Fighting machine (The War of the Worlds) the tripods' main body and the aliens' heads resemble cuttlefish. In Pendragon Pictures' low-budget, direct-to-DVD "H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds" (aka "Invasion" internationally or "War of the Worlds"), the only Victorian-set adaptation of Wells' novel, the tripod fighting machine design is loosely based on the look of a praying mantis, which, according to director Timothy Hines, was a favorite insect of H. G. Wells. Tripods have a large, free-moving head atop the smaller main body, giving its sole Martian occupant a panoramic view. It has four thick, metallic tentacles, which are held on high, made up of boxy-looking
The War of the Worlds infrastructure such as armament stores, railways, and telegraph lines; it appears to be intended to cause maximum casualties, leaving humans without any will to resist. These tactics became more common as the twentieth century progressed, particularly during the 1930s with the development of mobile weapons and technology capable of surgical strikes on key military and civilian targets. Wells's vision of a war bringing total destruction without moral limitations in "The War of the Worlds" was not taken seriously by readers at the time of publication. He later expanded these ideas in the novels "When the Sleeper Wakes" (1899), "The War