quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: Looks like a giant cricket.
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?
Possibly, something along the lines of "Hey, Steven, I want you to direct me the super-star in a movie with lots of explosions and action and a kid or two and a big title people will recognize!" "Well, how about 'War of the Worlds'? I'm sure we can turn that into something that will do."
From what I had seen so far, it looked like Spielberg and Cruise had watched that horrible TV series from some years ago and thought that was the original source... even the movie poster looks a lot like the title screen from the series opening.
Of course, it could be argued that the series was based on the 1953 movie, which in turn was based on the book, so that there wouls still be a connection between this movie and the original story, but...
quote: Looks like a giant cricket.
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...
Then it's worse than I had thought. Wouldn't H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu stories have been better suited for such a story?
quote: Looks like a giant cricket.
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!
So, they had to release it directly to DVD? I was hoping someone would bring that one to local theatres to counteract the effects of the Spielberg/Cruise one...
Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
posted
Honestly, I was really looking forward to the Pendragon version for a year and their press releases always indicated that it would be a theatrical release....untill Speilberg's version was slated for summer. THen they announced the direct to DVD format, but I still expected a theactrical quality movie. It's not.
There is also another direct to DVD version to be released in July (starring C. Thomas Howell) but the cover for that looks exactlt like Independence Day- complete with the beam destroying the White House from above). The War Machines in that version look like giant crabs- I shit you not- giant crabs.
Good comparison between the crappy TV series logo and the new poster- looks like nothing is too original in Speilberg's version.
Another strange comment from Speiberg on the new movie (regarding the Redweed the martians accidentally brought with them)
quote:"I wanted to explore the environmental aspect of the martians arrival- the book deals a lot with the environmental consequences of the invasion".
Er...what book is that?
Still, I hope for an enjoyable (if not accurate) movie.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
posted
The War of the Worlds could never be accurately portrayed because in my opinion the book was not such much an action story but more of a slaughterfest that symbolized the evils of colonialism. At the movie's premiere many actors stated that Spielberg's version was more like the book, obviously showing they did not read the book (sparknotes anyone). To me the movie is a "mixture" of the book, the 1950's movie, and the TV series (which I just discovered existed, but it sounds pretty shitty).
Anyways I think I found a site this dedicated to the show.
Registered: Feb 2005
| IP: Logged
posted
Well, I thought that site was dedicated to everything WotW to a certain degree or another, but now that you mention it, it seems to be primarily focused on the TV series...
Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
-------------------- "It speaks to some basic human needs: that there is a tomorrow, it's not all going to be over with a big splash and a bomb, that the human race is improving, that we have things to be proud of as humans." -Gene Roddenberry about Star Trek
Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged
Er....It's visually stunning, the tripod WAr Machines look great but I dont think anyone involved with the movie read the book.
Biiig flaws: -The aliens are not from Mars (at least no mention is ever made one way or another). -The War Machines have been buried underground (somehow without ever being discovered) for millions of years. Why? Who the fuck knows....no reason is ever given why the aliens would have come here, left their shit underground (somehow knowing they would need it long before humans were alive) or why they chose now to come back and start making trouble. -The aliens arrive in a biig spooky cloud (sound familliar?), though their ship is never seen, it emits powerful electromagnetic pulses that knock all electronics (even cars) out- the cloud fires lightening strikes over and over exactly where their buried tripods are... That's not so bad, but the aliens get to their deeply buried tripods via lightening. No shit. They have dart-shaped capsules (chock full of aliens) that shoot into the ground...on...a bolt of lightening. Yeah. Metalica should have done the theme song. -The tripods have force-fields that stop any projectiles/missiles before they can get close. -The tripods use a fog-horn...just for kicks mainly. -The aliens themselves are nothing like Wells described but instead look a LOT like the aliens from Independence day from the neck up- their bodies are a torso, two arms and a central leg. They move kind of like monkeys. They have no tenticles. -The aliens do not use the Black Smoke chemical weapon and do not have any flying machines. -The Heat Ray is not hot: somehow it turns the person in their clothes to dust but the clothes float away on the wind- what wind? Who knows, but it's an effect used over a dozen times- so many floating jeans, I thought Levis was a sponsor. Each tripod has two heat rays that it fires from the hips- like a three legged gunslinger from space. -The aliens drain people of their blood- aparantly to spray it all over the redweed as fertilizer or something- they are never shown ingesting it and the tripods spray it all over. Why? Who the fuck knows: in the book, the aliens ingest blood because they are just big brains and need fresh blood to live. At the end a tripod opens up and about 50 gallons of blood-looking stuff spills out- Mabye they just had a big punch-bowl full of blood or something: I cant see these guys floating around in blood. -Tom Cruise is SUPER-DIVORCED-DAD! Only Tom Cruise manages to destroy a tripod! Goooooo Tom! -You foreign types should be prepared for a visual assualt of american flags in Tom's all-american-blue-collar niighborhood. There's a "are we being attacked by terrorists" line from Tom's son. -Tom's kids are so annoying, I wanted them dead for the entire movie- his daughter screams endlessly in the shrillest voice imagineable and his rebelling dickweed teenage son goes out of his way to get killed because he "needs to see this". After all is said and done, Tom's family is re-united with NO INJURIES or personal loss at all- fuck, even the windows on his ex-wife's brownstone are spotlessly clean, although the rest of Boston is in smoking rubble.
It sounds like I'm bashing, but I'm only relating the major issues.
The GOOD things: Tom Cruise delivers a great performance and I think he did an amazing job with the script given to him. Tim Robbins is very good as well (taking on the role of the Curate in the farmhouse- though he's a paramedic). The acting is good throughout- Speilberg really pulls on the "hate" and "outrage" emotional strings but there is not much real suspense (at least not among the group I went with). Again, visually it's incredible and the desctuction is on a grand scale. These aliens could teach Godzilla a thing or two. Morgan Freeman narrates the very start and ending of the movie with (updated) exerpts from the book- a nice touch. -They used the same "alien arm falling out of the war-machine" scene as the George Pal version (unfortunately followed by a closeup of a petrified-looking alien's face).
Overall, I'd give it a five out of ten. Worth warching but not worth buying on DVD.
[ June 29, 2005, 10:40 PM: Message edited by: Jason Abbadon ]
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
quote:-The tripods have force-fields that stop any projectiles/missiles before they can get close.
I know that an advanced species capable of interstellar travel probably could develop such a device, but it sure seems like a cop-out. I'd rather that they use hyper-advanced armor or something.
quote:-The tripods use a fog-horn...just for kicks mainly.
The famous WWII German dive bomber, the Stuka, had a siren mounted on its side in order to produce a screaming sound when it went into a dive. Apparently it was intended to have some sort of psychological effect on the people below. Perhaps the aliens had the same idea (as if giant tripod machines with disintegration beams wasn't enough).
quote:-The aliens drain people of their blood- aparantly to spray it all over the redweed as fertilizer or something- they are never shown ingesting it and the tripods spray it all over.
That seems like an odd change to make. I'm sure that the idea that the martians ingested blood was somewhat shocking in the late 1800s, so it's odd that in an era in which people are a bit harder to shock, Spielberg decided not to show alien consumption of human blood. Perhaps that would have pushed his movie out of the more box-office friendly PG-13 category.
-------------------- "Having is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true."
Registered: Apr 2005
| IP: Logged
posted
Mabye- they dont actually show the person being drained either (probably another concession to the ratings board)- the gut in question get's impaled by a tenticle behind acar and you see the blood shoot up the (embedded in the tenticle) clear tube to the tripod...then it's sprayed out over the landscape from another port in the tripod.
The siren thing is (aparantly) used to call a pair of investigating aliens back to the ship but that cant be it's function, as it's blared randomly as the tripods are destroying stuff.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
posted
So, I'm moderately excited about this movie, and I also apparently approach adaptations in a crazy freewheeling manner compared to others here, but all that aside: Why should aliens make noise only in situations humans would?
(And also, I sure like bizarre noises in general, is I guess my bias in this case. Like, in Lost, when the security system is honking and rattling and screeching in the forest? It is the best, and makes me want to get better speakers before the DVDs come out.)
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
posted
Dammit, I'm not bothered about being spoiled over WotW since I'll never get a chance to see it, but Lost is being shown here later in the year and I'd sooner not get spoiled, thank you very much.
posted
I did not consider the international implications, and I apologize. I mention as some small consolation that my comments probably mean a lot less than you might fear.
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
posted
You know, this description of the tripods makes me think, in the first place, of the force fields aroudn the ships in ID4, and second, of an essay by Jacques Bergier I read several years ago in which the he explores the "what-if" of the U.S. returning to Vietnam with special equipment which included "war tripods" equipped with ultrasound generators on their legs that would prevent anyone to get close enough to detonate an explosive...
Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
Printer-friendly view of this topic
