What 2005 film is about Earth being invaded by alien tripod fighting machines?

The 2005 film about Earth being invaded by alien tripod fighting machines is War of the Worlds. Directed by Steven Spielberg, it stars Tom Cruise as Ray Ferrier, a New Jersey dockworker trying to protect his children during the invasion.

The film adapts H. G. Wells’s 1898 science-fiction novel, although it relocates the story to the contemporary United States. Its alien war machines emerge from beneath the ground and use powerful heat-ray weapons, force shields, and human-harvesting equipment. Their three-legged design connects them directly to Wells’s famous “tripods.”

A common mix-up is confusing the 2005 film with the 1953 film of the same name, or with the novel itself. The 2005 version is also notable for depicting the invaders as aliens that planted or occupied machines buried on Earth long before the attack. The invasion ultimately fails because the aliens have no immunity to Earth’s microorganisms.