The End of War of the Worlds Explained

Steven Spielberg War of the Worlds (2005) follows single father Ray Ferrier's desperate attempt to get his two sons to safety as his town is plagued by hostile newcomers in the alien invasion film. After a mysterious lightning storm destroys the city's power grid, the citizens of New Jersey make the terrifying discovery that aliens from Mars buried machines known as “tripods” below the Earth’s surface many centuries past. What were initially thought to be lightning were actually energy beam attacks, which caused mass destruction and at the same time injected capsules into Earth, transporting the Martians into their machines.

In one of Tom Cruise's countless science fiction films, his character flees the city with his daughter Rachel (Dakota Fanning), but his older brother Robbie (Justin Chatwin) soon becomes separated from them. As a mass exodus flees the Tripods, Ray and Rachel are flagged down by a stranger, Harlan Ogilvy (Tim Robbins), who provides them shelter. When Harlan panics about the death and destruction outside, Ray is forced to kill him to hide his presence, but even so, they are soon driven from hiding. After heading to Boston, Ray discovers the tripods began to fall mysteriouslyand notices that their shields are down.

What happens to the aliens in War of the Worlds?

How do they all die?

The Tripods' abrupt defeat is a somewhat confusing turning point in Spielberg's plot. War of the Worlds. Throughout the film, no military force is able to penetrate their magnetic fields, and yet, when Ray and Rachel arrive in Boston, the machines' shields have inexplicably lowered. This is evident by a flock of crows that begin bombing a tripod. Ray alerts military forces to the downed shields, and a series of missiles quickly takes down the massive machine. Moments earlier, a nearby soldier informed Ray that the tripods suddenly started acting erratically.

Following the Boston Tripod's defeat, the machine's processing engine spews a sickening mixture of blood and gore onto the floor as a near-dead Martian hangs limply from the cockpit. The sudden fall of the invading forces was possible thanks to the multitude of microorganisms that populate planet Earth. When they harvested human blood and tissue to fertilize their Red Herb, Martians exposed themselves to a range of bacteria that their immune systems have not evolved to combat. This infection caused the Tripods' shields to fall off while their drivers quickly fell ill and died.

Why War of the Worlds Ends So Abruptly

Even Steven Spielberg doesn't like the ending

Steven Spielberg admitted that the War of the Worlds ending doesn't make sense. In James Cameron Science fiction storySpielberg is quoted as saying that "I never could figure out how to get rid of this damn thing," and that, "The film doesn't have a good ending.” In the grand scheme of the nearly two-hour film, less than three minutes are spent explaining the sudden defeat of alien invaders. The mysterious circumstances that made this defeat possible are explained only in the narrator's (Morgan Freeman) postscript, referring to the iconic War of the Worlds introductory monologue.

However, Spielberg was not necessarily negligent in choosing to end the film in this abrupt and somewhat vague way, even if it leaves something to be desired in the realm of falling action. After all, the source material, H.G. Wells's 1898 novel War of the Worlds, It ended quite similarly. Wells' original ending had its infamous Martians die when they come into contact with “putrefactive bacteria”. This surprising lack of preparation on the part of a supposedly highly advanced alien race was explained as ignorance of disease due to the fact that death and decay had long ago been eradicated on their planet.

Does Ray reunite with his children at the end of War of the Worlds?

Can Rachel and Robbie make it out alive?

Ray's son Robbie becomes separated from his family shortly before Ogilvy allows Ray and Rachel to take shelter in his basement. The teenager's dynamic with his father is tense from the beginning, and his determination to participate in the seemingly futile war against the Tripods appears to be a juvenile attempt to assert his autonomy and independence from his father. This puts Ray in the impossible position of having to choose which of his two children to protect. As a worried couple tries to take a seemingly abandoned Rachel to safety, Ray is forced to leave Robbie behind.

In the final scenes of the film, Robbie is reunited with his family at his grandparents' house in Boston, his original destination when he fled the city. Surprisingly, every member of the family survived the alien attack unharmed. Robbie separated from Ray and Rachel to fight the invasion and somehow managed to make it out alive, despite apparently being engulfed in a flame of fire. His involvement in the battle is neither seen nor explained in the film. The final scenes indicate that the trauma of the invasion has healed some wounds for the Ferrier family, as they realize that some things are more important than the bitterness of the past.

What happens to the red weed after the movie?

Why did the red herb turn to dust?

Red Weed was a fast-growing plant-like organism brought to Earth by Martian invaders. It is necessary fertilization through blood and human tissue to survive Earth's climate. In the film, captured humans were powered by the Tripods' processing engines to produce a fertilizer spray for this vegetation. The Red Herb was possibly a food source for the Martians, as its introduction to Earth in the film is an intentional aspect of the alien invaders' plans, but it appears it had a darker intent. In the source material, however, the introduction and survival of this plant are apparently accidental.

Around the same time that the Martian tripods began to fall, the Red Weed developed strange white, mold-like spots before turning to dust. This implies that this invasive vegetation died due to a bacterial infection similar to that contracted by its Martian cultivators, and possibly also due to the absence of its fertilization. The purpose and nature of the red herb itself are not made absolutely clear in the film, although its abnormally rapid growth may indicate that it was more of an infection than a plant and was therefore part of the invading forces' plan to conquer Earth rather than than a food source.

Like another war of the worlds Adaptations handled the ending

What defeats the Martians in each version of War of the Worlds?

HG Wells' The War of the Worlds has been a cornerstone of the science fiction genre for 126 years and counting, and in that time its adaptations have run the gamut of entertainment mediums. So far, the story has been directly adapted into seven films, two TV series, countless radio and stage versions, and even a musical starring Liam Neeson – not to mention several sequels to the original story. Throughout this diverse range of retellings, THE War of the Worlds saw a wide variety of settings, characters and especially different conclusions.

(through Mojo Box Office)

Some versions of the science fiction classic War of the Worlds we saw the Martian invaders being exterminated by the common cold virus, some by microbes in general, others by the rabies vaccine and even one by music. In almost all iterations, however, the conclusion is so unexpected and abrupt like that of the source material and perhaps intended to imply the inexplicable and unpredictable nature of humanity's continued survival.

Source: Mojo Box Office