unexpected problem with launching, transporting and safely landing the crews, and it was so serious that it took them long time to solve it. For example the problem of food 2.They were launching tripods in capsules to multiple planets in advance, expoliting them one after another then

[@TyberiusDe]

Hello. Was looking into this movie again, and your video came up. Gave it a look and made the same conclusion when I watched it in theaters back in 2005. As far as your question at 4:52, I didn't have an answer at the time but I have learned a lot about diseases and where they came from, and I think I have a good answer for you: The commonality and severity of diseases that humans interact with has exploded since humans developed animal husbandry. If we assume they had been here and left before 9000BC, humans would have been far less disease infested than they are today. I know a lot of folks ask why they wouldn't know about our diseases or simply ignored them (to which there is a number of possible answers) but I will simply state that most people don't realize that most of our diseases are jumps from cows, pigs, birds, ect. And if the average Human doesn't realize where our diseases come from when we live with disease as something normal, then I can very much believe the Martians made a oversight out of sheer ignorance. It has happened many, many times in our own history.

[@LadyYautjaSpacePirate]

Personally, I like HG Wells' idea about them being Martians, but I also like Spielberg's idea of the aliens' machines already buried symbolizing the Martians' envy for the human race being surface dwellers. Scientists speculated that Mars was once liveable above and below surface until it changed, possibly forcing them underground. That's a possibility. One of their rovers found fossils on Mars.

[@starscream4282]

No problem! I was obsessed with this movie back in 2004 when I read that Spielberg was going to direct War of the Worlds. I’m a huge Spielberg/ Alien movie fan so the combination excited me. I was always searching for any information I could find about the movie before it came out. I got really excited when Spielberg said he wanted the movie to feel real. He said it was going to be “Saving Private Ryan style except the villains were aliens instead of Germans.” That’s another aspect of the movie I love. How grounded and real feeling it is. One of my favorite movies of all time. I love reading about theories and all of that stuff about the movie but the most important thing about the movie is that we don’t know or understand anything about the invasion, other than it’s happening. Spielberg intentionally did this because it’s realistic. The aliens would never tell us what, how, or why they were doing this. Everything is speculation. And that’s another reason why people can still have interesting conversations about it two decades later. I’m happy there are other people who love this movie as much as I do that create content about it. When I show people this movie who have never seen it, they are all so impressed with it and don’t understand why they never heard of it or watched it. This movie’s SFX look better than most movies made today due to an amazing director using multiple film making techniques not used as much today. I love this movie and thank you all for keeping it relevant!

[@NordkapSounddesign]

If they did not came in ships, what transported them trough the lightning into the machines then? In the end there have to be a mohtership or more to transport them. And this would be spottable.

[@starscream4282]

Back in 05 I had read an interview where it was said that Spielberg was toying with the idea that the aliens were actually inter-dimensional aliens. I also read an article back then connected to the movie about electromagnetic storms in space being caused by solar flares on the sun. In the movie one of the guys talking to Ray, as they walk to the hole in the ground, makes this comment and the other guy says, “The sun doesn’t cause lightning. It just sounds dumb when you say that.” I thought this was interesting when I watched that part in the theater because I had read about it before the movie came out. And the funny part is that solar flares CAN cause electromagnetic/geomagnetic storms. Doesn’t sound so dumb after all lol😂. But that was the point of that line in the film. Giving the audience little clues but nothing definite because everyone in the movie is just experiencing the invasion and really don’t understand any of it. All they know is that the aliens are killing and abducting humans. The theory was that portals between dimensions could be opened and traveled through with these electromagnetic storms. The article was a type of “scientific” article based on actual science theory. I wonder if these ideas got mixed with different ideas they actually used in the movie. I always thought it was interesting even if the electromagnetic storms was changed from inter-dimensional travel to space travel. Either way it’s cool. Spielberg always said in interviews about WotW that in real life nobody would completely understand an alien invasion. They would just be trying to survive. The aliens would never tell us lol

[@MetalTeaCup]

Me riding the lightning down to the 1985 Chevy Silverado work truck trying to remember if I need the hammer or screwdriver to start the truck. "Okay, how the hell do I drive this thing..."

[@alang.bandala8863]

Well... I was thinking about it and I think a very simple way to avoid the trope and still make it feel unique is to exclude the comment that the tripods were buried all this time. One suggestion I have is that, since storms and thunder seem to come from nowhere, it seems more like a wormhole than anything else, while we think about how to get from point A to point B, the Martians thought about how to do it. that point B reached them. The reporter's dialogue could change to: "Those machines come up from under the ground, but there was nothing there years ago... Who the hell put them there?" The video would show how what look like pieces, capsules, and sometimes you can even see only silhouettes, come down from the beam. "That's them. They go down in capsules, they use the rays to transport themselves to their assembly area." Then you just have to select the martian pilot concept art and run with it!

[@RadioSnakeInvasion6333]

I have to say this rq, I find it pretty interesting how all this morbid stuff is caused by aliens who, for some reason (referring to the spielberg aliens) look kinda cute xddd idk im probably the only person in the world who thinks these invaders look pretty adorable, but they use probably one of the most terrifying tripods

[@sjTHEfirst]

What always got me was, in the thousands of years people have been digging in the Earth, we never came across even one of these buried fighting machines?

[@RobWithGuns]

One big idea that came across my mind is that the civilization that buried the tripods isn’t the same one that came back and initiated the invasion - same species, but an entirely different society, utilizing the ancient technology of a long lost civilization after learning how to use it. Just as we have long lost, ancient societies that we don’t know that much about, I think it’s possible the present day aliens might not be anywhere near as advanced or knowledgeable as their predecessors. Because in my mind, the tools made to harvest our biomass as a fertilizer would require extensive knowledge of our own biosphere down to a microscopic level. I think there was some kind of civilizational collapse or slow atrophy/decay in which a great deal of knowledge and data was lost. The tripods were planted at the peak of their civilization while the present day invaders are ignorant and weak in comparison, like toddlers playing with a loaded gun. This isn’t too far off from Wells’ original depiction of the Martians whose long-held dependence on technology made them weaker. But for them to fail the way they did I think would’ve required a fall-of-Rome type of scenario that leaves the species in a relative dark age.

[@communistconisor2872]

In the book, the martians already had livestock that were described as being humanoid in nature. These livestock were basically dried rations from mars like mres. So maybe when martians came the first time they took some humans back to mars but decided to plant the tripods in the earth like you said as a contingency. Its like how europeans would take fruit from colonies and bring it back to europe but also made farms in those colonies. Maybe the martians have been abducting people for thousands of years but eventually the livestock on mars dried up so the martians resorted go full blown invasion.

[@RavenVI]

aliens with ancient buried technology isn't even a new trope, a few of them explain why they "waited" was that earth was a backup plan. Others indicate that the aliens were forced off earth at some point. The tripods themselves may not have even been built as war machines originally. The jeff wayne video game adaptation does a similar idea with the invaders using repurposed technology that "hadn't been needed in a long time" indicating that they aren't normally a conquest seeking race. A similar thing can be said to the 2005 version which would explain why they didnt invade right away. Resistance comes to mind, the chimera invaders in the games had buried structures under the earth, excavating them. Similarly, they too had a weakness of earth, the temperature was not safe for them without gear to regulate it, indicating that the earth wasn't deadly to them then. For the same reason, the aliens simply didn't exist on earth after they left to have developed immunity and resistance towards the illnesses that developed in their absence, and not much in the way of knowing about or even countering it.

[@emily1]

The lightning itself may have had many purposes. We can establish that the aliens more than likely came down in the lightning due to the silhouettes seen in frame by frame analysis of the movie. But this may or may not have been the case exclusively. The capsules could have contained some form of teleportation/deployment device that can be activated and deploy a tripod to the intended location. This may explain why humanity never found them. It is also possible that they were buried deep underground, and the lightning they created also had the ability to break soil and rock of all kinds hence clearing the way for such tripods to reach the surface (Tom Cruise picks up a rock and remarks that it's "freezing". This MAY be the aliens trying to freeze the ground to make it more easily breakable.. however whether it actually does is debated but still possible). This can however open a plothole asking how they reached the top as there is no evidence of the ability to fly or climb straight vertically and how they did it so fast given the depth. Before the tripod rises the ground doesn't just collapse in/push up for the tripod to reveal itself. The ground rotates in a (seemingly uniform) circle which would be too perfect for a tripod push up incident. A capsule or the deployment device for the tripod likely in any explanation bored and destroyed ground in a cylinder boundary so that the tripod could reach the outside. The hole isn't initially that deep either, and given the fact the tripod needed to foot the ground outside to pull itself out, it's a given that the tripod (height 45.72m) was at most 36 or so metres (less when counting the legs only and subtracting the length used to extend the legs) underground at the lowest point. This would not be very deep to start with. It's possible from sight estimation that the highest point of the tripod was around 10 metres below. The ground when it pushes up and collapses would be unlikely to have been done again by the tripod. My best guess if it was that it used it's head and strength to headbutt the ground. This would however require room (which would not be available if it's buried with earth around it. It's again likely that this deployment device forced the ground up and pulled it down and detonated (hence the ground having a big explosion) I would also believe that Stephen would have had characters suggest some ideas so as to cause a mystery but also spark great debate of how why and what. The movies approach was people trying to survive and make sense of the whole situation, so the woman that suggested this was only speculating based on the facts presented to her (to a normal person it would probably seem that they were just buried) We can also give reasons as to why logically and strategically, burying weaponry/vehicles etc is a bad idea, especially that deep. It can be viewed objectively based on evidence in the film that while these aliens did not plan for the earths environment with disease and germs, there is still evidence that the aliens were in theory good strategists and a smart civilisation. Going back to the lightning, the lightning storm the aliens create starts a EMP blast. Why? Potentially so news coverage was limited and suppressed, and victims could not escape easily. This adds to the surprise element Stephen went for. Why do the aliens come down in lightning? So you don't know they're aliens until you're looking down the barrel of their gun. Leaving the tripods in such a depth depicted would compromise the invasion before it even started. Imagine someone was digging a tunnel 20 metres below ground and they just by chance came upon a tripod. It would compromise the invasion and possibly equip your enemy with your own technology and research which would given time prove very disastrous. Shield technology alone would already set back the invasion and add the potential for losses given they allowed weapons to be fired from the inside. It makes a whole lot more sense, given as well their technology, to deploy the tripods onsite as would help keep the invasion a surprise or (ambush) and would not compromise the success of the seeming colonisation. I can agree and do believe at least that they had a goal of waiting for population to be of a good sizeable amount for harvest and colonisation, but my comment is long enough as it is. I think the best way to hypothesize is to think outside of the box and try to see it from a invader standpoint and work with what we see. More especially, it's easier to apply a human way of thinking or a idea, because we've never seen, heard or though of anything of this magnitude.

[@s452_Gojisaurus]

Yeah, the Fighting Machines being left underground for thousands to millions of years was always a dumb creative choice for that film next to making the aliens themselves bio-tripods instead of the book's space octopus design. A point that no one brings up when talking about the 2005 Paramount film is that Fighting Machine tripods that invaders are riding in are very outdated, retro tech that realistically would be very inefficient and harder to operate/maintain for newer generations like modern humans going to wage war with musket rifles and swords against 21st-century guns & nukes. In the span of 60 years, after H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds was published, humans went from steam engines to atomic bombs, cars, tanks, submarines, airplanes, supercomputers, and spaceships. The only time in sci-fi when ancient but advanced alien tech that lay domain behind humanity's feet on Earth works is when said tech belongs to an extinct alien race who die off or disappear in the distant past like the Prothean in Mass Effect or an advanced civilization purposely left said tech for humans to discover and reclaim like the Forerunners in Halo. Now the idea you presented of the aliens purposely waiting and monitoring humanity before harvesting was actually done far better with the Reapers from the Mass Effect video games, which the game devs at Bioware said were inspired by the Martians from The War of the Worlds. In Mass Effect, the Reapers wait in dark space outside of the Milky Way Galaxy monitoring species that advance enough to make galactic empires, space travel, dark matter tech, and self-aware AIs only for the Reapers to return, wipe them out, and all traces/evidence of the Reapers involvement every 50,000 years.

[@pupbenny]

Yeah, it's definitely a bizarre concept. I hadn't considered till making this video about how outdated the tripods must be to them, it's really odd. I haven't played Mass Effect, I should probably try it, I've heard a lot about it and it sounds really good.

[@s452_Gojisaurus]

@@pupbenny Here's another thing to consider that filmmakers maybe didn't think of. The deeper underground you go, the hotter the temperature gets. The world's deepest manmade hole, the Kola Superdeep Borehole in Russia, reaches 12,262 meters (7.6 miles) underground which they had to stop digging in 1989 due to the metal drill melting from Earth's natural temperatures. For example, the temperature at 3218 meters (2 miles) underground reaches 40 to 60 Celsius (104 to 140 degrees) which is considered too dangerous/deathly for most Earth life & humans. So those Fighting Machines from the 2005 Paramount film have really good air conditioners or be buried at least between 110 to 1609 meters (0.1 to 1 mile) underground to prevent the alien invaders from being cooked alive inside of their own machines and remaining undiscovered by humans either by seismic surveys or building an underground subway tunnel.

[@xyreniaofcthrayn1195]

@@s452_Gojisaurus not so there are area's made by the mantling of oceanic crusts that you could feasibly park a tripods in or even hide whole ass staging areas between the crust and the mantle and contain really old hot water so i would be more concerned with rust than anything.

[@s452_Gojisaurus]

@@xyreniaofcthrayn1195 Expect the fact that the underground does change over time due to the movement of the Earth's tectonic plates, which was a point that even the excellent Spacedock KZbin channel points out when talking about the Spielberg tripods in his "Top 10 Sci-Fi Walkers" video. Even if you build a structure underground, it has to be maintained, like how subway tunnels have regular maintenance to prevent them from collapsing into themselves due to the forces of nature. So even if the Invaders set up underground hangers/armories for the tripods, they could be either damaged or inaccessible just due to the Earth itself without any human involvement, depending on how long they are down there. Also storing the tripods in the Oceanic Curst is a very bad idea as the invaders and/or the Fighting Machines would be crushed into a paste or a tin can by the high pressures alone. I just still find the alien invaders hiding and invading Earth with outdated Fighting Machines & tech underground a dumb creative choice for Speilberg's War of the Worlds remake as I did when I 1st saw it back in 2005 (which I find sad because Gears of War did that concept of underground alien invaders better with the Locust Horde just a year after the Speilberg film) and is full of many plotholes, unlike the space explanation. The aliens and their machines coming from space instead of underground is still the most realistic explanation and fairly easy to modernize like giving the Martian cylinders cloaking devices, radar/camera jammers, or faster-than-light/wormhole travel to avoid detection by modern humans.

[@xyreniaofcthrayn1195]

@@s452_Gojisaurus not so for these really old (some are as old if not older than pangea and exist precisely because of tectonic shifting specifically at the ocean on ocean tectonic movements where one continent slides down and the other rises over (mantles) the other continental plate slightly or did you miss that particular class. Admittedly they are somewhat stuck between solid rock and mud in terms of movement but they don't get replaced very often.

[@SuperKernel32]

When I first watched the film I felt that the reporter saying they must have been buried for a long time was her making an assumption in the wake of the attack. I always felt the aliens rode the lighting and assembled their machines underground, similar to them building their tripods in the book.

[@palpadur1112]

what'll really mess with you is that, in one of the special features of the 2005 dvd, Stephen Spielberg himself says that the tripod aliens come from the same part of the universe as E.T, but a much darker part of it. which means that Star Wars can get pretty dark.

[@macaiahyhwh3330]

This movie needs a sequel

[@dakotahudson8964]

I personally disliked the 'the tripods being underground all along' premise, however if reworked naratively (like the aliens and tripods are teleported in, disrupting the infrastructure of the city) I think it was an interesting take.

[@juanisol8275]

My only major criticism is the design of the Martians! But I loved the technological reinterpretation! As for your review, Personally, maybe something similar to Pacific Rift happened. About how the conditions of the Planet were different in Prehistory and Maybe they simply left because they had other issues to resolve (Like Civil Wars on Mars or The Silurians and Cosmic Events) but not before leaving it as a backup plan...Aside from the plot hole I am also more intrigued about the Martian civilization and other cosmic historical events!

[@SonOfKerro]

In my opinion, what actually happened with the tripod is that, they burried the machines realizing that the planet CAN sustain life effectively, they ethier then planted life or just realised life existed in the oceans and left. Which they didnt know the things they planted evolved to be deadly in the first million years.

[@Christianluna-ib9gn]

For the tripods not dying to bacteria there is a possible reason! The reason they didn't die is because they didn't stay long, let me explain, in the 2005 film the tripods don't die immediately, the bacteria actually starts to kick in more a week later, maybe they had buried those tripods within a week? These tripods don't die immediately, yet the tripods at the end don't really die immediately. Now the reason why is because, well when you have a fever, does it get to its worst point? Nope, same case goes with the tripods vs bacteria! This is the tripods getting sickness!

[@rapatacush3]

That is not how it works. Once you are exposed to bacterias and virus they latch into you. They would have got sick eventually.

[@michaeltupou8200]

The reason why they didn't die before they came it's because of less oxygen

[@SpeedyGaming]

My question is, if they were able to not be detected by using the storms, what were they? Were they actually ships or were they able to use portals to seed the grounded Tripods in preparation for their exit of their homeworld planet, the storms were the most mysterious enigma of them all, and it shows how much more advanced they were in comparison to their ancient mechanized Tripods.

[@NordkapSounddesign]

They where transportet trough the lighning in capsules. You can see it in the movie, when the reporter stopped the frame. Thats why the lightning hits the same area again and again to bring enough pilots for one tripod. But yeah, what transported the capsules? There have to be a mohtership. Or it is really some kind of wormhole/portal thing...

[@invoke4937]

i think the best scenario to avoid the whole infected by germs thing, is that maby the searched planets from their spaceships that ''could potentialy'' harbor life'' planted the pods using their spacecraft, not needing to exited the vehicles to do so , and then just left, found out earth has organic life (maby even relize that earth has more value then they though and then came back only thing i am confused about is their harvesting operations, if harvesting is their main objestive, then why did the spend so mutch time basicly zapping people to death if they see them as a resource that is importent? i always thought up my own theory to make sense of it and that is, they want to wipe out all life on earth and harvest the humans to terraform earth to their own liking

[@Moochaa]

Whilst I like the idea of cattle (reminds me of Jupiter Ascending), I lean towards the idea of von Neumann probe-esque approach. They send the cylinders to many planets across the galaxy, sitting dormant until a time the aliens need them. They come at some unspecified time later, without needing to bring invasion vehicles with them, just the crew.

[@Elitesolider1023]

I have a theory that 1 of their own leaders knew of the bacteria that would kill their troops and he allowed it anyway. So he can make one of the other leaders look bad to be punish and take the position a literal Palpatine move And I love the idea that the invaders just stumbled upon humanity. And just use them as livestock for the red weed. As fertilizer send for some reason, corpses are always good for planting crops. I don't know why since i'm not an expert in that area of expertise, but I do know that fact And these guys are very similar to how the chimera. And the resistant series invaded humanity, especially after they've lost the war against the unknown alien race that nearly wiped them out. Also, in another series called crisis, the alien race known as the celp Came to earth to colonize it seed with life And when humans came, they were destroying their decades worth of work and wanted them gone And also left many superstructures behind long buried like their chimeran, counterparts not to mention I. Keep wondering how the hell they triggered. The lightning capsules to come to Earth from over various distance. Like there had a been machinery left behind on earth for them. To come down to their tripods. God, I really want a series about these guys, especially their interaction in politics with other species Not to mention they probably did consider to ally with humanity, but after seeing how barbaric and destructive humans are nothing but as pests like the celph view.

[@davidslaughterii1401]

Notwithstanding that every WOTW interpretation essentially ends with the aliens dying from exposure to Earth's various bacteria, per the original source material, I always thought the reason the aliens died because the bacteria, germs, and viruses on Earth are perhaps different from what would be known on their native planet, or whatever planet they called home prior to, in the case of Spielberg's version, coming to Earth; that's assuming, of course, that every potentially habitable planet might have such things similar to what we have on Earth. Another thing to consider is that, when Europeans came to the Americas, they brought with them diseases that were common to Europe, such as the bubonic plague, of which the natives of the Americas had no immunity defense against. Another consideration is that the little micro killers evolve, both over time and as they move from one host to another in transmission, so whatever the aliens might have been immune to before, they'd have no immunity to in years and centuries after. And then there's the worst of the worst, human-made biological weapons, which we know that scientists have this bad habit of enhancing germs, viruses, and bacteria to make them more effective, thereby overriding our normal immune responses and capabilities. One other thing, it's known that prolonged containment within a sterile environment can result in a weakened immune system due to the body's evolution, or in this case, devolution, which would effectively make the common cold a killer. Just some theories to throw out there.

[@shimizuhikara7088]

I love the war of the worlds most tripod

[@evilcrashbandicootthetouho2753]

This the best vr of the design 👌

[@renderlessgames]

Why didn't the aliens just use animals all those millions of years ago?

[@Abstrakt_Animations]

Maybe they need Human blood or certain blood types for some reason, or maybe they’re just dumb

[@aaronball10]

I don’t think it’s entirely unrealistic to not find one of these things buried. The Earths crust is miles and miles deep, and we haven’t dug too far down to reach the mantle. Who’s to say they just didn’t go deeper? The criticism of “why come now when humans have all this technology?” Is a ridiculous one as you can see in the movie, human weapons were ineffective against the tripods until the very end so if disease was not a factor, our technology would be nothing. Honestly the ‘harvesting humans now that their numbers are bigger’ is a good argument to make, but there’s another thing to consider with how technology has affected us and society: As we have evolved, we have become much more dependent on our technology. We’re interconnected in such a deep way that a disruption to that would completely shatter the population. If they attacked at, say, the 1700s, they’d still be very dangerous but we’d still have some maneuverability since we had a much lower population and more endurance to the world around us, making the job harder. The aliens had to wait until we got large enough to where all they had to do was turn off the power, and we’d be thrown into chaos. Also as some have pointed out, viruses, bacteria, do evolve over time, and can become more or less dangerous as time goes on. That’s why we have to get annual vaccination for things like the flu, since it mutates and we have to adapt to that. I like to think it’s not that the aliens ‘forgot about germs” or anything like that, but because the viruses have evolved and mutated so much, any inoculation methods and their own immune system would just not endure. Also, they never say in the movie exactly what viruses killed them, just that they did. It could be something like the flu, or it could be the countless other viruses and diseases that humans are exposed to, especially considering in the scene where the tripod was taken down by the National Guard, they were practically swimming in it.

[@andrewholdaway813]

It is utterly ludicrous.

[@cthulhusmop]

2:57 - FWIW, I'm Australian, and in every Chemistry and Biology class I was in, "Pipette" was pronounced "PIP-pet" by every teacher or lecturer.

[@Siberiancatsrule]

My problem with the "humans are cattle for the aliens" is that why haven't the alien just implemented industrial farming? If they are so advanced that even their obsolete and primitive (by their standards) walkers are more advanced than anything humanity has produced at the moment. Why haven't they just industrialy farmed the humans like how we do with cows, chickens,etc.?

[@valkorian3172]

The only idea I have, is the aliens are sadistic as a species. Perhaps they like invading species that have hope for a future, and love breaking their hope and watching those they invade fall into despair while they watch all the cared about be lost. Family, houses, their confidence, etc.

[@lucbedard7564]

The Night That Panicked America tells the story of the 1938 broadcast from the point of view of Welles and his associates as they create the broadcast live, as well as from the points of view of a number of different fictional American families, in a variety of locations and from a variety of social classes, who ... in 1974 was the film i found very interested when i look it up year after but couldn't find on dvd, but the rest did have, seening in 1980s in my 20s i didn't think much, but the past start to haunted me to seek more knowledge. seening Star-Trek TNG make realize that reality is very different that you mighty think. i've seen many movies and film on TV in my time, that in real life we wouldn't be able to fight back even if we want. knowing this is way more than dark secret itself, It facts. ...i 've predict the movie ALIENS of Jame Cameron but didn't know who she gonna fight with the lift against. ..one of my hobby is writting scenario's that i didn't realise i would fall in love with cinematography

[@M.A.R.K.Z]

bro, when i thought why they would leave and come back, seriously my first thought was: population

[@nitsuA_LH]

I have a theory that at least answers my questions as to the germ issue and why the buried machines were never found. Put simply, it could be the same thing we’re doing right now. We’re sending probes out through space to explore and photograph planets. They possibly did the same thing with drones looking for a planet that was in its infancy and could be conquered relatively easily should the need ever arise. Once they discovered earth, possibly during the time of cavemen or even before, they sent their machines in cylinder-like devices that would easily drill themselves deep into the ground and mark their location somehow for the aliens should they ever arrive to use them. The aliens themselves would never actually set foot on earth until the day of the invasion. Once they arrived safely to their destination, they powered down aside from defensive capabilities to prevent them from being destroyed or tampered with if they were discovered. So how did we not find them? The simple answer is we did. No one survived to report it though as they were killed in cave ins, toxic fumes, etc. whatever would keep anyone else from going down there and trying to investigate, collect the bodies, or continue digging. These cave ins and toxic gases would be thought of by any rational person as an accident. The ground wasn’t stable, or they ran into some pocket of toxic gases, but in reality it was the defensive systems of the machines activating to kill anything unauthorized to get that close to them.

[@JuleZz__z]

Kinda cool how the plotholes have sum decent explanation that expands the lore more

[@ChimpingBulldog]

It is explained by Tim Robbins' character in the film.

[@bradleypilch7422]

I want to know how the aliens knew where to bury their tripods? I mean, when cities were being built over time, how would humans not find the buried tripods? its not like they were buried that deep.

[@glenngriffon8032]

This movie had some good ideas but it really lost me with the Martians design. Their culture was supposed to be base three and the number three was central to them. They had three arms with three fingers and they had three eyes. Their ships had three legs and they attacked on groups of three.

[@Gareth-410]

There were four aliens in the basement iirc. You can see in the shot when they retreat back through the hole in the ceiling.

[@damoncovington6393]

I personally think the Martians came from the ground to surprise everyone because they would be visible if they came from the sky

[@pupbenny]

Yeah, that makes sense, the ultimate surprise attack!

[@SomewhatDapperExtraterrestrial]

I feel like there could be a solutioin where the aliens do come down from space without the humans knowing about it. After all, in the book astronomers did observer explosions on mars 11 months earlier but wrote it off as a natural phenomenon. So, what if they do approach earth in a spaceship that is tracked but believed to be an interstellar meteorite passing through the solar system until it's too late.

[@Youngblood457]

They are holding the throwing spears from Vegas in the thumb now

[@RadioSnakeInvasion6333]

I ALWAYS THOUGHT THAAT!!!

[@julianf.wheeler3665]

In the story, weren’t the invaders also harvesters of humans? Still, I’m trying to reconcile with how they would’ve endured the micro organisms then, only to die from them when they would invade later.

[@justhere4637]

0:22 What video game is this?

[@skunkooo]

i like to think that they aren't from mars in this film, but they did conquer mars and that's why mars is red

[@Soon_To_Be_Gone_Acc]

After watching some clips of Scary Movie 4, it completely ruined the terror of the tripods and theory’s because of how it parodies it. Spoilers! Inside the Tripod, the characters encounter Jigsaw.

[@KSPOlivi]

The tripods are Van-Neumann Probes.

[@theiathegondia7349]

Maybe they took humans to other planets to farm them like the goa'uld

[@glenmassey3746]

Good video. There were so many plotholes in the movie it wasn't funny. But here's a likely reasoning based on the video, they buried there equipment at least before humans evolved with the likelyhood of Earth being a planet slated for teraforming then seeded a species DNA having both the necessary teraforming elements as well as served as a food source while teraforming is completed as well as after. They may have done this multiple times on different planets and had expected resistance from humans, which is why they had multipurpose walkers herders with with shields and heat rays was well as just teraforming equipment that harvest humans. What they didn't expect was the planet environment to change the DNA so much as well as humans changing their own DNA to adapt to the environment. You take a look at the last hundred years humans have created multiple vacancies to diseases. So even if the aliens had planned for certain evolutions of the humans they forgot to factor in the environment, which is something we as a species are starting to do because of climate changes. With the aliens, their hubris of repeating process continually made them forget about events happening outside of the norm.

[@paulallas7665]

Why vaporize people if they want to use them for feed? That kills that theory.

[@BaileyPotts-jb3no]

I read a theory somewhere that the people vaporized were because they had the wrong blood type, and the tripods can detect that. That would explain why Tom's character was never vaporized

[@joannkirk-il3mo]

If this was a harvest, why shoot their guns? The army was helpless and the cattle were plentiful. Why shoot at your food?

[@fimurr]

Where were the aliens watching us from though? How did they watch us? How did we not notice?

[@joannkirk-il3mo]

The burried war machine is quite possible the worst idea ever.

[@garyobrian3597]

H G Wells the time machine the eli were basically food for the under ground warlock

[@Desphexian]

The reason of the aliens not dying back then of some virus, yet die in modern time, could tell that the virusses are man made.

[@spaceinsectoid]

What if the aliens from this version of WOTW actually invaded millions of years ago, during the time of the dinosaurs? seeing how dinosaurs never became sapient, they would be easy prey for the aliens

[@organicketchup5171]

I think it's just supposed to be nightmare logic. It's a bit hokey, but one of the movie's first scenes is Cruise's character coming home and going to bed after work; in my opinion, the rest of the movie is his post-9/11 tinged bad dream.

[@nicholasjackson1669]

what if the aliens were actually from earth millions of years ago, maybe an earth civilization that lived here before the dinosaurs, and some sort of war or asteroid wiped them out and a group of survivors left for another galaxy in refuge, and now that the time is right they see fit to return to earth as the rightful owners.

[@kengh61]

Time dilation. If they travel ver u fast the time on earth passes slower. If they move from world to world it could be millions of years in human time vs the alien time.

[@drstrangelove09]

that's not what "begs the question" means

[@nicolafiorelli1319]

ok so while they “wait for the harvest” what do they live on, martian rocks? This theory makes no sense

[@HistoryOnPaper]

Why did they decide to invade 1 year after half life 2 got released I take ages to complete story games so they could have just given humanity a bit longer.

[@RadioSnakeInvasion6333]

BRO LMFAO YOURE LITERALLY SAYING THE SAME THINGS I HAVE BEEN THINKING OF WITH THIS ADAPTATION LMAO

[@histguy101]

Thats not a plot hole. They needed human blood, and maybe animal blood, so they needed a large population of humans on earth. If the Martians had come 5,000 years earlier, there'd only be a measely few million hoomans, and all spread out. The biggest megacity of 3000bc had like 30k people, a small town by later standards

[@kengh61]

Another idea. They were us, built the pyramids, and left. Humans took over the pyramids and scratched on thier surfaces new markings.Humans evolved, but so did the aliens (us) and became adapted to space....hence the change in biology initatimg to weightless loving in spaceships that were substitutes for their onrigimal form. Us?

[@Dinosaurprince]

Nope. They don’t have an immune system. So they would have failed back then too.

[@yippeeki-yay1691]

Which makes their decision to brazenly expose themselves to an Alien biosphere even more perplexing.

[@CRXnick]

The scary part is, earth wasn’t even the first planet they invaded

[@dynestis2875]

That was never even remotely suggested in the 2005 movie

[@B.I.GShady]

It would be a one of a twist, if we found out that, they ate some peoples blood who had AIDS, and that's why they immunity was wiped and died from germs 😂

[@Emoo-bull]

I was laughing because you showed an image of scary movie 4 2:09

[@DARKNES_925]

So they waited for the right moment when there were enough people to harvest

[@Hiusharks]

It is funny 1:56

[@davidthomas3826]

Spielberg ruined it. The aliens should have arrived in the cylinders. In the novel, it was known in advance about the vehicles coming from Mara because astronomers were watching them. The idea that the aliens had been here long and come to harvest us is not an idea that works well. In fact, I think it's just a plot hole because Spielberg was being lazy and didn't want cylinders, which is a shame because the part of the story when the cylinders arrive is very tense and creepy. The 2005 version has some pretty good moments but the story felt rushed and incomplete

[@Godzillafan78]

Clearly you haven’t seen whatever the British tried to do in 2019

[@davidthomas3826]

@@Godzillafan78 Oh, I have seen it. And, yes, I do prefer the version with Tom Cruise

[@FrenchFryCheese04]

​@@davidthomas3826 shut up

[@imsodelirous2743]

I think with the diseases it was a change in what we had infecting us and developed immunities and infection mutation as well