Gene Barry and Ann Robinson, stars of the 1953 version of this movie, make a small cameo in this movie as Mary Ann's parents. You can see them at the end when the whole family is reunited.
Movie news
Great sites
Quotes
Ray: They came from someplace else.
Robbie: What do you mean, like, Europe?
Ray: No, Robbie, not like Europe!
Mistakes
In the scene right after Ray kills Ogilvy, Rachel finishes singing her song and as she's taking off her blindfold you can see that her hair is all messy and dry. In the very next shot her hair is all wet and neat. See more...
Movie Mistakes blog
Popular blog posts:
10 Twilight mistakes in pictures
War of the Worlds (2005) - 10 trivia entries
Directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Dakota Fanning, Miranda Otto, Tim Robbins, Tom Cruise (add more)
Gene Barry and Ann Robinson, stars of the 1953 version of this movie, make a small cameo in this movie as Mary Ann's parents. You can see them at the end when the whole family is reunited.
When Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning are hiding out in a basement after the military attack, they meet a character called Oglivy. Oglivy was mentioned in both HG Wells' original book and the highly popular radio play, except then, he was a noted astronomer.
The sequence at the end, when the dying alien crawls out of the damaged machine, arm dangling, is taken directly from the 1953 original. This scene is not at all in either the book or the radio play.
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.
In an early scene in which Rachel is watching television, she's channel surfing. At one point, she hits briefly upon a shot of a car being demolished by a speeding locomotive. This is, in fact, a scene from "The Greatest Show on Earth," which Steven Spielberg has reported as the first movie he ever saw.
Unlike other films where old tanks are 'built up' to look like the tanks they represent, this film is the first film to feature real M1 Abrams on camera.
When Ray, Bobbie and Rachel are walking to the ferry, you can see the director, Stephen Spielberg, walking somewhere behind them.
The set used for the 747 crash cost 9 million dollars, and appears in the film for a total of 4 and 1/2 minutes. Five years after the film was made the set is still intact, and a part of the Universal Studios tour in California. There is a steep hill directly behind the "crash site" with a residential neighborhood on top. The tour guides joke that when the people living up there have something they can't get rid of in a garage sale they just toss it down the hill and it becomes part of the debris field.
The plane crash scene that was built for this film is now part of the back-lot tour at Universal Studios. Ironically, the plane had to be repainted after the movie, as it had the logo of a real airline company, and pilots flying overhead were calling in an airline crash for that airline.
The top of the Tripods look like the spaceships from the 1953 version. The comic "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" also had Tripods that looked like this.
You may also like: Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi | Dawn of the Dead (2004) | The War of the Worlds (1953) | Alien Vs. Predator | Hot Fuzz
Message boards
No discussions yet
Register as a member to post a message
The message boards are meant for discussing things with other users, rather than making submissions/corrections. By all means feel free to post what you like here, but for anything to be looked at properly and entered into the "official" section please use the "submit something" link in the navigation bar. Any members who post offensive content will have their accounts blocked. This is also not the place to contact Jon (who runs the site (although the members who help him check are a BIG help)) - for that, please use the contact form.