Corrected entry: When Tom Cruise goes out after the lightning storm to find his son, he puts on a blue zip-up sweatshirt. For the rest of the movie, he's wearing a leather jacket over the sweatshirt.
Corrected entry: When Tom Cruise and his kids are in the basement of the ex-wife's house, there is this drawn out dramatic scene where Tom Cruise races to slam the door of a little closet they hide in as flames fill the room when a plane crashes on the house. When they enter, the door opens inward, toward the closet. The next morning when they emerge, the door opens in the opposite direction. Since doors that 'slam' close are not swinging doors, it is impossible to open the door in the other direction.
Correction: There are actually two doors that lead to the furnace room ("little closet"). The outer door that opens out into the main area of the basement, which Robbie opens, has six carved panels and a door knob. There are 2-3 steps to the second inner door, which Ray forcibly closes, that opens into the furnace room, and it is a solid door with a door knob and a dead-bolt.
Corrected entry: Tom Cruise is able to drive the mini-van because he told the mechanic to try changing the solenoids. The military vehicles all work, indicating that they knew how to get vehicles moving again, yet the military does not tell the mobs of people how to repair the cars and Tom Cruise does not take the time to replace a solenoid in one of the thousands of disabled cars, instead choosing to walk from the Hudson River to Boston, about 200 miles.
Correction: Cruise's character had already seen first-hand the stampede and violence that erupted when the mobs saw a working car. He knew he would not have been allowed to keep the car for long, and it could be very dangerous to him and his daughter. As for the military; how many of the regular soldiers would know how to fix the cars? Most likely this was done by the mechanics in the military compounds, and they would have their hands full with repairing vehicles (or being called out to fight), so it is not certain thy would have had the opportunity to inform the public.
Well, one more reason is, where will he find the solenoid in that chaos, to replace it in the first place?
Corrected entry: When Ray and the kids hide in the smaller room in the basement, he shuts the door and everything goes black. But in the larger part, he had the lights on, so the lights from the bigger section of the basement should have shone through in that slit under the door. However, there was no light.
Correction: There was a huge explosion. So big in fact that there was a huge fireball in the "main section". This explosion destroyed almost the entire basement. Surely all the lights would have been destroyed.
Corrected entry: Once the big aeroplane has come down the following morning one of the engine's rotorblades can be seen moving. The amount of burning debris on it varies from shot to shot.
Correction: Not exactly true. Fire is unpredictable. It could start at one part, go out, and end in another part. It could of easily went out and then spread back over where it was.
Corrected entry: The mechanic asks Ray how he should repair the van disabled by the EMP since the starter he already replaced didn't work. Ray responds by suggesting he replace the solenoid (which we later find solves the problem). Unfortunately, Mopar vans (Dodge, Chrysler) use starters with solenoids already attached. He would have already replaced the solenoid when he replaced the starter.
Correction: Still, the solenoid may have been faulty, requiring it to be changed again. Thermostats, for example, for vehicles are notorious for being faulty right out of the box, requiring two or three attempts to get a good working part. Regardless, a solenoid/starter should not be affected by an EMP as an EMP would likely only affect computer modules.
Corrected entry: In the scene when they are hiding out at Ray's ex-wife's house, Ray throws a piece of bread with peanut butter on one side at the window, and it sticks peanut butter side against the glass. In the next shot, it is a sandwich with the peanut butter between slices of bread.
Correction: No, actually it is always just peanut butter on a piece of bread. Granted the position does change slightly, but it is still the same.
Corrected entry: In the scene where the soldiers gather around the downed tripod walker, one of the soldiers with a M242 (machine gun) has a green box of ammunition attached to it. Green boxes are for blank ammunition, black for live.
Correction: With the world being attacked by alien invaders, they may have been running tight on supplies and must have used whatever they could find to carry ammunition in.
Corrected entry: IF the aliens wanted our planet so bad for so long, why didn't they just take it when they planted the stupid tripods? Why wait a million years and then systematically kill us in the most inefficient way possible? For that matter, wouldn't the germs have killed them when they first came to bury the stupid things?
Correction: They needed a 'critical mass' of warm-blooded creatures to grow and sustain their 'red vine' plants, that terraform our world to resemble theirs. There weren't enough back then. They weren't killed by disease because they sent down the machines UNMANNED- that's why we saw the pilots coming in on the lightning.
Corrected entry: It's accepted as canon that when the tripods first were buried, it was before humans had evolved. In that case, why are the Martians focusing solely on destroying humankind? They wouldn't even necessarily know that humans are intelligent since they are so self-assured and yet there are no instances of other animals being vaporized, investigated, loaded into tripods, etc. If the Martians were planning this before we were anything more than bipedal monkeys, what makes us so special?
Correction: They probably buried the tripods before any spieces was dominant and observed us. Once they realized that humans were the dominant life form they went after us.
Corrected entry: After finding out about the effects of EMP Tom Cruise looks at his watch and it is disabled. You could see in the shot that he wears an Omega watch. This watch happens to be a vintage Omega Seamaster Deville Chronograph which is a mechanical watch that contains absolutely no electronics. The watch would have been completely unaffected by the EMP.
Correction: Actually, the DeVille is a self-winding mechanical watch with a 44-hour power reserve. If Ray had not wound his watch in a while (thus forcing it to run on its reserve power), then it would have died with the rest of the electronics. See http://www.watchesplanet.com/omega_de_ville.php.
Corrected entry: When Ray and Rachel are looking at the thunderstorm, the thunder is always at the same time as the lightning. However, the lightning doesn't strike right behind their house, but roughly a mile away in the distance. From their point of view, there should be at least 3-4 seconds between those two things.
Correction: This is not a normal storm. As shown by the strange wind and repetitive, thunder-less lightning, the normal rules do not apply.
Corrected entry: After Ray is captured by the tripod and put into one of the baskets and the first man is taken the camera zooms out as the tripod walks away. If you look at the other basket where another tentacle is picking a victim to process for blood you can see that it isn't holding anyone at first. Then a body suddenly materializes almost out of thin air like it was added in afterwards to the SFX.
Correction: The people, which the Martians want to feed off, are first sucked out of the basket into the tripod (that nearly happens to Ray too). They come out of the tripod at another point. So they don't materialize out of thin air. They exit the tripod and are picked up by the tentacle.
Corrected entry: Shortly after the ferry leaves, the captain looks out his window to see a tripod underwater. It bursts out of the water. This tripod would malfunction and die right away, as at the end of the movie we find out that the tripods are dying because of small organisms in the water.
Correction: The tripods actually died because they caught disease that men have immunities too. It would take a while for the disease to work its way into the alien's system and kill it.
Corrected entry: When Robbie is hugging Rachel after just trying to get on the convoy of Humvees, he has spots of water on his shirt. In the next shot, the spots have become just a large wet area.
Correction: Water sinks through very quickly on clothes, so yes the 'spots' of water would turn to wet patches.
Corrected entry: In the scene where the ferry gets tipped by the tripods, you see a car starting to slide sideways into the side barrier as the angle of the ferry tipping increases. You see it stop suddenly before hitting anything to stop it.
Correction: We dont really see the floor of the ferry at that particular moment. There could have been something on the floor to stop the car.
Corrected entry: When Ray, Rachel and that other guy are in the basement after the aliens eye has come and gone, they see a ripple in the water. They then see aliens coming down to the basement. These aliens would have to be down there in the water before making the ripple.
Correction: No, they would only have to make something drop into the water, such as a pebble or other loose debris that is lying around after the destruction.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Tom Cruise returns home after being chased down the street by tripods, he suddenly rushes to the bathroom, after realising he is covered in dust, which he promptly washes off. A few scenes later, he is escaping his house with his kids and there is not a streak or drop of dust on him. His jacket is surprisingly clean considering the rush he was in, he wouldn't have had the time to clean it that well.
Correction: He did not wash any of the dust off. He brushed it off and patted everything real hard with his hands. The stuff was just sitting on him and his clothes, not ground in where it would need water and soap.
Corrected entry: When Ray meets the people in the news van, the van says "CBS 2" on the side. But the woman says they're from the Pine Barrens, i.e. Southern New Jersey. The regional station there is CBS 3.
Correction: This isn't actually a mistake. The Pine Barrens are in South Jersey but the "barrens" or pine lands spread north up to areas like Lakehurst (up in to the 90 mile markers on the parkway.) The area of Lakehurst and about 15 miles south ARE covered by CBS2 (the New York station.) CBS3 or KYW is in Philadelphia but since they were dealing with the NY/NJ metro area CBS2 makes much more sense especially since Philly isn't in the film.
Corrected entry: When Ray is arguing with his son as the military column rumbles by you can see over the son's shoulder that there are no further military vehicles approaching. The shot changes to Ray's daughter running to the son and the military vehicles are passing by again.
Correction: There was just a gap in the convoy between those shots.
Correction: When Ray is watching the overhead clouds (in front of his house and in the backyard), and the subsequent lightning strikes, he wears only the blue sweatshirt. Then when he heads out from his house, meets Robbie in the street, heads to the area of the 26 strikes, comes home with human "dust" all over him, and finally when he, Robbie and Rachel leave in the van, Ray is wearing the leather jacket, with white stripes on the sleeves, over the blue sweatshirt.
Super Grover ★