Surprised so many of the films skip the 2 scariest Martian weapons entirely, heat rays being invisible and the black smoke. Yeah they're overpowered and mean that you can't have cool scenes of characters narrowly escaping a Tripod but it would also make Tripods just way scarier when they have an effective AoE death zone around them.

While invisible heat ray doesn't look as bombastic, its way creepier when a weird tentacle comes up, a light snaps in it like it just took a photograph and suddenly all living things in front of it are on fire. Thats the one thing that was silly with the 2005 adaptation, tripods essentially using railguns to snipe random civilians, just because Tom Cruise can't run away a lore-accurate heat ray that just instantly sets every civilian in front of the gun on fire.