10 Smartest Villain Plans From Sci-Fi Movies

3. Burying The Tripods - The Aliens (War Of The Worlds)

Superman Lex Luthor Gene Hackman
Paramount Pictures

If anyone ever tells you that their favourite Stephen Spielberg film is 2005's War of the Worlds, terminate any sort of contact you may have with them immediately. They clearly cannot be trusted.

Spielberg's Tom Cruise-fronted adaptation of H. G. Well's seminal novel is far from a classic, but it does get one thing right in how it portrays its villains as far more advanced than the human race.

One day, the Earth gets some visitors in the form of giant, weaponised tripods. The three-legged titans emerge from the ground and begin laying waste to the Earth and its inhabitants. It's up to Tom to keep his kids safe as the destruction continues.

To be fair, of all the humans you'd want looking after you during an alien invasion, Tom Cruise is up there.

The aliens - who are Martians in Wells' original book - have been plotting this attack for a long time; long enough that they were able to bury huge machines underground without anyone noticing.

They took the world by complete surprise and would have gotten away it it too, if it weren't for those meddling microbes.

Contributor
Contributor

Jacob Simmons has a great many passions, including rock music, giving acclaimed films three-and-a-half stars, watching random clips from The Simpsons on YouTube at 3am, and writing about himself in the third person.