posted
Well with the big hype over the movie and Tom Cruise's deeper dissent into insanity, I thought I might bring up this little jewel of a website which details the book covers used for H.G. Wells' novel throughout history. I really like the different interpretations of the Martians "war machines" yet several covers caught my eye:
From those covers you'd think that this book was about tentacle porn, yet I read the book and was sorely disappointed that there was none
Anyways here's the site
Registered: Feb 2005
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We've been debating this to death over at SSM. The Speilberg version looks slick but does not seem to follow the book closely and both Speilberg and Cruise have said that the movie is "more about family values and relationships than interplanetary war".
What the fuck are they thinking?
Also, it seems the Martians do not arrive from Mars, bur rather were buried for millions of years and re-awakened to reclaim their (yawn) world and...ZZzzzz...
Pendragon Films just released their (really close to the book- which I bought) version on DVD but it's laughably bad acting and CGI in places.... Really good renditoin of the Martians and the Flying Machine looks very nice buuut it would serve best as a teaching tool for schools and not as a feature film.
Just read the fucking book!
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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quote:Also, it seems the Martians do not arrive from Mars, bur rather were buried for millions of years and re-awakened to reclaim their (yawn) world and...ZZzzzz...
Wasn't that the basic idea behind the X-Files movie?
My favorite War of the Worlds cover is the one on the copy of the book I bought when I was in the fifth grade:
The image of the cold metal war machines stomping relentlessly through the burning city and terrified crowds always seemed to best sum up the story for me.
-------------------- "Having is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true."
Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
"The Speilberg version looks slick but does not seem to follow the book closely and both Speilberg and Cruise have said that the movie is 'more about family values and relationships than interplanetary war.'"
Well, have you read the book lately? It isn't exactly a rousing war story. Everyone is ruthlessly slaughtered until the aliens get sick and die. We're not talking The Longest Day with rayguns here. (Though I was sort of surprised the last time I took a look at it to see that the military had managed to destroy more tripods than I remembered.)
I'm kind of looking forward to the movie.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
I read the book two weeks ago actually: it's all about one man's flight both away from the martians and into desperation as his proud society crumbles in a few short days time.
It's also a parable for English colonialism of the day- Wells was showing how his society would react to it's own overseas policies.
If Speilberg used those themes, it would be amazing.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
A little off topic, I always thought that War of the Worlds was one of those stories that is essentially unfilmable for a mass audience. (Aliens destroy stuff and start taking over the world...and then die of a cold) Yes, I know it has been filmed before, but it always seemed odd to me. Foundation is another one of those seemingly unfilmable stories (Loop, People talk about stuff for a long time, stuff happens offscreen, people analyse the results, end loop), but someone seems to have plans for that too. There was also Alexander (Man conquers much of the known world with thrilling battles! And then *cough* dies of malaria *cough*), but that got filmed.
Don't really know what my point is...
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Alexander sucked ass and was grossly miscast though....
Foundation will probably have many "re-imagineing" done to it (adding sex and violence for certain) to get HOllywood to buy into it.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Is there some severe shortage of story writers in Hollywood these days? When someone wants to make amovie about family values, why can they no longer have someone write a story about family values? Why do they have to find some utterly unrelated story, steal its name, and mess around with it until it manages to neither convey the original intent, nor the filmmaker's?
Registered: Mar 1999
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WizArtist II
"How can you have a yellow alert in Spacedock? "
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posted
Everyone is caught in the nostalgia of early days of TV crap. Since those stories were being visualized for the first time, the newness and sense of awe and wonder was there. The Movie Mafia in order to turn the quick buck can simply cash in on the average person's comfort and familiarity with the old stuff by doing a cheap rewrite and throwing a CGI blow job in the mix. Result = instant $ and no creativity has had to be expended.
-------------------- There are 10 types of people in the world...those that understand Binary and those that don't.
Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
That's why I skipped I Robot. The classics are all up for sale and all the intrested parties are only after their titles.
Everyone's heard of War Of the Worlds already so half the marketing is already finished before the movie is ever filmed.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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"The Movie Mafia in order to turn the quick buck can simply cash in on the average person's comfort and familiarity with the old stuff by doing a cheap rewrite and throwing a CGI blow job in the mix."
But, Spielberg? Shouldn't he already have enough money that he can concentrate on quality instead of marketing? And does he really want to be "that guy who used to do some pretty neat movies, but now he does crappy knock-offs"?
Registered: Mar 1999
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