War of the Worlds (2005 film) War of the Worlds (2005 film) War of the Worlds is a 2005 American science-fiction action disaster film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Josh Friedman and David Koepp, loosely based on the 1898 novel of the same title by H. G. Wells and jointly produced and released by Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures. It stars Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Justin Chatwin, Miranda Otto and Tim Robbins, with narration by Morgan Freeman. In the film, an American dock worker is forced to look after his children, from whom he lives separately, as he struggles to protect them and reunite
The War of the Worlds 1900 echo scientific ideas of the time, including Pierre-Simon Laplace's nebular hypothesis, Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, and Gustav Kirchhoff's theory of spectroscopy. These scientific ideas combined to present the possibility that planets are alike in composition and conditions for the development of species, which would likely lead to the emergence of life at a suitable geological age in a planet's development. By the time Wells wrote "The War of the Worlds" there had been three centuries of observation of Mars through telescopes. Galileo in 1610 observed the planet's phases, and in 1666 Giovanni Cassini identified the polar ice