20 Years Ago, Steven Spielberg Revitalized A Classic Sci-Fi Epic

The title is a misnomer. Humans deploy their tanks and jets to fight off alien invaders in Steven Spielberg’s 2005 sci-fi thriller, but what unfolds isn’t really a war of the worlds. It’s a widespread annihilation of one side: ours.

The third of the director’s alien encounter films, War of the Worlds initially appears similar to Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, as all three are about dysfunctional families altered by first contact. But gone is any sense of wonder or curiosity, replaced by mass panic. Gone is the aliens’ desire for connection, replaced by violent conquest. We might not be alone in the universe, but with War of the Worlds, that prospect was no longer comforting, but chilling.

What remains constant is the absent father figure. The parents in E.T. are separated, with the dad away on vacation with another woman as the film unfolds. And when the mothership appears over the mountain in Close Encounters, it’s everything the protagonist has dreamed of, crystallised right in front of him, his family long abandoned. Likewise, War of the Worlds’ divorced dockworker Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) is estranged from his children, Rachel (Dakota Fanning) and Robbie (Justin Chatwin), but has custody of them when the invasion begins. The disconnect is so deep that he responds to his 10-year-old daughter screaming in fright by telling her to shut up. He can’t get through to his teen son either, who constantly and mockingly undermines his authority.

While Ray struggles with communication, so too does humanity. E.T.’s grasp of human language is limited, but the depth of his conveyed emotion undeniable, while in Close Encounters, the aliens attempt to converse with a repeated musical transmission. But there’s no relationship with War of the Worlds’ malevolent presence, no negotiation or pleading. You only get a split-second to decide whether to fight or flee.

“For the first time in my life, I’m making an alien picture where there is no love and no attempt at communication,” Spielberg told Empire. Rather than the sweet, child-sized creatures of his previous films, these aliens are housed in towering metallic tripods that burst through the Earth’s surface. Even before their death rays reduce frightened bystanders to ash, their design screams danger — we can’t see ourselves in them, and the unfamiliarity immediately puts us on edge.

In contrast to the young children of E.T. and Close Encounters, who only sob when it’s time for their alien companions to leave, Rachel instinctively muffles her cries when she first sees a tripod. Unlike Close Encounters’ Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss), whose fixation causes him to regress into unfettered childishness, and E.T.’s Elliot (Henry Thomas), who finds a childhood companion, these aliens bring with them a loss of childhood innocence. In one scene, young Rachel stumbles upon bodies floating downstream, her first brush with death.

Spielberg’s vision of devastation wrought by space invaders was inspired by real-world tragedies. “The image that stands out in my mind the most was the image of everybody in Manhattan fleeing across the George Washington Bridge in the shadow of 9/11, a searing image I haven’t been able to get out of my head,” he told Today. He evokes the spectre of the terror attacks through scenes of Ray wiping ash off his face following the first tripod assault, and later wandering a neighborhood overrun with debris from a crashed 747. Cinematographer Janusz Kamiński’s camera embeds itself in the frenzied crowd, becoming yet another panic-stricken citizen attempting to flee.

War of the Worlds unfolds like a disaster film, with people who are dwarfed and helpless. As the extraterrestrials’ deep-red vegetation takes root across the planet, it makes Earth appear covered in oceans of blood. Terror also comes from Ray’s fellow man. In the film’s most harrowing scene, mobs swarm his family’s car — because it still works — jumping on the hood, breaking glass with their bare hands, shoving themselves through the windows, and finally pulling a gun, resorting to violence in their desperation to have what he has.

“Close Encounters is all about children opening doors to beautiful sources of light,” Spielberg said of a scene in which a child gleefully welcomes alien abductors and is later returned safe and sound. What a contrast to Ray and his family, who shut themselves in and board up the windows, only for the aliens to invade the sanctity of these spaces. As they journey across states, however, Ray undergoes a transformation too. In Spielberg’s other great subversion, Ray’s false bravado morphs into honest expressions of love and care. For all the fathers in his films who leave, here is one who stays.