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There are several differences between the tripods as described in Wells' novel and those in Steven Spielberg's 2005 film, which come from an undisclosed planet. In this version the tripods were long ago brought to Earth, having been buried underground in its past. The aliens instead travel in "capsules" to their machines by some kind of "beaming" process resembling lightning (from where or what is never revealed), which transports them underground. The lighting containing the capsules travel faster than the eye can see, and the unearthing of the first war machine suggests they may have also each been kept in something similar to a cylinder (which might have been part of a rocket or other transportation that brought them, long ago, to Earth). In a published interview, screenwriter David Koepp stated his belief that they were planted long ago by these extraterrestrials as a part of some kind of alien "contingency plan" (said plan never being revealed to the audience).

The features of the tripods also differ: They do not possess the novel's killing chemical black smoke and are equipped with some type of invisible force shield that only becomes visible when struck; no human weapons can penetrate them (an obvious reference to George Pal's original 1953 film version). They are armed with two heat-ray-like weapons that incinerate humans to ash, leaving the victim's clothing behind while destroying and burning everything else; this caused confusion for some viewers and also among critics. It has been put forward that aliens' heat-ray only destroys "organic" matter, though this does not fully explain the destruction of buildings and vehicles, nor the untouched cotton and wool of clothes, both of which are organic. One offered solution is that the heat-ray is a high energy coherent emission of microwaves similar to a Maser that causes the water in the human body to superheat into very high temperature steam, which then causes the victim to explode into ash as it instantly expands; this would also account for the metal objects it hits catching fire as they heat up, like metal objects placed in a microwave oven.

The tripods have several searchlights mounted and facing forward for use as they move at night. Like in Wells' novel the tripod's three legs are completely flexible, even rubber-like in their appearance and movement. The tripod's legs have no visible mechanical joints or pivot-points, and they propel themselves by truly "walking" over any terrain; this can be seen as faithful to the original novel, where Wells describes the tripods as being more organic in their nature than mechanical. Spielberg's tripods also emit loud, deep bellows, which seem to be a means of calling out to one other, similar to how Wells' originally described them at one point in the book. The sounds used by the tripods in the film consist of one loud 113 Hz blast (between A2 and A#2 on the musical scale) for three seconds, followed by a deep 136 Hz blast (near C#3) for another three seconds, sounding very much like Earth lighthouse foghorn blasts. The tripods are also equipped with numerous retracting and expanding tentacles for the capturing of humans, as well as two long thick-wire cages running directly underneath and along on each side of the machine's main body, used for temporary human prisoner storage; the hatches over each cage dial open and then sucks-up captured humans for off-camera blood processing. The machines are also equipped with a retractable, snake-like, aerial camera probe used to search inside abandoned buildings and in other locations that cannot be directly observed. The points where the hatches meet the human storage cages seems to be a tripod weak point; in one climatic scene, a captured soldier's belt of pulled-pin and activatedhand grenades is able to destroy one of the tripods after the grenades explode inside, causing the machine to crash to the ground.

Additionally, the tripods have another tentacle used as a pipette to drain human blood, the collected blood then being sprayed from the tripods' heads as fertilizer to aid the spread of their fast-growing terreforming red weed. (The captured humans that get sucked into the tripods' interior could very well have their blood drained in an alien machine by a more direct process.) Similar to the book, the tripods appear to emit some kind of black smoke before arming and firing the heat-ray, although this may only be accumulated dust and fine debris or a chemical steam for clearing vents. We discover the tripods are made to resemble the aliens themselves, which have three legs, a large head, and three arms attached to their bodies. Some have observed that the tripods' main body housing and the aliens' heads look like cuttlefish.