I always liked how despite their most powerful weapon failing, General Mann refuses to abandon the fight. Clearly stating that they will establish a line and fight the aliens to the death with conventional weapons simply to delay them and buy time for a scientific breakthrough.
Very interesting how the machines had to combine the strength of all their shields to survive the blast. Probably one of the most incredible details in a 50s sci fi movie.
So the alien ships had to combine all their strength to withstand the blast of an atom bomb, the strength of just one alien ship would probably not withstand it. And that was an atom bomb in which they had to combine all their strength to withstand the blast. That being said, a hydrogen bomb might've been able to stop them.
This scene out of all of them, now, it still scares the living hell out of me. The Atom Bomb going off, the shockwave of the wind and this scene with no music. The horrifying vibe.
"They haven't even been touched!" The most powerful and horrifically destructive weapon we have ever had both then and now, and it did absolutely nothing... still terrifying in its implications.
With the end of the Cold War, younger generations may not appreciate how *terrifying* this scene was in 1953, or even later, and how very topical it was.
Why would they be afraid? The nuke did nothing to them. They just put up their shields like they did against the artillery barrage earlier in the movie. One-size defensive tactic.
@@danieldickson8591 They clumped together in order to create a more powerful shield and briefly paused their advance, waiting for the bomb to dissipate before advancing again. It's possible if it was one nuke vs one ship the nuke could have destroyed it.
@@dfmrcv862 On one hand, it's hard to see from that distant shot if their shields really were "clumped together" or just looked that way. The machines also moved slowly, so we can't tell if they stopped their advance. But on the other hand, even if what you say is true, since they always moved in groups of at least three, humanity would still be screwed.
Looks better than the lazy CGI garbage they do today. The only one that looks as good is Terminator 2: Judgment Day and that was in early 1990s when CGI didn’t take over a movie and look horrible
@@acenosce3334 they also thought it would set the upper atmosphere on fire during the Manhattan project. But they said fuck it and tested the nuke anyway. People had balls back then.
In this movie, the military, the government, the church and science all try to stop the Martians and all fail miserably. It's an epic smackdown of the pillars of human civilisation. I remember as a kid thinking humanity was actually going to get wiped out in the end...I was chilled to the freakin' bone by this movie.
@@Fireheart1945 fun fact: American soldiers and Martian soldiers can die both there's no difference who can die or that cannot die. They can lose martian's protective blisters an another day
Best invasion movie ever. No CGI, no fighters moving at breakneck speed. Just those elegant war machines moving easily and purposely, they don't have to rush, they're unstoppable and they know it. Gliding to the next target. That kind of enemy would be terrifying.
The aircraft used to drop the A-bomb on the Martian war machines, the Northrop YB-49, was a jet-powered derivative of the piston-engine XB-35, and the second and third YB-35s on order (serial numbers 42-102367/42-102368) were converted to YB-49 iteration, and the first YB-49 flew on October 21, 1947, a week after Chuck Yeager used the Bell X-1 to become the first person to break the sound barrier. Despite being faster than the XB-35, the YB-49 suffered longitudinal instability during state trials, and thus was judged unsuitable as a bombing platform, not to mention that it had an operating range only comparable to the Boeing B-47 Stratojet. The second YB-49 had a crash in June 1948 during a flight over the Mojave Desert, which killed all five crewmembers aboard, including Glen Edwards (for whom Muroc Air Force Base was renamed) and one of the people aboard the B-29 Superfortress used to carry aloft the very X-1 that broke the sound barrier. The Air Force ordered 30 examples of a photographic reconnaissance version of the B-49, designated RB-49, which would have eight General Electric J47s (six buried in the wing, two below the wing), and another incomplete YB-35 on order (serial number 42-102376) was chosen to be the RB-49 prototype and became YRB-49, powered by six J35s (four in the wing, two under the wing), while seven YB-35s (serial numbers 42-102370/102375, 42-102377) were earmarked for conversion to RB-35Bs to train crews to fly the RB-49. The RB-49 production order was canceled in 1949 and the RB-35Bs were never completed, but the YRB-49 took to the skies of May 4, 1950, making its first flight two months earlier after the sole remaining YB-49 was destroyed during a taxi run. Although not destroyed in an accident during testing, the YRB-49 did not survive the breaker's torch, being scrapped in late 1953, more than two years after its last flight. By the time, Northrop relinquished his post as head of the company that he had founded in 1939, only returning to the Northrop headquarters in the late 1970s to see a model of what would become the B-2 Spirit, which has the same wingspan as the XB-35 and YB-49 but is stable in flight thanks to fly-by-wire controls.
Did it never occur to them to just plant bombs underground in the path of the Martians, let the shield bubble move over them, and then blow them up? the explosion would be amplified by nature of being trapped inside the shield.
YES! When the enemy can't be beaten with conventional tactics, don't play by their rules. Nuke them over and over. If they enter a ravine, blow up rocks to try to crush them. Make entire minefields with the idea of blowing them up when the martians pass over them. Don't just go into a fetal position and wait for a heat ray or disintegration beam to kill you.
They kind of did, that scene with loads of military hardware on the hill, one of the soldiers yells “No effect on target! No effect!” You don’t see the fight, but you get a good idea of who is winning.
Spielberg deliberately walk away from the typical doomsday film where you see big cities getting their ass kicked and nukes dropped on them unscratched as these things have been done to death in aliens and end of the world genere like ID4, deep impact and the day after tomorrow (etc etc). He wanted the remake to be about suvival of an average family. Therefore he intentionally left out scense where big cities are getting its ass kicked (He could've chose NYC instead of NJ). and could've made the hill scene a nuke scene. But he didn't. he put in a half ass conventional fight where you can't really see what's going on behind the hill. (but you still see the result). Not everyone liked this approach, and the remake was only an average blockbuster compare to his other work.
Granted, this is science fiction. The effects of a ground zero nuclear blast are better understood by writers of today than writers of the early 1950s. Shields or no shields, the combined effects of a point blank range nuclear detonation, intense radiation, a million plus degree fireball, and over pressures would have still obliterated every martian ship in the group. Those ships would not have emerged from a nuclear blast unscathed.
@@victorwilson6826 I always wondered since I was a kid,(50 yrs ago) why not bury a cannon, pointing straight up, and fire it as the machines pass over? LOL. American ied. A kids overactive imagination!
AND the characters were a lot more attractive and interesting and not annoying and dysfunctional like Tom Cruise and his halfwit son and constantly screaming little girl. They paid Dakota Screaming a fortune to scream the whole movie at anything and everything.
@@classicgunstoday1972 Right but it's better to have some redhead chick blowin your ears out with screamin as well, accompanied by horrid acting, eh? Lol.
In Spielberg's version the main characters are innocent bystanders caught on the periphery of the action, just trying to survive. In this movie they're at the heart of the story, so we as the audience feel more a part of the major events and decisions.
The tripods, most of the camera work, the soundtrack, the atmosphere and battle scenes of the 2005 one were good. unfortunately the characters aren't great though.
ivy king was a high yield nuke that would've had a much bigger mushroom cloud with a very different shape, ivy mike was also tested in 1952. also in 1953 the entire operation upshot knothole, which had 11 nukes in it, was conducted, and the most famous mushroom cloud images come from there (knothole grable, aka Atomic Cannon, people always confuse it with the Davy Crockett; knothole badger, that famous one people confuse with Trinity, etc.) so it was likely this was a low yield nuke (10 - 60 kt, the range of the knothole nukes) and was probably leftover from Operation Upshot Knothole or another nuke operation
I grew up with War of the Worlds on t.v. so many times; from my very first viewing on ABC Sunday night in the late '60s, to WGN's Family Classics in the 70s, and even on CBS in the mid-afternoon also in the early 70s---yet every time I hear a scientist say, "protective blister", I want to shout at my television screen, "It's called a Force-field...!!!"
I always love watching these old sci-fi movies that were made before we defined the terminology for sci-fi technologies. Like they could have easily called the Martian shields "shields," but in this movie they describe them as "protective blisters", "electromagnetic coverings" or even "umbrellas."
The takeoff and flight scenes of the YB-49 are recycled stock footage of the YB-49 carrying out its first flight on October 21, 1947. The YB-49's bomb baby was not big enough to carry the first generation of American nukes, including the Mark 4 bomb, but Northrop did propose an improved B-49 with a bigger bomb baby, designated N-40 by the company, which would have had the same number of engines as the YB-49.
"It'll only end one way...we're beaten." "Actually, we'll all be dead in a few days of radiation poisoning, from all of this fallout dust we're covered with."
I'm not an expert at nukes but my guess is that just after setting one off, the cloud of smoke takes a long time to dissipate, so you wouldn't immediately see from a safe distance if the aliens have been destroyed. This also applies to Independence Day.
The only thing memorable about the 2005 remake was Gene Barry and Anne Sheridan have a cameo at the very end. Yes, the special FX were impressive, but takes more than that to made a movie worth watching in my book, and as long as moviegoers keep paying good money to watch mediocre movies, that's what Hollywood will keep churning out
@@ernesthill2681 hitting the mute button everytime Tom Cruise or is dysfunctional kids start whining and screaming. (Which is about 90% of the movie) Oh and I believe her name was Robinson not Sheridan
Well the martians(Aliens from an unknown in the 2005 version which is Gene Barry’s Final film before he passed away in 2009) has a bunch of force fields around them. How they did the effect is they filmed plastic bubbles against a black screen and then layered the bubbles over the war machines. I discovered it on IMDB.
2:25 This part always made me laugh Forester looks like he's about to say. "yeah sure buddy... I'll get right on that. I'll let you know.... As soon as I know you'll know... I'll call ya."
I watched this on AMC as a kid and thought it was cheesey. Movies like Independence Day and Terminator had improved nuke scenes. But I’m glad I watched it because the remake with Tom Cruise would’ve been so scary if I didn’t know how it ended ahead of time.
Films like these can only be appreciated if you take into account that it was of it’s time. In 50 years, effects will probably trump films like Independence Day. But that doesn’t make it any less of a bad movie.
actually if they were like any conventional shields the harder the force they use the more the shields are able to repel them I wonder if they were like the clone wars where a slow-moving object could enter the shield barrier. only problem I don't think they'll allow anything to get that close.
The Day The Earth Stood Still is another great sci-fi movie in which the original is far superior to the pathetic re-make. Michael Rennie as Klatu was perfect casting. Patricia Neal said, shortly after making the movie, that she thought it was "silly" but, years later realized that she had been part of a classic. True! Locke Martin as Gort was a doorman at Groman's Chinese Theatre when he was spotted by a studio executive and cast as the robot. There's a lot of interesting trivia about Day The Earth Stood Still on the web.
Where is the Flying Wing? Theres supposed to be a Flying Wing Bomber that drops the A-Bomb in this scene. How could they have taken such an iconic plane out?
I actually prefer this version of War of the Worlds to the more recent one with Tom Cruise. The tripods didn't rush around frenetically. They were slow and methodical while going about their work of destruction. They were impervious to anything humans could throw at them and so didn't have to hurry.
I’m just say this. People are hating the 2019 war of the worlds for its differences to the novel. Yet, this film is barely like the novel. They aren’t even tripods.
The machines are held up by a trio of invisible legs actually; it's even mentioned in the film itself. When they first emerge from their nest in the early part of the movie, the scene where the priest walks out to try to speak to them, you can see on the ground some sparks and fires flare up because of the invisible legs walking across the terrain.
Love that movie 😁😁😁 I first saw it when I was 6...And many times after that... I remember that scene...To think that atomic weapons did nothing but in the end it was a common cold that killed them...
I think it's a riot how they wrote atomic weapons in most of the sci fi movies during the 1950's. A classic example is the movie Them where giant ants were the result of nuclear testing.
Little did they know in 1953 that a nuclear explosion would have created an EMP that would have ripped their shields right off. Nor did they consider using other forms of weapons like chemical weapons.
And the invasion, and the characters, and the score, and the CGI, and why do you people insist on hating a good film? Because Tom Cruise was a little weird back then?
This is getting a ton of attention now considering the US government now admits the existence of ufos and is now proving they have a new Pentagon department investigating it.
In real life a nuke would be the end of these alienz l thought it was a bit far fetched when they survived. A bit silly to an otherwise really good film. Special effects were superb given its a very old film. 8/10.
Use more than one nuke. Instead of just one, drop one another another until their shields are gone; better to use up your nukes than let the Martians capture the Earth. Bombard them from 10 to 20 miles away with artillery while doing so. Plant nuclear mines in the path they're heading, so that the bomb blows up under them instead of on the shield.
to much fallout for humanity as a whole, secondly the martians will not give you time to do that very likely next time they will shoot down the aircraft. like they did earlier.
The blood analysis was a foreshadowing to the aliens eventual downfall. Behind their invulnerable machines the martians themselves were too weak to withstand earth’s bacteria and viruses.
During the scene where the world map showed all the Martian positions, my son asked me what was up with all the Martians in Australia. I told him because of the "Sheep Dip". Six seconds later, he was choking on his mouthful of pizza ...
There is a deleted scene 🎬, ID4, where aliens 👽 wee shocked that we had a nuke and actually lost the shields . If they hit them a second time, humans would have won sooner
