10 Movies With Crazy Foreshadowing You Totally Missed

9. The Splinter Analogy - War Of The Worlds

War Of The Worlds Splinter
Paramount

Steven Spielberg's take on H.G. Wells' War Of The Worlds might just well be one of the most underrated movies of recent times. It was, after all, far more intelligent and a whole lot denser than most people gave it credit for - as witnessed by the seemingly random dialogue cue that left most people pondering why the screenplay had made time for Dakota Fanning to talk about splinters.

That's to say, there's a moment where Fanning's screaming and somewhat insufferable character, Rachel, refuses to let her father, Ray (Tom Cruise), remove a splinter from her hand. And her reasoning - "When it's ready, my body'll just push it out" - serves up some clever foreshadowing regarding the ending of the movie, in which the Martians meet their doom as a result of their immune systems not being able to cope Earth-based bacteria.

Like Rachel's splinter, the aliens are ejected from Earth when they are no longer wanted, but the moment also sheds light on the genius of the immune system and our reliance on it to survive.

It's a neat little analogy that views the whole movie in microcosm - one that most folks probably missed.

Contributor

Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.