Amazon Prime Video's War of the Worlds ended with the aliens' deaths, but it was way different from other iterations. The 2025 reboot is based on H.G. Wells' 1898 novel, The War of the Worlds, and it showcases an alien invasion through the eyes of Will Radford (Ice Cube), a security threat analyst working for the Department of Homeland Security.
While the movie begins by focusing on Will's uneasy surveillance of his two children, Faith and Dave, an alien invasion of Earth raises the stakes. The invasion was unique and calculated, mainly because the invaders' target was the planet's data.
Directed by Rich Lee, War of the Worlds is headlined by a strong cast of actors, such as Ice Cube (who also starred in the 21 Jump Street franchise), Eva Longoria, Clark Gregg, Andrea Savage, Henry Hunter Hall, and Devon Bostick. The movie premiered on Amazon Prime Video on July 30, 2025.
Why Did the Aliens Die In War of the Worlds 2025 Movie?
There were several attempts to thwart the alien invaders in 2025's War of the Worlds. First, the global military force coordinated a wide-scale attack to defeat most of the cybernetic-infused alien creatures, but Will Radford later noticed that it was just a diversion because the aliens' real target was a program called Goliath.
Goliath was a highly secure surveillance program that was more invasive because it could predict people's thoughts and movements. Radford's boss, Don Briggs (the Director of the Department of Homeland Security), was aware of how dangerous it was but decided to activate it because it was his twisted way of protecting the people.
It turned out that the government had been aware of these invaders because they had already done a small-scale invasion in the past, much to Radford's disappointment. Goliath's activation became a sort of "dinner bell" for the alien invaders, leading to their attack on the present day to obtain the planet's precious data.
The second attempt to eliminate the invaders was to create a virus that would act as a Trojan horse and disable the aliens. However, it didn't work, and it killed the other hackers who created the virus in the first place.
The final attempt to defeat the aliens was created through a coordinated attack made by Will, his son Dave (who was revealed to be a hacker known as the Disruptor), his daughter Faith, her boyfriend Mark, and his NASA contact, Dr. Sandra Salas.
After learning from Sandra that the aliens are a hybrid organism (biological and cyber-infused), Faith, a biomedical researcher, managed to re-engineer a virus called the cannibal code by tricking them into cannibalizing themselves.
At the end of War of the Worlds, Will was able to insert the cannibal code into Goliath's server, which culminated in the aliens' deaths after they were overwhelmed by the corrupted data.
The deaths of the invaders in 2025's War of the Worlds were quite unique and embraced a modern twist, which was different from previous versions of on-screen adaptations of H.G. Wells' novel.
So, How Did the Aliens Die in Other War of the Worlds Stories?
All versions of War of the Worlds ended with the aliens being defeated, but the way they died in the novel and various live-action iterations varied.
H.G. Wells' 1989 novel ended with the Martian invaders succumbing to Earth's bacteria because they had no immunity to them. They were ultimately "slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared." The bacteria did not affect the humans because they had already developed immunity against them.
Other versions of War of the Worlds ended in the same way (Earth's microbes killing the invaders), such as in Jeff Wayne's album adaptation, Byron Haskin's 1953 movie, and Steven Spielberg's 2005 film of the same name.
BBC's War of the Worlds series from 2019 (starring Twisters star Daisy Edgar-Jones and Gabriel Byrne) ended the same way, but it had an added reason for the invaders' exposure to Earth's environmental factors (which is why they died).
2025's War of the Worlds stands out from the rest of these adaptations because the protagonists were more active in devising a plan to defeat the invaders, which ultimately led to the creation and execution of the cannibal code that led to their enemies' demise.
