Question: I've been looking all over for this answer and can't find it. I know this has been asked, but it has not been properly answered to what I can find. At the end of "War of the Worlds", Tom Cruise saw the birds and realised the shields were down. How did the shields deactivate? I understand that the aliens got sick and died from bacteria, but there must have been something else. Even if there were designated aliens to control each tripod's forcefield, there is no way that every "Shield duty" alien died before the other members of their crew, leaving their tripod mobile and vulnerable... Were they getting low on resources because they had eradicated too many humans too quickly? Did they decide that since the majority of people died, that they could focus on using more of their "fuel" towards mobility and capturing instead of combat?
Eclipse97
20th Sep 2019
War of the Worlds (2005)
Answer: Bear in mind if memory serves we only see that one tripod with no shields - other than that we're just told another one "behaved erratically" then went down. So there's no evidence that all the shields on all the tripods went down by default. Could well just be that with the one we see the alien inside was seriously ill, flailing about and deactivated the shields by mistake not long before becoming completely incapacitated.
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Answer: I believe its supposed to be the tripods work on the alien's biology, so its powered by the presence of a Martian inside. So if the martian is sick, the tripod is sick.
lionhead
That's always what I believed. This is further evidenced by the fact the tripods themselves have actually been on earth for millions of years, but they get "sick" when the Martians do. It has to be tied to the Martian's own health for that to make any sense.
BaconIsMyBFF