The War Of The Worlds, This > the Spielberg remake Options

[MARS]

Here's something I've found sometime last year. It's Jeff Wayne's musical version of H.G. Wells' legendary novel The War Of The Worlds re-imagined as a surprisingly
well done CGI-adaption set in the modern age. No Spielberg, no Tom Cruise, no annoying family drama, just Martians coming to Earth to wipe us all out. Check it out:

Part 1 - The Eve Of The War
Part 2 - Horsell Common And The Heat-Ray
Part 3 - The Artilleryman And The Fighting Machine
Part 4 - Forever Autumn
Part 5 - Thunderchild
Part 6 - The Red Weed

[Dutchygamer]

Looks good. I'll keep my eye on this one...

[NergiZed]

Damn the Chinese government's need to block youtube....

Gah, I really want to watch this!

[MARS]

The thing I love about this version is that he didn't omit the Thunderchild chapter. It's kind of a letdown when most of the adaptions, especially the ones set in the modern era, do not feature a SINGLE human victory over the Martians. In the original novel, the Martians lose one of their machines to an artillery volley (from that point onwards, they played it safe and gassed every possible ambush point with Black Smoke from afar) and two others are taken down by the Royal Navy vessel Thunderchild which is then destroyed by a third one. Even though the ship failed to stop the Martians, it bought enough time for a number of civilian ships to escape.

The modern versions seem to be missing this more often than not for some reason. In the George Pal version, they use a YB-49 to drop a nuke on them without any effect, not even saving anyone in the process. Independence Day, while not officially a WOTW adaption and a dreadful sci-fi movie by its own merits, features a similar scene in which the alien ship is hit by a nuclear missile as a last, futile act of human resistance and in the 2005 Spielberg-version, the Martians don't take any casualties prior to their downfall either.

They pull the generic 'lol we have shields'-gambit which allows them to field walkers the size of skycrapers without getting immediately annihilated. The only scene that is remotely similar to the Thunderchild chapter is that one instance where the US military throws tanks, jeeps, infantry, choppers and fighter jets at the aliens while a huge stream of civilians is fleeing through the combat zone. Unfortunately, they fail to damage, let alone destroy, even ONE of the machines because their shields seem to have absolutely no problem absorbing repeated hits by armour-piercing tank shells, Hellfire missiles and other heavy ordnance.

Rumour has it that the Japanese managed to take out one machine but that really isn't explained any further. Personally, I always found it kind of disappointing that the modern adaptions always seem to ignore that one single 'victory' over the invaders. When you consider all the sophisticated weapons of today, one would think that we could at least take a few of these aliens with us. For me, making the aliens 100% invincible to even the strongest of our weapons makes it harder to suspend my disbelief than making them superior, yet partly vulnerable.

Whew, now this post got a little longer than I expected. Added semi-logical paragraphs for reading convenience.

[Pickysaurus]

WOTW (modern version) was just made out to be a complete whitewash showing how we earned out right to live.
Besides, if we could beat them it would seem less threatening

[MARS]

But again, isn't it kinda hard to suspend one's disbelief when the aliens are soaking up high explosive grenades, laser guided bombs, uranium munitions, cruise missiles and nukes without taking ANY damage WHATSOEVER just because they are protected by a shield of plot convenience? Ironically, the original Martians could be destroyed by 19th century artillery which kinda makes you think that they wouldn't stand any chance AT ALL against a modern army. Giving them some super awesome shield is the easy way out, though. Why can't they come up with a different explanation for their superior combat power without making them completely and utterly invincible?

``Besides, if we could beat them it would seem less threatening´´

I disagree. As long as they still overwhelm us with relative ease (i.e. our 'victories' have no real impact on the war as a whole because, for example, the Martians are conducting a worldwide 'shock and awe' campaign that breaks our morale within a few days) the scenario WILL be threatening, especially in the later stages of the story when the actual war is over and the occupation has begun. When it comes down to it, what do you think is more depressing: No hope at all from start to finish or a little bit of hope that gets crushed instantly and leads to even greater aggression by the enemy? In fact, allowing humanity to have a few small victories might actually add to the menace. Come to think of it: No matter what we do, no matter how hard we fight, which weapons we use or how many of us are sacrificed, the ONLY THING it does is destroy one, maybe two fighting machines out of hundreds, perhaps even thousands. Our 'victories' come at such an inhumane cost with such little effect that they can't even be called 'victories' anymore. Isn't THAT threatening?

[Comr4de]

This is a fantastic film made by these individuals, I found myself watching them in awe even though most of it was really Photoshop images with effects, I guess imagnienation and imagery take a huge role in telling this interpretation and it works very well. Great mind Ray, i will be looking forward as to how this ends in this, even though I know how

[MARS]

I also love that he tried to base the Martians off the original description. It may look kinda weird but you'd be surprised how hard it is to find artistic renditions of the classic Martians on the web. If you want to use them, you have to design your own which really isn't easy because their strange anatomy is much harder to capture than it seems. The Spielberg aliens were pretty stupid. The shape of their heads was kinda cool but come on: Three legs and two tiny little arms? Sure, aliens HAVE to look alien but which kind of environment could possibly favour a creature with an odd number of limbs?

[Comr4de]

I also love that he tried to base the Martians off the original description. It may look kinda weird but you'd be surprised how hard it is to find artistic renditions of the classic Martians on the web. If you want to use them, you have to design your own which really isn't easy because their strange anatomy is much harder to capture than it seems. The Spielberg aliens were pretty stupid. The shape of their heads was kinda cool but come on: Three legs and two tiny little arms? Sure, aliens HAVE to look alien but which kind of environment could possibly favour a creature with an odd number of limbs?

You make a great point there. I did enjoy the Spielberg movie but it was really more of his interpretation, as it should be, and I don't disagree that it wasn't one of the best. I'd sure love to see more of this story taken by a different set of eyes and given the correct and accurate descriptions HG Wells made. Surely something will eventually be taken into audience once more in the future.

[DELETED MEMBER]

Independence Day, while not officially a WOTW adaption and a dreadful sci-fi movie by its own merits, features a similar scene in which the alien ship is hit by a nuclear missile as a last, futile act of human resistance and in the 2005 Spielberg-version, the Martians don't take any casualties prior to their downfall either.

I am going to bite but: I find ID4 shield were more realistic in that aspect because.....well the only shield than survived a nuclear detonation was a a city-killer ship, plus they actually lost one of them before the shields going down

Why the Martians turned down the shields at the end of Spielberg version is beyond me other than "here look at the humans doing something"

then again i may be giving points to the ID4 aliens because they are smart enough to wear a SUIT in another planet

[MARS]

``then again i may be giving points to the ID4 aliens because they are smart enough to wear a SUIT in another planet´´

That's about the only thing they deserve credit for. As for the rest, ID simply had TOO many logical holes EVEN by sci-fi standards but you can still see that it was
at least inspired by WOTW. Technically, every film, story or game about an alien invasion in the classic 'they come to Earth to kill shit'-style is inspired by WOTW.

[Pickysaurus]

Yeah it did confused me if the shield were so impenetrable that a virus could get through.

There was always the victory where the shoved grenades in the belly of a walker

[MARS]

True, although that scene doesn't really come off as the 'bitter-sweet victory' that was the Thunderchild
chapter. It's more like 'Tom Cruise casually destroys a fighting machine while rescuing his annoying kid'.

[DELETED MEMBER]

That's about the only thing they deserve credit for. As for the rest, ID simply had TOO many logical holes EVEN by sci-fi standards but you can still see that it was
at least inspired by WOTW. Technically, every film, story or game about an alien invasion in the classic 'they come to Earth to kill shit'-style is inspired by WOTW.

Yeah ID4 is pretty much the clasical cliche movie about a alien invasion with a lot of logical plot holes but is still one of my favorites

but some of the plot holes could have a explanation but well, its not like anybody cared about them

[silence]

Farewell Thunderchiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiayyyyld.

[MARS]

It's also worth noting that this particular scene plays an important part in the narrative. It's usually depicted as the climax of the war. The destruction of the Thunderchild marks the ultimate defeat of man's armies; the most powerful weapons of the late 19th century - the massive guns of the Royal Navy - have failed to stop these invaders. From now on, human resistance will crumble. We are no longer able to put up an organised opposition. The Martians have finally arrived and the war itself is over. What starts now is the occupation, 'Earth under the Martians'; the Red Weed has taken root on Earth, starts turning our world into their world and rather than fighting us, the Martians begin harvesting us. The marker of this turning point from bad to worse is the destruction of the Thunderchild. You see, there really IS a lot that can be done with it which makes it all more stupid to just ignore this important chapter and say 'yeah, fuck this, we can't do shit against these guys, let's die'.

Blimey, interpreting a book like this makes me feel like I'm in school again. It would have been awesome if we could have dealt with WOTW in English class.

[Razven]

I remember reading it and finishing the entire book in one night. It was a fantastic book.

[MARS]

The 1953 version of WOTW was on German TV last night. Interestingly, the German title isn't 'Krieg der Welten' (which literally means War of the Worlds), it's actually 'Kampf der Welten' which means 'Fight/Battle of the Worlds'. Guess it was named by the same people who now insist that Afghanistan isn't a 'war' either. Anyway, the special effects are pretty impressive for the time (They actually used flying machines instead of tripod walkers because those would have been too heavy on the animation budget) and for a 50's movie, there's a lot of action going on. Unlike the other adaptions, it also has that awesomely cheese B-movie charm with people screaming like crazy, over-confident army guys and UFOs making freaky noises. It may not feel very serious by today's standards but it's the archetype of an alien invasion movie. It does omit a few major things from the novel such as the Red Weed and the haematophagic Martians, though.

EDIT: Since this has become more than just a video thread but an actual discussion of the WOTW novel and movies, I'm moving this to the Box.

[MARS]

[epic necro is epic]

Here's part 7 for those who are still interested.
Unfortunately, I can't watch it since those cunts at Sony/WMG won't allow us filthy Germans to view their stuff on YouTube.

[Pav3d]

That was a surprisingly epic series of vids

[MARS]

First of all, here's a big CHEERS to you, KamuiK, for telling me how to bybass the problem and watch the video. If anyone else is
having the same problem trying to view certain videos from Germany, check out the link in KamuiK's comment on my profile page.

As for the video itself, I liked this part. It's been quite a while since the sixth episode and I was getting a little worried as to whether the project was cancelled but this one manages to capture the atmosphere of horror, destruction and despair just as well as the previous parts of the series. It's especially amazing how they pulled this off with such basic CGI-technology. All the animations of the Tripods are actually from an old, little-known War Of The Worlds video game. Looking forward to the next episode.

[Evan]

I know...this is a necro. But these videos are blocked...anyone have another source?