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H.G. Wells explained this in his novel. The Martian race and civilization was vastly older than Humanity, and had wiped out all dangerous microbes on their planet so long ago, they had forgotten that such things existed.

My favorite part of this movie, is realizing that the aliens built the machines in their own image. This is literally the equivalent of humans invading an alien planet, and our weapon of choice being Gundams.

The original book stated somewhere that the Aliens had eliminated hostile bacteria on their own world thousands of years ago, and it was deemed so unimportant afterward that they forgot about it. They didn't even take it into consideration when invading earth at all.

The bacteria twist definitely works better in the original novel, keeping in mind that it was written in 1889

I really liked the idea of the aliens making a stupid mistake. When I imagine the human species in the future, I can still see us making stupid mistakes like this. I think it's reasonable to assume that being technologically advanced doesn't imply that individuals can't be stupid. I love your videos.

In the book, it described how the aliens marveled at the wheel, a uniquely human invention, indicating that they actually lack the wheel in their technology. The movie pays homage to this in the basement scene, where an alien plays with the wheel of a bike. This would seem to suggest that the aliens aren’t necessarily more advanced than us, just radically different. They most likely focused *all* of their research and development in weapons of destruction and technology with the means to conquer. So they either lost the knowledge about germs and microbes, or never discovered it to begin with.

For those who didn't notice, in the scene where the tripods are chasing people down the hill you can see that another tripod is emerging from the lightning

The aliens being absolutely cavalier about hazards to their health in an otherwise hospitable environment brings to mind the cast of Prometheus and Alien: Covenant merrily taking off their helmets as soon as it appeared that the atmosphere is breathable.

Tbh after reading just the first chapter of the original WotW book, i realised why i've never heard anyone say the "how did the aliens not know germ theory" thing in its context. In the movie, it's repeatedly implied that the aliens have been planning the invasion for millions of years, which give the criticism weight because there's plenty of time for them to have figured it out. In the book, however, wells mentions that the martians werent really bothered with earth that much until mars started freezing over and their planet started becoming more and more uninhabitable. As a result, in the book, the invasion wasnt some million-year-long plan, it was a hasty act of desparation, which helps explain how they didnt consider the fact that they had no immunity to the germs of earth

The "bodies in the river" scene is based on a scene from the book. The british tv version has this scene included and it's awesome. Basically, a bunch of people are crossing the river when they get "zapped", but the water acts as an insulator and they all get cooked to death instead. Edit: Thank you all for the likes, 1.4k

I watched this as a kid and thought the birds just got sick of them and decided to help destroy them 😂

I can’t imagine how horrifying it’d be to be in an alien invasion with someone like Rachael around with that intense of an anxiety disorder. I honestly felt bad for her watching this movie.

From what I recall of the book, the idea is that they had so long ago rid themselves of disease causing microbial species that they had become some obscure factoid of their ancient past, and simply didn't think of it when planning their invasion. And that if they tried to invade again, they'd be able to handle it just fine after the reminder that germs exist.

Scary movie 4 absolutely nailed the crazy guy in the basement with the shotgun. His lines are just my favorite: "This ain't a war, anymore than a war between men and maggots. Or, dragons and wolves. Or, men riding dragons, throwing wolves at maggots." "We gotta find a way to take out these tripods. I heard that the Japs took out a few of 'em over in Kikkoman." "Kikkoman. That's- That's a soy sauce." "Right, yeah. Low sodium." And my favourite of them all.. "We'll build our own tripods. Ours will have four legs."

For the record: in the original WotWs book, the aliens were pretty much just a brain with manipulators, because the author wrote them as a species so advanced that they did away with most of their internal organs, and are now basically just a brain with manipulators attached (as said). The original reason they started to capture people instead of downright killing them was because they would take their blood out and inject it into themselves, as instead of eating they used pre-nourished blood from other creatures having evolved away their need to eat. Similarly, the reason why they didn't even consider microbes to be an issue was that in the book they came from Mars and Mars was a much older planet than Earth, where all bacteria and microbes had died off. However, in this movie the aliens were changed to be these three-legged monkeys rather than the brain with tentacles they were in the book. Obviously, most of that doesn't make sense if you know anything at all of modern science, but considering how old the book is it's pretty amazing.

Humans: Full range of vaccines for travel on our own planet. Planet conquering aliens: “Hey man we’re about to hit that blue planet called E-arth. You get your shots?” “Pff nahhh”

I’d still say the aliens from *SIGNS* invading a planet full of water still takes the biscuit for most ridiculous idea

Forward facing eyes doesn't necessarily mean predatory, it simply means they have evolved in an environment where depth perception is advantageous. With the theory that they evolved on a densely forested environment, depth perception would definitely be helpful when judging distance for travel between said foliage

I also love how, when the ferry capsizes, there is a lot of people trapped in their cars, some with the lights on and running. But...why are there even cars on the ferry? Weren't the protagonists literally assaulted earlier because they had the only working car in the area?

My favorite parody of this was an episode of Invader Zim, where Zim learns about how Earth germs are dangerous to aliens, and ends up covering himself in germ-resistant fast-food meat at the end of the episode.

The fact that the aliens should have been able to tell our planet was a threat reminds me of a story I read once when I was a child. Some aliens were looking at Earth and deciding if they should invade. They saw stories of Santa. Now, this man was able to determine who was good and bad from his secret base in the north pole. He was also able to deliver gifts to the entire world all in one night. These things meant that he was either extremely technologically advanced or had an undetectable army that spanned the globe. Either way, they decided not to poke that bear and find a different world.

There's a concept I've seen floated around that I quite like, as one solution to the Fermi paradox, and it stems from the Warhammer 40k concept of a 'death world'. That is, a world with wildlife so numerous and dangerous that being outside without protective gear or a ton of experience is suicide. The idea posits that what if Earth was one of these worlds? A planet considered so dangerous because of it's hyper-competitive and predatory life that aliens simply avoid it. Given that in some circles there's a belief that alien viruses might not be dangerous to humans because they would simply be 'incompatible' with lifeforms sufficiently different, it's possible the Martians thought the same thing, only to find that terrestrial microorganisms are far more aggressive and adaptable than initially thought

SO many parts of this movie I can’t stand but it’s still one of my favorites. The tripods are just perfect.

Fun Fact: The scene filmed in Athens, NY, is my hometown. A lot of the extras in the scene were just locals that were excited to see Tom Cruise lol

The book explains the bodies in the river, actually. At one point, in a city upstream, people tried crossing the river during a tripod attack. The lasers actually ended up boiling the water, cooking everyone in it alive. So what the daughter is witnessing at the 12:00 minuet mark is the bodies washing downstream.

My theory is that Robbie made it to the military front lines, told them he wanted to fight & proved within 30 seconds why it's a bad idea to give an angsty emo kid with parental abandonment issues a loaded gun. As such, they put him in a Humvee & sent him back to his mom.

The Aliens' worst mistake? Messing with us when they weren't made in God's image. Damnable Xenos.

The original novel makes way more sense. In the book the Martians' ancestors eliminated the bacteria on their world long ago which could explain why they weren't prepared for the microbes on Earth. In the book they have a very definite plan and have been monitoring Earth for some time. In the book the Martians are motivated by survival as their own world is dying though they have a plan for humanity - they also want the blood but to inject into themselves. There is at least one humanoid race on Mars that they use for this purpose as the Martians have evolved into what are essentially huge brains. They make and use mechanical bodies according to their needs and no longer have a digestive system. In this sense it explains why the aliens in both the books and the film don't eradicate humanity - because that would be wasteful when they can be put to use. The N-Dimensionals in Invasion Earth also take this approach. The Martians who come to Earth in the book are more like colonists sent to tame a wild world. The aliens are so advanced in every respect that they probably only consider humans to be lower animals. There is some similarity to the aliens in the film here as they come across as farmers who's main focus is getting the planet ready for mass colonisation using the Red Weed. Incidentally - it is unclear whether the Red Weed was unleashed on purpose or by accident in the novel.

My theory about these aliens is that they believed their strange vine like food source would basically terraform earth and destroy any bacteria on it. After all, they only got out of the ships when this vine began to spread. However, since this thing was made using human materials, it’s likely some of these bacteria were able to adapt to such an attack, and then spread to the invaders

I always liked the scene where the aliens are looking at the family photos in the basement and handing them off to the next guy. I don't know why but it makes them seem more realistic and almost gives them personality.

Judging the absolutely horrifying plagues/parasites that have existed here on earth, alien planets could potentially be nightmarish for us, despite being a perfect environment

-How these aliens are so advanced and yet so stupid? They didn't know about germs? -Dude, we are the most advanced species in this planet and we were in a global health emergency for three years and millions of us died because someone ate a bat soup...

I think the director really fumbled with neglecting to add a naval battle scene between the US Navy and the tripods. In the book, the only time that the aliens were challenged legitimately before the diseases broke them was the HMS Thunder Child. Would’ve been sick to see that reimagined.

I like the idea that the aliens weren’t exactly cut out to be the perfect specimens as they so believed. I don’t think the book would be as entertaining if the aliens were a perfect creature that wiped out humanity in the very first chapter. Having a creature travel to a different, unfamiliar planet and having it not be able to adapt makes perfect sense especially from a book written as long ago as this one. Absolute masterpiece of writing.

Tripods: Wtf Is bacteria?

19:00 this could be explained by the bystander effect. When the first guy was taken no one did anything for fear of getting involved but when ray was being taken, Rachel's crys and attempts were enough to motivate the others to join her

My primary theory as to why the Martians didn't know about or understand germs is... well, they literally wiped out all disease on their homeworld millenia ago, so long ago that they completely forgot such things existed. So, when they invaded Earth, they had no defense against diseases because they had forgotten that they would need them.

With so many examples in human histoy of botched invasions, I always assumed it was due to some corrupt alien powers invading haphazardly cutting corners and ignoring risks.

I remember what I thought was the worst thing about this movie were all the close calls. First in the street, then the house, then the boat, the military truck, the walls collapsing, the arms almost getting them, aliens going house to house for some reason etc. etc. Just missing the kid coughing on Tom and then him licking the alien overlord to make him sick and save the world. They could've built up more suspense with just observations of the rest of humanity getting wiped out instead of Tom dodging thing after thing last second over and over. ^_^

As for the shields of the tripods not working, I think that the fact that the tripod has organic structures ( like the literal sphincter that almost swallows Tom Cruise) means that it is also infected, probably why it was secreting fluid on the last scenes.

With how much Roanoke loves cars, I'm surprised he hasn't made a video on the biology of Transformers yet.

The aliens from Signs were even worse, considering they came to a planet where 75% of its surface is covered in a substance that breaks them apart in seconds (and that often falls from the sky, too). It would be as stupid as us going to Venus completely naked.

The people floating down the river, I assume, are people that were drained of their blood and their corpses were discarded, again, into the river

That boat scene was shot in Athens, NY and my dad got to be in the shot - He went up to, and spoke directly to (he was not supposed to do this) both Tom Cruise and Spielberg (who was being completely ignored because of Cruise lol) and said hi and thanked them for the movie and Spielberg was really cool about it whereas Cruise just smiled that "I'm totally not in a cult" smile and vigorously shook his hand.

Today’s episode: War of the Worlds Expectation: wow I get to finally learn the biology of this species and some more lore on them Reality: dude just dogging a guy for owning expensive cars and bringing it up a hilarious amount of times in the first 5 minutes lol Much love Roanoke!!

24:35 A possibility would also be that their brains could be in their torso instead of the head. Nothing guarantees that their evolutionary pattern would be the same as ours in this aspect.

You confused as to why that the aliens couldn’t figure out microbes when the entire of might of the US government, military and its overwhelming budget couldn’t figure out covid? No matter how advanced or powerful you are, there’s always room for mistakes.

I always thought that the aliens were attacking in desperation. Hence why they failed so miserably. They acted a lot sooner than intended with beings that didn’t have access to the full scope of the invasion plan. Makes the movie make sense to me, but that could just be cope

You know something is wrong when roanoke puts it in the title, lmao

12:07 Only scene I thought was amazing in the whole movie. A bridge full of people could of collapsed, people could have jumped into water en mass to escape aliens and like the book been boiled alive upstream.

I’m still trying to figure if the clouds the aliens came down in were attached to an unseen mothership or a direct portal to their home world connected to a wormhole Hopefully someone sees this comment and can further explain this because I noticed in the middle of cloud there was a light source and it wasn’t talked about in the movie

I always had the headcannon that the WotW aliens actually HAD a germ/virus countermeassure going on, but it failed catastrophicaly the moment they got cocky and started walking around eating and drinking our water. As if their sense of superiority made them throw out the window all safety protocols they may put in place to avoid their whole army from getting infected by some common cold or something.

I loved the bit in the book when people thought the police/military were being too harsh and mean to the aliens. Everyone assumed they were just curious and helpless until they started blasting.

Best part of the video is when he stopped simping over the car.

24:33 "Punch to the side of the head" Welcome to Earth!

The story makes much more sense and is actually incredibly impressive when you consider it was written in 1894. Before both world wars, before germ theory was accepted, before radio was a widely used before cars were widely used, before freaking tanks! And this guy wrote about laser wielding mech walkers from mars. To get from mars to earth, the martians used a giant cannon on the side of mars and waited for the planet to rotate into position to fire in retrograde towards earth since you know... before rockets.

I have a theory in regards to the shields randomly being disabled. My guess is that tripods are being operated via a neural link. Kinda like pilots operating a jaeger in pacific rim. Only in this instance, the machine is operated based on subconsciousness as well as actual movement. This could also explain why the tripods are basically giant representations of themselves. As soon as one of them inside begins to weaken from contamination, so does whatever they were charged w/ operating. Could be wrong, but I thought I’d add my two cents in.

The scene that bothers me the most is immediately after they're awakened by the camera in the basement, he chops it up(it would've immediately retracted in my opinion), then he runs outside and can't see any tripods any where,(where did the camera come from), then out of nowhere a giant tripod grabs daughter. Where did it come from? My theory is that they fell asleep and from that part of the movie onward is a dream, and they eventually died in their sleep from toxins in the red plant coming through the basement windows.

the rant about the car was absolutely on point!

I always imagined they didn't account for the unpredictable mutations of the Flu Virus. I think they were cocky not stupid.

I actually like the idea of the military and the tripods drowning out the voices. It’s realistic, I mean, you try to talk to someone without a radio right next to an abrams.

One thing, your theory about their planet having cooperating microbes and not warring ones like here would mean that they probably would not conceive of a plan like you mentioned in the end. As such this scenario might be one of the ONLY ones where they land to fight us.

"Activates his almonds." I'm fuckin' stealing that. Mine now!

I'll never understand why "lighting doesn't strike the same place twice" is so pervasive. Lightning TENDS to strike the same place twice. That's literally why lightning rods work.

I was actually an extra in this movie. The part of the movie where they show Tom Cruise on a highway was filmed on Staten Island, New York....I used to live there. I was driving on Forest Ave and there was a person from the crew asking people if they wanted to be extras for the scene because they needed more cars on the road and more people running away from them. Of course i said yes because who wouldn't lol.

Beginning of the movie was great. After the plane crash it went downhill. The idiotic aliens in the cellar were for sure the low point.

I firmly believe the Martian invasion and rapid conquest was supposed to be the taste of their own medicine for the shortest war in history

I figure the reason for the death or significant illness of the pilot deactivating the shield makes sense. If your pilot dies while in the ship, everyone has to wait for the power to run down until the shield can’t sustain itself to get the pilot out and get a new pilot in. So if you tie the shields to the pilot’s vitals, if they are injured enough that they can’t disable the shield to get help, the shield disables itself.

My theory is that they knew that the environment was dangerous, but their own world was becoming toxic so they had really no choice. They were trying to teraform the planet with the red weeds, and probably figured they had more time

This movie should have been titled - "Ray, Robbie and Rachel".

The part that bothered me the most about this film is that I didn't quite get how dying from terrestrial germs would cause the force shields on their tripods to deactivate and leave them vulnerable to our weapons...

I think in regards to the river scene with bodies floating in it, I believe this is in reference to the original book where a group of people attempt to hide in a body of water to avoid the Martian heat rays (the original book describes the weapons as emitting a ray of superheated air invisible to the eye). This results in the martians boiling the water to basically burn everything in the water.

...actually if a splinter is too deep to get out and not so big as to cause real damage (so an actually tiny splinter you just can't get out) your body WILL eventually just spit it out. It'll get irritated at first then it'll form a small cyst pocket around it and then one day it'll just push it out through your skin, usually with the skin over it dying. Then you'll just have a little indent and area with newer skin as your body heals the area. This happens to me a lot because I have a raspberry garden and...raspberry bushes are hateful beasts covered in tiny splinter like thorns.

Space Travel: 1,000 flurrbo's Overwhelming Technological Superiority: 10,000 flurrbo's Microbiological wherewithal: (apparently) priceless

Is it weird my first instinct upon seeing the alien plants was to roast them over a fire and see how they taste?

I will say I think one major issue with this movie is just that it's a modern movie trying to adapt ideas and concepts from the late 1800s/early 1900s. Like for a bit of context, when the book was written Germ Theory was like a relatively recently accepted theory on how disease works that was rather innovative for the time since it gave a genuine explanation for some of the most horrific ailments affecting people. Back then when writing about aliens it probably wasn't seen as big of a stretch that they'd overlook such things because microbes are so small and easy to overlook as well as the fact that in the book, while the Martians were "advanced", they weren't really like as advanced as we'd consider "modern" aliens to be. The best way to describe it is they were advanced in the same way people in the early 1900s thought people in the 2000s would be. Like for example they didn't even have spaceships they used to get to Earth, instead they all literally yee-hawed their way to Earth by shooting themselves out of massive cannons on Mars. The most advanced piece of "tech" I'd say they had in the book were their heat-rays, as everything else had a rather strange rickety piston-and-rivet feel to it all that the humans actually were able to take out with conventional weapons. With that in mind it makes more sense why the Martians got domed so easily by bacteria in the book, it was because in effect they were basically Victorian-era "futuristic" aliens that had heat rays and tripods while at the same time still using lead-based makeup and radium paint.

One of the better theories from before this movie based on the book was that the invaders were actually criminals. Mars was shooting armed prisoners at us in a attempt to pull a Australia style colonisation.

"Can't we have a movie about aliens invading earth that does not have 1 point of weakness or not allergic to earth?" - Cinemasins

The Novel Footfall by Larry Niven is a fantastic read if anyone wants to know what an alien invasion would be like. It’s a bit more realistic as it gives the aliens in the novel a reason for being kinda stupid. See we think aliens would have the same concept of war as we do. YeahC they know war, but their concept is a little different. In the book the aliens are evolved from herd species similar to elephants and their entire view of how things work comes from there. If one herd shows another herd they’re more powerful, the other herd must join that herd for losing essentially a slapping contest of sorts. They come to earth unprepared for a war of attrition. All they know about humans is we exist and they want our planet. So when they give us a black eye, they’re horrified we retaliate and continue to do so. Like legit can’t cope with a human style war. They make some unbelievably bad decisions cause they have no experience in fighting a war like this. I mean I don’t want to give away spoilers, but humans more or less use the spare space shuttles to build a warship to take on their mothership. Its nothing fancy, it’s basically a giant nuclear missile with human pilots. Yeah, it’s a Kamikaze ship. That’s what it is. So I can see the aliens in WotWs having a totally different view of how things work and be pretty stupid.

Thinking about it, I have a small theory. Maybe the aliens have been around for so long with such advanced tech, that they became resistant/immune to sickness on their home planet, rendering medicine useless and after long enough, would be forgotten by the population.

Correction: nothing is biting the heads off of great white sharks. Orcas, a small number of them, have been attacking great whites and eating their livers.

I despised every character in this movie. The girl's sole function seemed to be to whine and annoy; the son's role appeared to be "person I'd like to punch in the face," and dad seemed to be "most ineffective parent ever." I love the Jeff Wayne musical, but this movie was created to be maximally infuriating.

The Aliens in this movie are freaking terrifying as hell Love your content as always!

I like how most people think of aliens as creatures in ships that are super intelligent when an insect from another planet is just as much an alien. I find it way more interesting when you think of aliens as anything alive that isn't from earth. Makes the whole, "Are there aliens out there?" question much more easy to accept.

If they buried 100s of thousands of tripods, all in excess of some 100 feet high, how do we believe that with all the tunnels, shafts, mines, underground buildings, etcetera that we never found just one? We love to dig and I think several would have been unearthed. This would have been a technology game changer in the war for humans. I also find 3 legs as foolish as 4 were in Star Wars. A few planes, some cables and down they would go. I think the compact floating wings from 1953 made more sense, as did the canisters.

Keep in mind that the book was written in the 1890s and viruses were initially discovered in that same decade. The book also explains why the aliens didn't really think about microbes in a way that makes sense.

I do love that humanity's first contact with aliens could very well be a man hole cover flying through space.

Lightning is actually a lot MORE likely to hit the same spot again... The previous bolt leaves a trail of ions behind that subsequent bolts can follow.

I know that in the books it was already explained. I'd like to propose another answer that could have been used. Considering how microbes and viruses have evolved specifically to target biology in our ecosystem, it would have made a lot of sense that alien "scientists" would have pretty much said: "Yep, these microbes and viruses aren't related to us in any way, shape, or form. So totally safe bro."

25:08 This is unironically the best, most digestible explanation of abiogenesis I've ever heard.

The tripods don't appear to be buried very deep. It's interesting that none were discovered while mining, or building sewer systems and subway systems, etc.

I have to agree with the War of The Worlds alien's being from a planet where cells didn't square off against each other. They would have been fine inside their machines, but went out to explore man-made structures. As for the ending of the movie, I think the reason their tripod shields went down was because of the birds that got past their shields. The shields only seemed to come up when under attack from actual weaponry like bombs. The shields didn't seem to appear to protect against organisms, like humans or birds. The birds disrupted their shield, which was how humans were able to take them out. The aliens got sick and died in their own machines too.

Personal theory? They were a private terraforming company that seeded those tripods a long time ago. So they were incompetent and were working with outdated equipment in order to cut corners.

That scene where Rachel gets a splinter, Tom Cruise's character is trying to force it out but she says her body will "push it out" when it's ready - like the planet will push out the aliens which aren't meant to be there.

What if the aliens knew about all the germs and ick we have here, but were just desperate enough to take that chance to try and survive instead of it being an oversight or mistake?

I don't know why, but it feels so good to hear someone actually talk well about humans. Time after time I see people wishing for the end of humanity, it's disheartening to say the least

The scifi channel made a sequel, where the Martians remembered to get their shots before invading again. Too bad it flopped.

Not quite as dumb as the Aliens from "Signs". "We are smart enough for interstellar travel, but are dumb enough to walk around naked on planet that has a substance we are deathly allergic too fucking everywhere. And that substance is WATER."

A couple of notes 1) war of the worlds doesnt really work so well if its not set against the original time period. We humans will definitely have a little MAD moment before this is over. 2) they totally missed out on having the red weed do more. 3) they could have done more with the ship/thunderchild scene. 4) the mechanic was hanging around to steal tiny toms car.