To my mind, the book was much less about the aliens than it was about war in general. The British had colonized much of the world with their high industrial level technology but hadn’t had a full scale war on their shores in several centuries. The Book is about how it be if this was turned around and Britain was attacked by a technologically superior force, and how the British would react to such an invasion. Of course since there was no one stronger than the British empire at the time, Wells needed to import a foe.
True, but it did generate the hilarious spoof that was Scary Movie 4.
The children were in the original book, though the ages were reversed.
Newt? All Newt did in Aliens was, you know, scream her head off whenever she was threatened*. You know, just like Dakota Fanning’s character in WOTW:
- When her dad was face-hugged (extended edition)
- When the alien was released in the med center
- When she fell into the water
- When she ran from the alien in the final scene
And others. “RIPLEY!! RIPLEEEEEYYY!”
Also, other than the Dad face-hugging scene, we see the two girls at different stages of their traumatic experiences - Fanning at the beginning of it, Newt after having survived a few weeks/months.
I still don’t know which film character you’re referring to. Tim Robbins? What would a “scientific expert” have brought to the film other than a bunch of expository verbiage that is irrelevant to the theme(s) of the movie: how suddenly your life can be destroyed, the confusion and dislocation brought about by this, and the repression of morality in the face of extreme adversity. Hell, Cruise at one point had to make his own “Sophie’s choice” - his son or his daughter? He was going to lose one, and he had to decide which one he was going to lose.
But the movie wasn’t a mere retelling of the novel, it was a story of how a family reacts when their world is turned upside down. Having read the novel a number of times (hell, the first time I read it was the second grade), I don’t really remember it with the rose-tinted glasses you obviously do: for example, I thought the ending was lame then, lame now, but that was the ending.
Since Spielberg didn’t have to show how the situation was resolved, he didn’t make that movie.
Then he should have called it something else.
:rolleyes:
But Well’s didn’t show the situation being resolved, either. There was no resolution - the things just upped and died.
Yes, Tim Robbins is the actor I believe. What a “scientific expert” would have brought to the movie is not really the issue… this was supposed to be War of the Worlds and in War of the Worlds Ogilvy is a totally different character. The reason I brought it up was not to get hung up on it but to show how Spielberg dumbed down this project in order to appeal to the average Joe. From educated gentleman to wife-beater-wearing psychopath… not really a promising move.
There’s plenty of awesome story in Wells’s novel - not really so in Spielberg’s movie. It’s just another “alien invasion” flick when it is actually supposed to be THE Alien Invasion Flick.
This is exactly the problem: it is NOT War of the Worlds. It is just another alien attack film. Why was it called War of the Worlds if the major elements from the original material were ditched?
To improve on Wells? Spielberg improving on the grandaddy of all alien invasion stories? War of the Worlds has stood the test of time and will continue to be remembered a century from now. Not War of the Worlds almost certainly will not.
The entire family plot was shoe-horned into this film in order to provide some kind of emotional core that the audience could latch on to, presumably. It’s hardly anything of exceptional artistic merit. Wells’s original story has plenty of skillfully delivered emotional content (e.g. the amazing Thunderchild sequence). Frankly, this tendency in Hollywood movies to include at all costs a number of lowest common denominators is a bit tiresome. I don’t feel it improves on the original, quite the opposite.
I find the original ending fantastic (and wholly original). After the full might of humankind fails to repel the Martians, the latter are defeated by our puniest organisms and humankind survives by a hair’s breadth. Pretty awesome!
I’ve heard a few people mention this and it is something I just do not understand. The only reason to do this is because a giant machine (or radiation monster - just ask Toho studios) bursting out of the ground is cool. To hide giant war machines under the ground for an invasion thousands of years in the future is a retarded tactic. Why not just take over the planet then and there when there is no need for giant war machines in the first place? Using lightning as a transportation device makes no sense and if you had such amazing advanced technology are you seriously telling me the best tactical use you can find for it is as a transport system to a ten thousand year old mechanical walking tripod?
You get pretty close to the same cool effect with a machine climbing out of a cylinder in a crater. You also have an ominous cylinder (from space!!!) in a crater which is pretty cool too.
If aliens are going to get around with lighting bolts do not try to tell me you are going to be able to see them squeezing through the lightning like an octopus through a rubber hose when you slow down the film. It makes about as much sense as Tom Cruise speaking about Scientology.
There’s nothing in the movie that states that the machines have been hiding for X years… it’s mere supposition by a character who knows as little as anybody else. It’s just as easy to fanwank that the same lightning that brought the pilots down also deposited and activated nanites, which built the machines.
Again, the point is no one knows, which is one of the themes of the movie - dislocation and confusion, and how one acts when your world is turned upside down by powerful, seemingly invincible, invaders.
Sorry, but my second-grade self must disagree. They can travel from Mars, they can destroy London, but they can’t be bothered to inoculate?
Do you have the same problems with the Gene Barry movie, which took as many liberties with the source material as the Spielberg film? It, too, called itself War of the Worlds, though it was definitely not the same story - set in LA, had flying machines (no tripods), introduced a “useless, lowest-common denominator” female character in an attempt to bring in some romantic tension, and everybody ended up in church to pray to God, Jesus, and all the Saints, an ending that definitely wasn’t in the book and can (should?) be used as another example of “Hollywood dumbing down to the LCD.” At least Spielberg respected the source material enough as to not hint that prayers brought the machines down, unlike the 1953 film. Had he been more faithful to the Barry movie, I think the outrage would be deafening. 
I also think the Tim Robbins character wasn’t supposed to be Ogilvey, but instead was a take-off of the crazy preacher that the novel’s protagonist was holed up with. To quote Wiki:
In regards to the Robbins character, it sounds like Spielberg was more faithful to the book than you remember.
Well, you know how we sometimes think we’re so smart as 2nd graders? Classic example right here. Go re-read the book now, and note this line:
Clearly indicating that Martians did not know about bacteria at all and were thus powerless against them. What’s so strange about the Martians’ demise, really? What would they inoculate against, since they reside on the other side of the gulf of space and are unfamiliar with the hazards of microorganisms?
The REAL error Wells made (and it is understandable if you think about when the book was written) is that our Earthly bugs would be unlikely to affect alien species, given the absence of a common evolutionary track.
Not nearly as many liberties, but yes I do have quite a few problems with it and I did NOT like the examples of dumbing down and LCD you bring up. The difference is that Spielberg’s effort was ultimately inconsequential. It added nothing to the genre, and in fact “borrowed” several devices from the 1950s original. The Gene Barry movie (which I admit I have not seen in 15 years) was - aside from being the first ever screen adaptation of the novel - a strong and original movie in its own right, considered one of the great films of the 1950s, historically important, and pretty much the first seminal alien invasion treatment on the silver screen, progenitor of countless future ones.
Spielberg’s effort was not anything near as relevant. To be fair and give credit where credit is due, we have to remember that Tom Cruise’s performance was nominated for Worst Actor and was pretty entertaining
I think you have the 1953 movie somewhat wrong. The shameless pandering to religion is there but it’s no more than an ambiguous hint. It shows humankind taking refuge in dire straits in the house of God, but the Martians were brought down (unequivocally) by microorganisms, not by divine intervention - though it was God who in his wisdom placed the microorganisms on the planet, of course :). Ultimately this is left open to interpretation, because it is equally as easy to see the events that transpire as an indictment against faith in divine protection. I may not be 100% accurate on that last count, since I’ve not seen the movie in years, but that’s what I got out of it.
Correct! This is why I find it such an unpleasant issue. The Spielberg redneck version of Ogilvy (whose real fate should be to be vaporized by Martians when he approaches them in diplomatic capacity) is pandering to the lowest common denominator yet again. The disturbed curate in the novel shows how religious devotion is powerless in the face of superior technological might, and in fact ultimately harmful. Spielberg decided to cop out on this powerful theme and axed the curate from the movie, replacing it with a character who in the novel was a scientist! That’s pretty obnoxious.
Incindentally, JohnT, in the Jeff Wayne version of War of the Worlds, Ogilvy is an astronomer and the disturbed curate remains a clergyman. To date, Jeff Wayne’s remarkable rock opera remains the strongest adaptation of the novel. Cinema has some catching up to do. Ulla!
And their underwear. It turned people and their underwear to dust but left their outer clothing. Or maybe it’s just that no woman in New Jersey wears a bra.
Heh, as a result of reading this thread I downloaded the Jeff Wayne version - I really liked it (though the '70s era beat in the music did convey an unfortunate hint of disco-dancing Martians 
). I particularly like “The eve of war” and “Thunder Child”. And, of course, the Martians hooting “ULLLAAA!”
Of course he takes some liberties with the text, removing the brother’s tale and adding an optomistic curate’s wife. The former is more understandable than the latter.
It would be truly awesome if they ever did a movie version even partly as close to the book …
The latter is understandable in light of there being zero female characters in WOTW (excepting the never really appearing wife of the protagonist), much like most Victorian/Edwardian novels.
There were only a handful of actual characters in the original - the narrator, the astronomer, the brother, the curate, the artilleryman (twice!). Given the times, none of these could realistically be female except the brother - who was rightfully eliminated in the dramatisation as duplicative of the narrator. Making the narrator female could work I suppose, but would be a pretty major change.
Creating a wholly new character if only to give it some gender balance seemed a misstep to me.
A worse misstep was the second ending, which should simply have been left off.
In short, I approved where the adaptation condensed, but not where it attempted to expand.
I’ve always thought the ending of the Tom Cruise WOTW was a dream or fantasy. Like the finale of Seinfeld. In both, I think the characters all died and what we saw for endings was wishful thinking (in WOTW - oh, look - happy family, all reunited!) In Seinfeld - welcome to Purgatory.
Those machines were shooting at the cast of “Jersey Shore”. I wonder if those Martians werent here to help humanity after all.
This is very strange - as I was half way through this thread, one of the tracks from Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds started playing on the radio.