Renovatio Records presents a new, slightly expanded edition of John Williams’ harrowing score for Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (2005), one of the composer’s darkest and most uncompromising works. Two decades after the film’s release, this presentation revisits a score that stands apart within Williams’ legendary career: a relentless study in fear, chaos, and survival, shaped by post-9/11 anxiety and stripped almost entirely of traditional heroism. Released in 2005, War of the Worlds marked Spielberg’s second collaboration with Tom Cruise, following Minority Report (2002). Adapting H. G. Wells’ classic novel, the film reframes the alien invasion not as grand science-fiction spectacle, but as ground-level survival horror, experienced almost entirely through the eyes of ordinary civilians facing unimaginable catastrophe.
Cruise stars as Ray Ferrier, a divorced Brooklyn dockworker whose fractured relationship with his children — teenage Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and young Rachel (Dakota Fanning) — forms the emotional backbone of the narrative. As colossal alien tripods erupt from beneath the Earth’s surface and society collapses into panic, Ray’s journey is less about heroism than endurance, protection, and moral compromise. Miranda Otto, Tim Robbins, and a supporting cast of civilians round out a story that focuses less on organized resistance and more on confusion, fear, and helplessness.
Spielberg’s approach is deliberately intimate and unsettling. The camera often remains at street level, favoring long, chaotic takes, obstructed viewpoints, and sudden eruptions of violence. The film’s themes — fear of the unknown, societal collapse, displaced families, and the fragility of modern life — unmistakably echo the cultural trauma of the post-9/11 world. While War of the Worlds was a commercial success upon release, it proved divisive among critics and audiences, particularly regarding its abrupt resolution, often described as rushed or overly deus ex machina. Yet this ending is, in fact, remarkably faithful to Wells’ original novel, which hinges on the same cruel twist of fate rather than human triumph. In retrospect, and especially in light of the recent global COVID pandemic, the film’s conclusion carries added resonance, reinforcing its themes of human vulnerability and the illusion of control.
As with most of his films, Steven Spielberg surrounded himself on War of the Worlds with his trusted creative team: screenwriter David Koepp, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, editor Michael Kahn, production designer Rick Carter, the visual effects artists at ILM, and, crucially, composer John Williams. Together, they shaped a film whose technical precision and emotional intensity feel inseparable.
For John Williams, War of the Worlds represented a radical departure from expectation. Where many anticipated soaring themes or noble resistance music, Williams delivered something far more confrontational: a score largely stripped of traditional melody, constructed instead from texture, rhythm, and sonic assault. Drawing from avant-garde orchestral techniques, modernist dissonance, and aggressive percussion, he crafted a soundscape designed to unsettle rather than reassure. The music does not guide the audience toward hope or catharsis; instead, it mirrors the film’s worldview, one in which there are no heroes, only civilians struggling to endure forces beyond their comprehension.
The score also reflects Williams’ late-career openness to experimentation, building on the challenging musical language of A.I. Artificial Intelligence and Minority Report, but pushing it further into darker, more oppressive territory. Rather than offering thematic familiarity or recurring emotional release, the music sustains a near-constant state of unease, reinforcing the film’s refusal to provide comfort. In doing so, it stands as one of the most uncompromising statements in Williams’ long and celebrated career.
Despite its reputation as an aggressive and demanding listening experience, War of the Worlds reveals remarkable depth and sophistication when approached on its own terms. Beneath the sonic assault lies a carefully structured musical argument, one that rewards attentive listening with a wealth of ideas, textures, and emotional contrasts. In many ways, War of the Worlds echoes Williams’ own Close Encounters of the Third Kind, particularly the early stretches of that score before the benevolent nature of the aliens is revealed. Once again, Williams explores the unknown through extremes of register, allowing the orchestra’s lowest and highest voices to define an atmosphere of awe, dread, and existential unease. Where Close Encounters ultimately resolves its tension into communication and wonder, War of the Worlds offers no such reassurance, but the musical lineage is unmistakable.
Williams makes striking use of the orchestra’s low end to convey inevitability and terror. Rumbling double basses, contrabassoon clusters, and ominous brass chords underpin many of the invasion sequences, grounding the music in a sense of physical mass and unstoppable force. One of the score’s most chilling moments occurs during the basement scene, where guttural, ultra-low male choral writing accompanies the first close encounters with the alien presence. The effect is less melodic than visceral, evoking something ancient, inhuman, and utterly indifferent. In stark contrast, Williams employs piercing high-register female choir writing during moments of sheer panic, producing hair-raising cries of terror that cut through the orchestral texture like alarms. These extremes leave little emotional neutral ground, mirroring the characters’ psychological state.
For the alien presence itself, Williams avoids traditional leitmotifs, instead relying on rhythmic pulses and short, looping figures in low-register strings and brass. These patterns feel mechanical, inescapable, and alien in the truest sense. Cues such as “The Lightning Storm” establish this vocabulary early, but it is “The Intersection Scene” that stands as one of the score’s most accomplished achievements. Here, Williams masterfully balances awe and dread as civilians watch a tripod rise from beneath the earth, initially transfixed by its sheer scale. As the music grows more aggressive, the realization of threat sets in, culminating in one of the most terrifying sequences Spielberg has ever staged, as the machine deploys its weapons and turns crowds to ash. Williams’ music does not merely accompany the horror; it anticipates it, escalates it, and ultimately overwhelms it through relentless percussion, crushing low brass, and piercing choral textures.
Aggressive brass writing, stabbing figures, clustered harmonies, and pounding ostinatos dominate much of the score’s action material, generating relentless forward momentum. Tracks such as “Escape from the City” and “The Ferry Scene” highlight Williams’ exceptional control of rhythmic percussion, with cues often evolving through shifting timpani patterns and layered pulses rather than traditional thematic development. The result is music that remains perpetually on edge, never allowing either listener or character a sense of safety.
Yet amid this sonic brutality, Williams introduces a central elegy-like theme: a restrained, mournful idea that serves as the score’s emotional anchor. Heard in its most complete form in the unused cue “Refugee Status,” this theme represents the battered humanity; displacement, grief, and quiet endurance in the face of annihilation. Its absence from the final cut only heightens its impact on album, where it offers a rare moment of reflection within an otherwise hostile sound world.
Fragments of this elegy appear throughout the film during moments of human connection. In “Robbie, Ray and Rachel,” the theme is carried by strings, underscoring the tentative rebuilding of trust between the fractured family and lending warmth and vulnerability to their interactions. It reaches devastating emotional force in “The Separation of the Family,” accompanying Robbie’s decision to leave Ray and Rachel behind to join the futile human assault against the tripods. This sequence stands as one of the score’s most epic and emotionally charged passages, as Williams allows the elegy to swell against images of hopeless bravery and inevitable loss.
The theme receives its closest approximation to heroism in “The Return to Boston,” where a rare moment of human success is depicted as soldiers manage to bring down one of the alien machines. Even here, the music remains cautious (resolute rather than triumphant) as if unwilling to suggest that victory can alter the broader outcome. Finally, in “The Reunion and Finale,” Williams transforms the elegy once more, presenting it through a warm, intimate piano solo. Stripped of orchestral weight, the theme becomes deeply personal, offering a quiet sense of closure that feels earned precisely because the score has withheld comfort for so long.
Taken as a whole, War of the Worlds is not an easy score, nor was it ever meant to be. It is a work of sustained tension, emotional restraint, and deliberate discomfort. Yet beneath its harsh surface lies a carefully calibrated emotional core, shaped by contrast, architecture, and purpose. Williams strips away romanticism and heroics not to shock, but to tell this story truthfully, creating a score that stands among his boldest and most challenging achievements.
The original 2005 Decca Records album presented a powerful but reshaped listening experience, emphasizing the score’s most immediately striking material while restructuring the cue order for musical flow rather than narrative chronology. While effective as a standalone album, that presentation inevitably smoothed some of the score’s harsher edges and obscured the incremental escalation that defines Williams’ dramatic construction in the film. Several cues were combined or omitted altogether, and the reordering emphasized momentum over progression. Later, in 2020, Intrada Records offered an expanded edition that restored much of the missing material, but often at the cost of cohesion. The sheer density of Williams’ writing, combined with its aggressive tone, can become overwhelming without careful assembly.
This new Renovatio Records release strikes a deliberate balance. Slightly expanded and presented in near-chronological order, it allows the score to unfold as Williams conceived it for the film. Previously unreleased material is reintegrated not as bonus content, but as part of the narrative whole, clarifying transitions, deepening atmosphere, and giving greater context to the score’s emotional undercurrents. The result is a presentation that balances completeness with coherence, offering a deeper and more honest portrait of one of John Williams’ most challenging works. In doing so, this edition invites listeners to rediscover War of the Worlds not as an outlier in Williams’ catalog, but as a deliberate, deeply considered response to a world shaped by fear, uncertainty, and collective trauma; a score that remains as unsettling, relevant, and emotionally resonant today as it was twenty years ago.
Track listing:
Credits:
Cue Assembly:
|
Track Title |
Slate Number and Cue Title |
|
1. Prologue |
1M2 Prologue |
|
2. The Lightning Storm |
MK SC 23 "Is It Over?" (Edited) |
|
3. The Intersection Scene |
MF The Intersection Scene (Edited) |
|
4. Escape from the City |
2M4 CD Intro 2M4 Driving Away (Edited) |
|
5. Surveying Plane Wreckage |
MD SC72 Bodies In The Water 6M4 Epilogue (Edited) |
|
5. Surveying Plane Wreckage_v2 |
MD SC72 Bodies In The Water 3M1 Surveying Wreckage 6M4 Epilogue (Edited) |
|
6. Robbie, Ray and Rachel |
3M4x Who Will Take Care Of Me |
|
7. The Ferry Scene |
MP The Ferry Scene (Edited) |
|
8. Refugee Status |
4M4 Refugee Status (Edited) 4M4 CD Extension |
|
9. The Separation of the Family |
MB SC103 Woods Walk 4M5 Robbie Joins The Fight |
|
10. Probing the Basement |
MG Probing The Basement (Edited) |
|
11. The Confrontation with Ogilvy |
MQ Aliens (Edited) 5M4 Ogilvy's End (Edited) |
|
12. Rachel Is Taken |
5M6 Red Planet |
|
13. Escape from the Basket |
6M1 The Basket Scene |
|
14. The Return to Boston |
6M2 The Entrance To Boston |
|
|
6M3hp Reunion In Boston (Horn & Piano
Version) |
|
15. Epilogue |
6M3hp Reunion In Boston (Horn & Piano
Version) Pull Back Shot (Ver 1) (Edited) Pull Back Shot (Ver 2) |