Another way the book and the 2005 movie differed: the aliens in the Spielberg version were not Martians. The film never tells us where they come from. We only (incorrectly) assume they’re Martians based upon the original book and its previous adaptations.
Ah, the infamous, “Based on…” as an excuse to get people to associate a movie with a book when there really isn’t any reason to do so beyond possible legal ramifications of using the same title.
Spielberg’s was a movie, Wells’ was a book.
ALWAYS going to be differences between the genres.
That being obvious to everyone here ;), I would really like to see a well done modern movie with the action kept in the original time period. And sugar free chocolate that tastes good, which ain’t gonna happen either.
Alien invaders? Assemble the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen!
I’d pay to see that! (But he’d probably put a little kid on the invasion fleet.)
The Barry movie was much better, I thought. Flying Martian battle machines were very cool, and the heat ray sound effects were awesome.
I AM the last of my kind!
just mixing up movies again …
One thing I can thank my ex-husband for is introducing me to this. My favorite piece of music was the song “When You’re Not There”. A wistful tune, with the protagonist missing his wife.
The book was written in 1898 - how did they know about WWII?
And since when are heat rays “WWII-level technology?”
The book didn’t state it - Chronos did back in post 12. And as others said, I don’t remember the Nazi heat ray turning a lot of battles.
I thought the C. Thomas Howell version from 2007 was rather nice. Next to no money for effects so it was plot driven and there was no Dakota Fanning.
When my daughter was 7, I asked her what her favorite movie quote was.
“What’s that, daddy?”
"You know, a line somebody says in a movie that you liked. For example, a famous movie quote from The Wizard of Oz is ‘I’ll get you my pretty… and your little dog, too!’ "
“Oh, I get it!”
:thinks:
(She deepens her voice and shouts out)
" ‘No, Robby, not like Europe!’ "
I busted a gut. I didn’t know what to expect, but I sure didn’t expect that!
Nowadays, she does a pitch-perfect Napolean Dynamite. It’s damned funny.
Spoiler alert-
There are no cylinders but instead weird lightning strikes which deliver the aliens into the tripods which apparently have been underground since God knows when waiting for their crew.
I actually thought that was kinda inventive.
I would consider stunned zombielike movements and stunned silence after the first attack. There is [in my opinion] only so much horror you can have trigger you before you are overloaded and start to withdraw. Newt is more what I would expect if she stayed active. The urge to be silent, and hide, and skulk around the edges and remain unnoticed. Survival instinct. Most kids do not have that much survival instinct now I feel thanks to the training of tv and computers to become passive observers.
I’d pay good money to see that.
I also liked it.
Well, ok.. we had ‘Heat Bombs’. Seriously, I’d stack the US military as it existed at the end of 1945 against the martians as described in the book any day. The martians would get their asses handed to them. The heat rays as described don’t sound particularly more lethal than a barrage of 90mm shells called in by any GI with a radio. Nukes would be overkill but we had them.
Ogilvy, in the Wells original, was an astronomer neighbour/friend of the writer/narrator who provided some necessary scientific background and commentary. He turned out to be wrong on a number of counts, but he represented a scientific establishment utterly unprepared for the possibility of alien intelligence, so that is understandable. Ogilvy also made it into the Jeff Wayne version, essentially unchanged.
In the abysmal Spielberg film, he is turned into a rambling blue-collar cretin for no reason whatsoever.
I disagree with your first statement, I agree to some extent with the second but do not find it terribly important to the overall quality of the film. I think this might have been a better movie if it had been a stand-alone product (they completely massacred Wells’s story anyway!) without pretensions to one of the most important titles in literature. It could have been just another alien invasion movie.
The problem is it *was *presented (not to mention hyped) as War of the Worlds, and it failed to meet the expectations raised by its hallowed name… except for Spielberg’s usual high standards in visual effects.
My beef with Spielberg is that he always finds a way to insert children into his movies…and then have them SCREAAAAAM!
He rewrote War of the Worlds to add screaming children. He rewrote Jurassic Park to add screaming children. Temple of Doom suffered because he felt compelled to give Indy a screaming-child sidekick. Hell, he even managed to insert a screaming child into Saving Private Ryan. I’m surprised he didn’t give Oskar Shindler a screaming nephew to tag along with him.
Screaming children are a Spielberg tic, and a damned annoying one at that.
ETA: Oh, and he also wrote The Goonies, which is like the Citizen Kane of screaming children movies.
Two words: Tom Cruise
major suckfest. sorry i wasted the money to see it.