I like how everyone was just standing there waiting to see what it would do. Yeah. As soon as the ground started shaking I would have been out of the country

That Tripod horn sound is still one of the most terrifying noise I've ever heard. That shit instills fear to your very core.

I always like to picture the alien controlling this tripod getting frustrated trying to wiggle it out and thinking, “We brought these things here thousands of years ago and of course mine gets buried under this heavy- ass intersection!”

Random fact: a friend of mine worked on this movie and brought back one of the jackets Tom Cruise wore on set. I gave it to my father in law in Hungary and watched him wearing it to do the gardening for years. He passed away in 2011 and we kept the coat in a wardrobe and whenever I look at it it makes me smile.

This giant steampunk tripod emerges from the asphalt, blasts a loud apocalyptic horn, makes the universal “charging-up” sound and I’m gonna just sit there and watch whilst mouth-breathing. Yeah ok!

When you hear turbines spooling up, whether it's human or alien tech, if you don't know what the machinery is going to do, you'd best be making tracks.

i think the scene with that one lady when she gets hit with the beam is the most chilling, there is a single second when the beam hits where she opens her mouth to scream in pain but nothing comes out showing that it doesn't kill instantly but everyone hit with the beam dies painfully but quick enough that a scream does not leave their mouths

Despite the fact the movie is almost 20 years old, its still just as impactful and frightening

The bit where Cruise comes home and realizes he's covered in the ashes of the dead is haunting.

4:41 That one guy who didn't stick around and made a mad dash like a Bat Outta Hell is a smart lad.

The use of reflections on store windows and car windshields is spectacular. The tripods "horn" blaring just before it unleashes hell on earth puts the finishing touches on this amazing scene.

The tripod horn is iconic and terrifying. And the power-up sound and the laser beam sound effects are equally scary. Spielberg is great at science fiction!

I know this film gets critized for being uneven, but the first part of it is absolute cinematic excellence and profoundly terrifying

“This isn't a war," said the artilleryman. "It never was a war, any more than there's war between man and ants.” ― H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds

6:23 The shot of the passing tripod will always give me chills.

I watched this in the cinema when it was released. Awesome experience. Me and my friends left with our minds blown and that horn sound stuck in our heads. Still love this movie. Watched it a hundred times.

I love the little fake-out they do at 2:25 where the tripod first appears. Since they weren't in the trailers, we don't know what they're going to look like or how big they're going to be yet. Since it's War of the Worlds we do know they're tripods. So the first reaction upon seeing those three big legs climbing out of the hole is to think "oh, that's how big they are, those are its legs" and then all three of them swung way up into the air and you realize those aren't the legs of the tripod, those are the TOES of ONE leg of the tripod. 😮

For me personally this is one of Tom Cruises most underrated films. I love the fact he isnt a hero in this film. He's just a father trying to keep his kids safe and survive and keep moving forwards, it's not his job to fight the aliens or save the world. Basicly a story that millions of families would be trying to do in such a similar situation.

This movie in 05 along with Resistance: Fall of Man in 2006 and the early Halo/Gears of War games was such a great time for alien content, I miss those days.

One of the greatest monster reveals of movie history.

I always thought the cinematography of this and Minority report had such a unique quality to it. Fuzzy, overexposed, lots of backlight... it almost gives the impression that it takes place in a dream.

I like how at the very end that one dad runs through the scene, still carrying his daughter. Dude was keeping up with Tom Cruise, while he was in full Running Mode. Respectable.

I’ll be forever blown away at how amazing the effects are in this film. Genuinely looks like it could be released in 2023 and is even better than some of the movies today!!!!!

I love how everyone just stands around and watches this giant machine rise out of the ground

The best line -- used in the first movie and paid homage to in this one -- is "Once the machines start moving, no more news comes from that area."

The most terrifying aspect of War Of The Worlds is that this almost unstoppable weaponry is thousands of years old. Imagine what they have now?

Amazing how the created and filmed this scene...all the angles and directing a whole crowd

This is a very horrifying underrated film. It should get more recognition.

I distinctly remember the silence in the theater when we all realized we were seeing this for the first time-as in absolutely none of this was shown in the trailers. We had no idea what to expect and that gave me chills. I wish more movies did this nowadays. Edit: I’m specifically talking about the structure of the scene and the movie’s marketing. I know what WoftheW is, and Cruise and Spielberg etc. all I’m saying is trailers didn’t show this at all at it was cool

That horn noise will forever be the most frightening thing ever… and that’s with human beings creating the sound design. Imagine real life aliens. What could be more terrifying?

Can someone explain to me why this movie is not officially putted in horror category? There's a lot of horror movies that are not scary at all, and there are movies like this one, theoreticaly simple Sci-Fi, but actually so scary that it definitely should be a horror.

For those wondering why people just stand still, I have reasons as to why that could be: 1. There are people clearly running away once the Tripod is fully emerged, and as the tripod began to emerge, everyone was fleeing in every direction, Because the chaos seemed to be coming from every direction. We have multiple vantage points to view this scene, while the characters are each limited to one. 2. People stop moving in part because the tripod has stopped moving and stopped causing damage 3. The audience has the benefit of hindsight to know what this thing is. The characters do not. 4. Standing around to see what the hell something is, no matter if it’s dangerous or not, is a human thing. Footage of disasters can be seen with people filming and recording. Even if those people in real life are at a safe distance, so can the people on the street assume so as well, especially the chaos has ceased momentarily. For disasters natural or not, police have to set up barricades to keep people back, because people will try to get close to what is happening no matter the reason. 5. Something like this is clearly something to behold and be in awe of. While it couldn’t be confirmed entirely to people on the ground what it was, some probably assumed it to be aliens, and you don’t wanna miss out on that chance because until the attack starts, you don’t know what will happen. I understand why people make this argument, because they’re not entirely wrong. But it’s not stupid for these people to be this close to the action and stand still to behold what they’re seeing. And it’s not like these people are directly under the tripod, they’re far enough back to see it.

You can tell this was filmed in a different time. The crowd of gawkers don't all have smartphones out filming the alien walker.

Man this STILL looks good and it still holds up today. Easily one of the best alien invasion movies, if not THE best in my opinion. Even Dakotah screaming the whole time is exactly what a little girl would do. Such a good movie.

The Tripod Horn Sound Give me Chills all the Time.

One of the BEST movie scenes in cinema history!!!

What I really like about this scene, is how brilliant the people are performing as the extras. They all did a great job, and hope they were well treated in the making of the film.Well done to them all.

The sound of the tripod walking is pure masterpiece!

One of those movies that I can watch again and again.

Самый крышесносящий момент в фильме!!! До сих пор круто выглядит!

I think his friend with the ski cap nailed his tiny parts. He portrayed the terror and awe we'd feel in this situation excellently .

This was brilliant and the best scene of the entire movie. As mentioned in other comments, nobody had ever seen the tripods nor any of this in the trailer and we had absolutely no idea what to expect, which put us in the same shoes as those people witnessing that in the movie. The moment those rays fire, the sound was so powerful and the scene so chilling, we were absolutely terrified, much worse than a horror movie, because it felt very real, it felt like Saving Private Ryan's beach scene felt. Spielberg does know how to make the finest horror.

One of the coolest movie scenes ever! The shock and awe of seeing the alien machine rise from the ground, and the music and sound effects are spectacular creating an intense disturbing feeling…Just chillingly well done.

I'm a Brazilian and just noticed that this neighborhood has a lot of Brazilian immigration. The sign in the Luteran Church is in Portuguese, the store called "TE AMO" _(love you),_ the Santos Florist (Santos being a common surname in Brazil), the blue sign of a company offering cheap calls to Brazil, and people shouting in Portuguese after the car is thrown. Many Brazilians do choose to live in Newark.

15 years later. I forgot about this movie. 100% still holds up.

I literally never get tired of the moment at 2:24 when the MASSIVE leg rises out of the ground and smashes down on the car. The sound effects are so terrifying. Like a mechanical yet living beast rising from the ground. This movie has some incredible effects for its time as well

As much as I loved the 2005 king Kong, I really think this should’ve won for best special effects. They did such a phenomenal job making it look real. In King Kong, Kong looked incredible but everything around him Kind of looked fake. This was some of the best special effects I have ever seen.

I love the colour palette of this film, just like a lot of Spielberg epics, it seems ‘washed out’ but it really adds to the atmosphere. Then when the whole ground rotates it just gives you that initial moment where you realise that whatever is down there is so much more dangerous and powerful than any of the people understand

I saw this in the movie theatre, and after the Pod emerged and started blasting people, a 10-year-old girl lept from her seat and sprinted up the aisle! A few moments later, a woman, I am guessing her mother, stood up, collected their things, and walked up the aisle after her!

I read the book. It was so well written. The way your mind develops the tripods and charterers is unmatched. Still this move was a great watch.

2:25 love the fact that despite possibly being millions of years old, their deadly ships are mechanical sounding, and slow moving. They mastered intergalactic travel, military grade intangible energy shields and a simple communication method. It’s not just an alien invasion, but like a deliberately barbaric attack and geoengineering a planet ripe for colonization. They literally survive on the blood of those they murder. Death by draining

That last part with the father holding his daughter running away from danger is so effective. Children are not safe from these space demons.

Recently read the book & it is a thousand times more chilling than the movies. Not a long book but, boy, it’s haunting.

4:41 - the smartest and most likely the people whose are alive are well capable of realizing the massive craft arisen from underground and blasted a foghorn is terrible news and started running for their very lives and you can see several people actually start to run only second after the tripod emerges those were the people who will survive the whole alien appocalypse On the other hand this movie is seriously underrated the effects the music the themes are all amazing especially for its year 2005

Even after almost 20 years the CGI still can hold a candle to present day movies.

This was my first alien movie ever. Watching this now comes with a nostalgic vibe 😮

The shot at 3:45 was always amazing to me. It scales just how massive this thing actually was, If you have headphones on, a soft low rumbling base slowly creeps in when it stands at its full height which adds to the horror. The way it moves and adjusts itself really lets the viewer see just how heavy and large this thing is. and at 5:44 when it gives you a close up of just how people are being vaporized, and how there's only a second of screaming before you puff into ash..probably the most terrifying ideas of alien invasion ever made for cinema.

03:30 The soundtrack always give me the chills.

Strangely, everytime l drive toward a particular train crossing near my home & the train speeds through...I STILL expect it to be ablaze 🔥🔥🔥

6:25 - For me it is the most terrifying sound in the movie - when they are walking. ;-; 4:25 - 5:15 - That horn and sound of the rays warming up. AHHH CLASSIC!!! I love that movie! Feeling of uncertainty, powerlessness is indescribable in this Spielberg's work... It has almost 20 years and the visual effects are still so impressive... 4:50, 5:00 - These reflections in the windows are beautiful!

I've watched this scene dozens of times. It's perfect, probably my favorite scene in the film. The effects, the ominous music, the terrifying horn, the sense of scale portrayed in the amazing shots of the tripod rising up first behind the tree and then above the houses. It is such a gripping display of sheer awe.

The scene of the front of the church moving in view of the sun has always been a cinematic highlight for me.

After watching the original film from the 1950’s many times I pretty much already knew what the aliens were going to do to us humans. The special effects were actually pretty good for that time especially the beam that vaporized people which was disturbing at best but not as scary. During this scene however really made me go, “Damn, that was brutal!” 😳

4:42 - still laughing at the "oh hell naw!!" run of the dude on left side of screen.

For film students it's a great scene to study. It's the work of a master. Scale is there, pace and stillness is there, the naturally maddening curiosity of onlookers is there, our chief protagonist is our chief Observer and the details of something rising from the earth is immaculate - making it feel so real.

V good example of it's not how much cgi you can marshall, it's how you marshall your cgi

The rotating intersection is a nice hat tip to the base of the Martians' cylinders unscrewing to let them exit in H. G. Wells' original story.

This scene when my brother and our friends and I went to see this movie and everyone in the whole movie theater was blown away by this one scene. This is truly my favorite part of the movie and one of the greatest ambushes in movie history. Plus, the music is creepy as hell as well.

This gives a new meaning to the word cremation.

Spielberg freaking awesome

The sound of that horn in the theater was almost deafening. The fact that NONE of what the tripods looked like, nothing had been seen in the trailers at all. Everyone who was there was seeing it all for the first time. No giving anything away like they do constantly in trailers now.

The heat ray as seen nearer the end of this clip, shaving off the rooftops of houses is closest to the heat ray as imagined in the book. It is a wide, invisible ray of such intense heat that it dissolves all it touches. The book has several mentions of clear places where the heat ray quickly shaved across a town and left nothing but slag and molten rubble in its wake. It ran across a row of houses and they collapsed instantly as the parts hit just dissolved. That's terrifying, even moreso I'd say, than thin, visible laser beams.

Essa primeira parte do filme é uma aula de desenvolvimento dramático. A apresentação dos personagens, a sensação de confusão, ruptura da realidade e o mais profundo e absoluto terror numa crescente durante a apresentação dos alienígenas numa escalada sem precedentes; as cenas impactantes do começo ao fim dessa primeira parte, os efeitos especiais incríveis (pra mim os melhores da história do cinema), o trabalho primoroso de som... pra mim é o auge do Steven Spielberg no que ele faz de melhor.

Watching this on opening night at theaters was an experience. You could feel the fear in the entire audience, almost like the people in the movie.

One of the coolest things to me even way back when I first saw this in theaters were the visual effects on the people literally turning into ash. The alien death beams aren't straight up vaporizers, they are designed _specifically to vaporize human tissue_ but they leave clothes, personal effects, and literally any non-organic tissue/material behind. The beams popping people and leaving behind a cloud of ash is a neat detail in its own right, but in my opinion it really shines with the added touch of tattered remains of clothing blowing away after the fact. It's taken a step further by making these ash clouds a real thing in the environment. Even if a lot of it was fake and CG, someone somewhere was throwing _real_ dust all over the set while this was shot just to make sure Tom Cruise would _look_ like he ran through a bunch of ashy human remains. The clothing especially is a _REALLY_ amazing detail that just lets your imagination run wild. I mean, think about it: these aliens built weapons _SPECIFICALLY_ to eliminate humans and _NOTHING ELSE_ in as efficient of a method as possible. It makes you wonder exactly how the weapons work or what went on when they were being developed. I feel like if this movie were made today, it would simply be a generic death ray that turns an entire person, everything they are wearing, etc into a pile of goo or something equally lacking in imagination. It would not have the same effect. The way it's done in this movie is just super eerie. A weapon that turns people into ash but leaves all of their clothes behind? That's absolutely terrifying. And it sets up future scenes in the movie where we just see lifeless empty streets, the only thing occupying them are a bunch of tattered clothes and piles of ash. That's some legitimately scary stuff. It reminds you that there _was_ a whole crowd of people in that street. That is some crazy next-level world building, and it's all thanks to one simple idea. As much crap as this movie got, it had some really nice visual effects and they surprisingly hold up even after all these years. Part of what makes them still good to this day is probably thanks to the fact this movie was shot on film in an era where practical effects were still heavily used, the other part is the meticulous attention to the little details, like clothing not getting burnt, items people holding simply dropping wherever they got vaporized, etc. It's a very imaginative and creative take on the generic alien death ray and I love it.

There's something about this scene, about how the humans are so utterly outmatched, that is quite frightening.

This was an awesome movie ....original ideas and great special effects...

@2:05 the "Yo that's my car!" kills me XD

I honestly thought this was one of the most terrifying movies I'd ever seen, as sci-fic apocalypses go. The friends I saw it with at the theater hated it and to this day, I can't imagine why.

If you have good surround sound. There is a low bass tone that you hear the machine moving underground. Badass!

Everyone coming back to this movie recently and realizing how good it was makes me glad. This shit was peak.

Everything about this whole sequence is perfect as 'monster reveals' go. From the film's outset we get hints of their inevitable arrival, then we see the tremors, then the ground and buildings collapsing, and even after it emerges we see it from the view of people on the ground in that compressed focal length, its "eye" dominating the frame at one point, before finally standing upright, revealing that glorious long shot of the tripod standing tall, totally dominant, the music kicking in only when the pilot is ready to sound its war horn to signal the start of hell on Earth. The fact the sound design and CGI still largely holds up to scrutiny today is a testament to how well this film was made. It still gives me the creeps, and watching it in the cinema as a teenager was a great movie memory I won't forget.

4:29 if this dosen’t give you the chills, Idk what will

As someone who read the original book, this movie was a perfect adaptation. Very good 10/10.

1. It's fun to see "2005" touches like people using digital cameras and camcorders instead of their phones. 2. If something throws a CAR out from the ground, I'm not sticking around to see what it is. 3. Ah...the "Prometheus School of Running Away in a Straight Line" was in full effect seven years before.

This sequence is both very well shot and has genuine tension: it’s one of the very few times you genuinely feel like Tom Cruise will not make it out alive, even though you know he will in the back of your mind.

Exceptional scene. The cinematography here is just mind-blowing.

4:33 the iconic horn

I feel like this movie was ahead of its time. It was truly an amazing movie.

That horn that tripod did was a communication signal meant to alert the other tripods that there are humans in the vicinity. This tripod is said to be part of the first wave of the invasion, so the majority are most likely still buried and are offline during this very attack

The way the Tripod herds people into the street-side buildings; and then smashes them all is very brutal cinematography.

It may be hard to believe but this is my childhood movie we had this on our DVD Player when I was young

The tripod's horns are so terrifying but so cool at the same time, but the sound when they are walking I found terrifying. Like imagine hearing that when ur outside and you justr hear it coming closer and closer until you eventually see it

That clarion call at 4:32 in the theater had my girl at the time jump in fear right in her seat. She spent the rest of the movie in my arms. Whew, that was just the start of the night😉👍 thank you, Señor Spielbergo

"Human fear is no match for human curiosity" ___ Jack Bauer

What an amazing film.

I was out walking my dog one day. I lived in SW Louisiana at the time. And all of a sudden I heard that same sound those pods make. That trumpet, metal sounding. It was really loud and You couldn't tell what direction it come from. There was nothing in my area for miles and miles that could had possibly made that sound. It was like it coming from the sky. I looked around on the internet and started seeing vids of that same trumpet kind of sound people were hearing. It's burned into my brain. It sounded just like these damn things. Craziest shit I ever heard.

How this whole scene was choreographed is just simply miraculous. Amazing. How much of it was CGI? Obviously the pods were, but very seamless editing between graphics and reality. Plus perfect accompanying music. What a chilling scene. I never get tired of it.

god i love this ... this scene it just LOOKS and FEELS real .... they hold off background music until it emerges .... i'll always enjoy this movie

i like how theyre running in circles then standing still and watching then running in circles again then watching again