Allegory

War of the worlds is considered a very allegorical film, referencing 9/11 in a lot of ways that are easily noticeable and put in the film to establish this. Spielberg wanted to portray these terrorist attacks, of 9/11, and create film based upon it and show the terror and the paranoia of the people that had witnessed 9/11 happen.  The fear in people is also a major factor of 9/11 as there was a mass sense of panic within America and most of the world too, so the film needed to show this.

            The film showed a lot of allegory when considering 9/11 and comparing it to it. 9/11 contained a lot that was shown in the film, for example: there is an overwhelming amount of grey smoke in the film; when we first see the tripod rise through the ground. The smoke seems to be pouring out of the ground that the tripod has ripped up. This can be linked to when the terrorist crashed the plane into the twin towers and there was grey smoke everywhere; this is possibly one of the most iconic scenes from 9/11 as the smoke flooded the streets and created a lot of panic.

            Ray, after seeing the tripod rise, stares at it in almost disbelieve, and is naïve to the fact that it’s going to destroy everyone. Once the tripod starts disintegrating people, we can see that there are clothes falling from the sky.  This represents the clothes and people falling from the twin towers when the planes crashed into it and had no other option but to jump.  The people running away is also a direct reference to the amount of people running away from the towers, and through the streets when 9/11 occurred

            Later on in the film we see Ray in a scene of destruction and aftermath that the aliens have left. In this scene we notice at least one crashed plane on fire, which has turned the surrounding area into rubble. The plane crashed we can easily assume is a reference to 9/11 as it’s burning and completely devastated the surrounding buildings.

From this scene we can see the allegory message that is the aliens do not want to do anything more than destroy the world and take over so they can rule it. This is the same way the terrorist felt when they committed the attack on the twin towers. They, as extremist Muslims, want everyone in the world to worship their religion, and will kill themselves and everyone else who doesn’t believe in that religion. So basically their objectives are very much the same as the aliens and have no concern over people, which dehumanises both the terrorists and the aliens.