War of the Worlds
War of the Worlds mistake picture

Revealing mistake: While tossing a baseball with his son, Ray calls him a "dick." If you look at his hand at that point, one can notice that his hand is closed in a fist, and he is not holding the baseball he is prepared to throw. (00:10:10)

Revealing mistake: Dakota Fanning cannot actually see the computer generated birds that are flying high over the Hudson-Athens ferry. If you look closely her eyes stair straight ahead and not up in the air where they should be. (00:58:35)

????

Revealing mistake: When the Hudson Ferry captain casts off the large label that reads "Hudson Ferry" is on his left side of his jacket. However, in the exterior shot as he looks out the window at the whirlpool, the label is on his right side. This shot was flipped, and amusingly, the CGI guys actually retouched the words "Hudson Ferry" so it wouldn't read backwards. (01:02:25)

Super Grover

Revealing mistake: At one point when Cruise is driving through the county in the van, you can see that the van is actually in "Park." You can notice this because the column mounted transmission lever is all the way up.

Revealing mistake: When the tripod is tipping the ferry over, people fall over the rail and cars slide toward it. You can see the cars stop short of the rail so they don't smash into stuntmen, even though they are jammed against the rail in the next shot.

Grumpy Scot

Revealing mistake: After the ferry scene, CGI clothes fall off from the sky, but manage to go through the branches of the trees, without becoming entangled in them, or without the branches affecting the falling path of the fabric.

Sacha

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

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.

More trivia for 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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