War of the Worlds
War of the Worlds trivia picture Video

Trivia: 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. They are at the end when the whole family is reunited.

Trivia: 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 at a movie theater.

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.

Trivia: 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.

Trivia: 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.

Trivia: 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.

Jazetopher

Trivia: When Ray, Robbie and Rachel are walking to the ferry, you can see the director, Stephen Spielberg, walking somewhere behind them.

Trivia: 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.

Jazetopher

Trivia: 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.

BocaDavie

Trivia: 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.

Trivia: When they get picked up by the tripod, Tom Cruise destroys it by blowing it up with grenades, he lets the other people know by spitting the pins out of his mouth.Tom Cruise does this again in a later film Edge of Tomorrow at the end only this time he opens his hand to reveal the grenade pins.

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)

Super Grover

More mistakes in War of the Worlds

Ray: Can you think of a plan that doesn't involve your 10-year-old sister joining the army?

More quotes from War of the Worlds

Question: I'm still a bit confused on the tripods' actual height. I can't find it anywhere and I just wanted to make sure how tall the tripods are. Preferably in meters but any measurement is fine.

Answer: They're reported to be about 100 feet tall.

Which is about 30.5 meters.

lionhead

They definitely seemed a lot taller than 100ft in the movies though that's for sure. I would have guessed maybe a few hundred feet.

Answer: In this film, their height is about 150 feet.

Bishop73

More questions & answers from War of the Worlds

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