Plot
Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) is a container crane operator at a New Jersey port and is estranged from his children. He is visited by his ex-wife, Mary Ann (Miranda Otto), who drops off the children, Rachel (Dakota Fanning) and Robbie (Justin Chatwin), as she is going to visit her parents in Boston, Massachusetts. Robbie takes Ray's car out without his permission, so Ray starts to search for him. Ray notices a strange wall cloud, which starts to send out powerful lightning strikes, disabling all electronic devices in the area, including cars, forcing Robbie to come back. Ray heads down the street to investigate. He stops at a garage and tells Manny the local mechanic, to replace the solenoid on a dead car.
Ray reaches the place where multiple lighting bolts struck the ground and witnesses the ground heaving up as a massive machine with three long legs climbs out. The Tripod gives off a loud blaring sound before opening fire with heat-rays, vaporizing bystanders and destroying everything in its path. Ray manages to barely escape; he packs up his kids and leaves in the vehicle Manny repaired as the Tripod destroys the town. He drives to Mary Ann's house to take refuge that night. Loud explosions occur all night. The next morning he discovers a crashed Boeing 747 in the street outside the house. He meets a news team stealing the flight's meals and surveying the wreckage. The reporter shows him footage of Tripods all over the Earth, with the unknown pilots entering the machines through the lightning strikes. She speculates that the machines were in place for thousands of years meaning the invasion was being planned for a long time.
Ray decides to take the kids to Boston to be with their mother. Robbie, trying to join the fight against the aliens, tries to leave with the U.S. military, but Ray and Rachel stop him. They are forced to leave their car after a mob surrounds them and takes the vehicle by force. They later survive a Tripod attack which causes the sinking of a Hudson River ferry. The family then ends up in the middle of a battle between the military and the Tripods. Forced to choose between being separated from Rachel and preventing Robbie from joining the fight, Ray lets him go with the soldiers. Immediately afterwards the Tripods destroy all military resistance, presumably also killing Robbie. The Tripods are shown to be protected by an energy shield that makes them invulnerable. While escaping, Ray and Rachel are offered shelter by Harlan Ogilvy (Tim Robbins), who vows revenge on the aliens after his family was killed by them.
While hiding in Harlan's basement, they witness the Tripods spreading a strange red weed substance everywhere. They all hide from a snake-like probe and a group of four aliens who explore the basement. The next morning, Ogilvy suffers a mental breakdown while witnessing a Tripod harvesting blood and tissue from a human. Concerned that Ogilvy's yelling and ranting will attract the Tripods, Ray reluctantly kills Ogilvy to silence him. The basement hideout is exposed when a second probe catches them sleeping. Ray cripples the probe using an axe, but Rachel runs outside and is caught by the Tripod. As he chases after the Tripod and Rachel, Ray finds a grenade bandolier with several hand grenades in a destroyed Humvee and detonates one of them to attract the Tripod's attention. He is captured as he planned and placed in the same basket with Rachel and several other prisoners. Ray discovers Rachel is in shock after she witnesses a captive being sucked up into the ship to be harvested. As Ray finally calms her down, the aliens select Ray to pull him inside for harvesting, but the other prisoners manage to pull him back. The bandolier he was wearing was left inside the Tripod and Ray was able to pull all of the pins, causing a massive internal explosion, destroying the Tripod and freeing the captives.
Ray and Rachel arrive in Boston, where they notice the red weeds are starting to dry up and disintegrate. The Tripods also begin to act erratically and appear to also be dying. Ray notices that a flock of birds landing on a machine, indicating its force fields are down. Ray alerts nearby soldiers, who fire shoulder-launched missiles at the machine, destroying it. As a crowd approaches the downed machine, a hatch falls open, releasing red weed fertilizer and revealing an alien that lets out a final growl before it dies. Ray and Rachel reach Mary Ann's parents' (Ann Robinson and Gene Barry, the stars of the 1953 film) house and find to their surprise, Robbie, who has somehow survived the hilltop massacre.
Read more about this topic: War Of The Worlds (2005 film)
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—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
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—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)