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.
