The aliens are the main antagonists of the 2005 film War of the Worlds, which is based on the H.G. Wells story of the same name. They are an alien race from an unknown planet that seek to invade Earth and wipe out its human population.
Their vocal sound effects were provided by Dee Bradley Baker.
History[]
According to the opening narration, they were watching Earth for a long time and were envious of humans. They began planning their conquest millions of years in advance, secretly burying their war machines underground. At the start of the film, the aliens begin transporting themselves to Earth with a mysterious electrical storm, riding the lightning bolts down into the buried tripods. The storm sends out an EMP pulse that knocks out all electricity and also disables cars. The first tripod surfaces in Bayonne, New Jersey, and begins destroying buildings and kills a crowd of people, blasting them into dust with its heat-ray.
Another tripod appears close by and shoots down an airplane, resulting in many casualties, with the plane crashing through the house Ray Ferrier and his children were staying in. A couple of nights later, several more tripods appear in Athens, New York, and attack a ferry that was filled with refugees, capsizing the ship and drowning many people, while others are captured by the tripods to be harvested for their blood. The military later shows up to fight the tripods, but are easily defeated and set on fire.
Following this, human resistance to the aliens seems to have largely stopped, and the aliens begin checking houses to see if any are still alive. Ray, his daughter Rachel, and their ally Harlan Ogilvy take shelter in a farmhouse basement, and the aliens send a probe down to check for survivors. When this proves inconclusive, the aliens come down themselves and examine objects in the basement, looking distastefully at photos of Harlan's deceased wife and daughter. They don't find the humans and leave, but Harlan goes insane later and Ray has to kill him to keep him from making noise that would alert the aliens.
A few nights later, the probe returns and Rachel runs outside in terror, and is abducted by a tripod, and put in a basket that is full of humans waiting to be harvested. The Tripod was then seen pulling a human into its Processing engine and grinded up into fertilizer for the red weed the aliens were using to terraform the earth. Shortly after, the Tripod attempts to pull ray into the processing engine, however, ray grabs a grenade belt that he had grabbed when trying to get the tripods attention, and while the tripod was trying to pull him in, he took one of the pin out of one of the grenade and threw it into the tripods processing engine, ray was then pulled out of the tripod with the help of many people, and the grenade went off, and blew up the tripod, freeing all the captives that the tripod had captured. The next day, Ray and Rachel make it to Boston where they find the aliens are dying due to exposure to Earth's pathogens, with a weakened tripod being shot down by the military. The hatch on the tripod then opens and the alien pilot falls out, hisses at the humans, and dies.
Personality[]
Not much is known about the aliens, but they seem to be highly intelligent and strategic, as they planned their invasion for millions of years. However, they have no empathy for humans and see them as pests to be exterminated. They also don't seem to care about animals and are seen to kill them as well. While the original book suggests they may have invaded Earth out of desperation because their world was dying, the film gives them no such excuse and merely states that they were envious of humans.
Trivia[]
- In the original Wells book they are said to be Martians. However the film doesn't mention where they're from, as it's now known that Mars does not support life.
External links[]
- Aliens on the Villainous Benchmark Wiki