Awesome / War of the Worlds (2005)

• Robbie's decision to run back and rescue the few people still clinging to the edge of the ferry after it undocked without a full load of passengers to flee a pack of Tripods. Of course it's difficult to say whether any or them survived, regardless, since the ferry is capsized by a Tripod waiting underwater and its occupants are mostly pulled out of the Hudson to be used as Human Resources. Still, this stands out as a moment of genuine badassery for a character whose desire to be a hero mostly serves only to put himself and others in harm's way.
• The Marines on the hill deserve a mention here. Although they get their collective asses handed to them hard. They still stand their ground to try and delay the advance of the Tripods until the civilians can get away. It also counts as a bit of Heartwarming because these Marines KNEW that from the moment they made contact, they weren't going to survive this fight.
  • They get avenged later on when an Army unit manages to catch a Tripod in a city, with its shields down, and THEY are packing Javelin Anti-Tank Missiles and Carl Gustov Recoiless Rifles. The fight goes about as well for the Tripod in question as it had been for the humans up to that point.
• Perhaps not as badass as the marines in the last example, but the conductors who direct crowds of refugees in various scenes, such as onto the ferry. We don't even know if they're employees or volunteers, but either way, they could have fled long ago and had a better chance of saving themselves; instead they stayed behind, to try to help others, and died.
• Ray making the decision to kill Ogilvy is a pivotal moment for him. It says a lot about how far he'll go to keep Rachel safe.
  Ray: Do you understand what I'm going to have to do? I can't let my daughter die because of you.
  • Rachel also gets one simply for keeping herself calm and making it all the way through her lullaby. Given how terrified she must have been, that's pretty impressive.
• Rachel gets one earlier, when she spots the signs that the Martians are about to attack the ferry, and alerts her father to this.
• Ray detonates a belt of hand grenades into the alien's tripod after being captured, by exploiting their method of selecting humans for draining.
  • Bonus for the people in the cage saving him from being killed. The fact that many more could have been sucked away or possibly lost Ray had they not managed is in itself frightening, the fact that people saw a man about to be sucked away to his doom and got together, determined, and pulled him out alive is both Heartwarming in itself and even Awesome in that they also prevented Heroic Sacrifice to get Ray to the end.
  • Also before that, when he grabs a bag of grenades and starts throwing them at the tripod that took his daughter.
  • The reason Rachel was captured in the first place is that she sees her father pinned down by a tripod and comes out of hiding to scream at it, drawing its attention. She was willing to put her life at risk to save her father.
  • When Ray is grabbed by the tentacle, Rachel wraps her arms around him and tries to hold him back, showing she won't let him go without a fight.
  • It's poignant that immediately after the grenades wreck the Tripod and all the captured people were safe, Rachel stares at Ray with a look of total awe in her face, clearly thinking "wow, my dad actually IS awesome".
  • It also provides a major Catharsis Factor to see that at least one of these monstrous tripods can actually be taken down.
• The sheer, unbelievable Catharsis Factor of how the aliens are finally conquered; after spending the entire movie treating humanity as either target practice or harvesting materials, and just overall acting like they’re above humanity, they are completely and utterly crushed by a terrifyingly invisible enemy that they don’t have time to work out how to fight; much like how humankind lacked the time and resources to find out how to fight them. The irony is palpable, and so, so sweet.
  • Ray's reaction when the last tripod comes down seals it. He hugs Rachel tenderly, telling her that he loves her, then carries her over to the tripod, so she can see with her own eyes that it's finally over, that the aliens that have terrorized her all film can't hurt her anymore. Very satisfying.
• It happened offscreen but there's the fact that Robbie managed to survive the battle between the tripods and the military and made it back to his family all by himself. Pretty impressive.

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