Typical, isn’t it? You wait nearly fifty years for another movie adaptation of The War of the Worlds, and then three turn up at once. This year has seen the release of two straight-to-DVD versions of the story, The War of the Worlds (Pendragon Productions/Timothy Hines) and HG Wells’ War of the Worlds (The Asylum/David Michael Latt). And, of course, there is also Stephen Spielberg’s mammoth War of the Worlds, (a Dreamworks/Paramount co-production).
Despite springing from a common source, these are three quite different films. The Pendragon/Hines version claims to be the most authentic, setting itself in the late nineteenth century and following the book very closely. The Asylum/Latt production is set in modern America, but it too follows the book’s plot fairly faithfully, though it excises the subplot featuring the narrator’s brother. Finally, the Spielberg film – also set in the present – plays most freely with the novel’s structure – though many key elements remain – and departs most significantly from Wells’ novel.
So how should we judge the relative merits of these films? As pieces of entertainment each film stands or falls by the qualities of their production, the competence of the direction and the ability of the actors, and those will be considered in a moment. But as adaptations of a classic work of science fiction, they must also be judged on how they interpret Wells’ novel.
To judge this we must ask what is it that makes Wells’ story significant, almost one hundred and twenty years after its first publication. In my opinion there are four key factors.
First, this is an adventure story. Wells wrote a page-turner that remains enormous fun to read. His innate intelligence means that this book has more to it than bangs and flashes, but the fireworks should not be dismissed.
Second, this is not the story of a hero. The narrator is unnamed because he is insignificant in comparison to the events he relates. His concerns are primarily domestic. He has no part to play in defeating the Martians, indeed in the moments before the Martians’ demise he has despaired utterly of everything he held dear prior to their invasion and wishes only to die.
Third, this is not a story of mankind’s victory. The Martians fail, but not before they destroy every human conceit. The science, military might, religions and indeed the very foundations of the civilization of humanity’s most powerful nation – heart of its greatest empire – crumble before our eyes as the Martian onslaught advances.
Finally, it features a colonial power suffering the ignominy of an invasion by a vastly more capable foe. Wells puts England’s imperialists in the position of all those nations they have defeated and exploited.
But, while the novel is set in Victoria’s imperial England, the core ideas are not fixed to any one place or era – which is precisely why Wells’ book remains relevant and readable today and is not just a dusty museum piece. It seems legitimate, therefore, for a modern adaptation to update the location. America is now, after all, the world’s pre-eminent power in a way that even Victorian England could only envy.
Which brings us to the Pendragon/Hines production, The War of the Worlds, and its claim to be authentic. Though set in Victorian England the film was shot in America and, because of its low budget, most of the action takes place in non-descript fields and countryside. This gives the whole thing an odd pastoral feel – there isn’t a paved road in the whole of Victorian Olde Englandshire – and immediately the sense of England as a powerful nation, confident in its military and industrial might, is lost.
But this is the least of the film’s worries. Hines direction is inept, the film moves at the sort of pace that would bore a sloth and its interminable three hours are filled with padding shots of people walking, running and riding to no particular effect. Worse the director seems fixated with reaction shots – nothing happens without a cutaway to a close up of someone’s face looking surprised. The film is no better served by the acting. Leading man Piana (The Writer) is woeful, the English accents vary from Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins to the truly ludicrous. Some of the supporting cast are profoundly – laughably – incapable. And all this is compounded by dreadful CGI effects and some dodgy costuming – at one point British soldiers appear to be wearing cowboy hats!
Worse though is that Hines (who also wrote the script) clearly has no idea what his film is supposed to be about. Tiny details are given undue prominence while the bigger picture is entirely lost. Hines is not just incapable of seeing the wood for the trees, he is incapable of seeing the whole of the tree for the leaves.
The only way I would watch this nonsense again was with a Mystery Science Theatre commentary track – but I fear even they couldn’t make this turkey funny.
The Asylum/Latt offering is less offensive, but it never rises above the level of a poor made-for-television offering. HG Wells’ War of the World at least has a passably competent actor in its lead (Howell) and setting itself in the modern era means its budget is spread less thinly. Within the limitations of a small budget, its effects are acceptable, though there appears no sound reason for replacing the famous tripods with six-legged alien fighting machines.
Latt does nothing dreadfully wrong as director, though he’s no maestro behind the camera. The acting tends towards the overly melodramatic, Howell, Busey (as the soldier) and, in particular, Giles (as Pastor Victor) all strike dangerously shrill notes in their various moments of madness.
The film has two major flaws as an adaptation. It cannot resist making its protagonist the hero. Trapped in a veterinary surgery after the artival of another alien pod, when an alien comes searching for the Pastor, the protagonist injects it with rabies, which eventually infects all the invaders and, therefore, saves humanity. Secondly, it makes no attempt to update or recognise the anti-colonial elements of Wells’ story. Latt never acknowledges the possibility that there might be a sense in which this fictional America is suffering what it has inflicted on others, elsewhere.
To my surprise that theme is practically the only thing that survives untouched in the Dreamworks/Spielberg War of the Worlds. Right from the moment of the aliens’ “shock and awe” arrival – cutting off power and communications – through speculation about the attackers being terrorists to Ogilivy’s (Robbins’ mad survivalist) comments that “occupations never work”, this film is absolutely aware that it is being made in the aftermath of 9-11 and the invasion of Iraq. And, for those ‘sins’ the script by Keopp and Friedman puts modern America (car-obsession and all) through the ringer in the most brutal fashion.
However, in pursuing this theme, the director and writers abandon almost everything else that makes The War of the Worlds distinct. Cruise is far too much of a star presence to play the part of an everyman, his acting is too affected and his star presence demands that, far from being broken down by the terror of his experience, his character (Ray) emerges as a hero having learnt valuable lessons about being a better father. The decision to lumber the hero with his children provides for some effective moments of peril, and it allows the film to contrast Ray’s determination not to get involved with his son Robbie’s (Chatwin) desire to get revenge, but it remains a mistake. Rachel (Fanning) is used too frequently as a helpless cipher to ramp up the tension until her presence becomes an irritation. The conflict between Ray and Robbie is clichéd and the reconcilliation blandly predictable.
Crucial to Wells’ story is the breaking down of humanity’s conceits. In the novel idea that humanity is the master of our universe and the characters’ confidence in themselves as both a species and as individuals, is stripped away. In his most serious mistake, Spielberg chooses instead to use the story as an attempt to affirm the importance of individual human life. Ray, his family and, we must suppose, the other survivors, emerge from the ordeal whole, intact and infuriatingly confirmed in a new and wholesome domestic American idyll.
However, as a pure adventure story, Spielberg’s War of the Worlds works reasonably well. The aliens’ arrival is dramatic, their opening wave of destruction is awesomely realised and there are moments – though too infrequent – of sweaty-palmed tension. The sequence on the ferry and the battle Robbie joins in his desire to strike back against the invaders are memorably intense. Nor has Spielberg lost his touch for creating striking images: a burning train flashes across the screen in a surreal moment of destruction; empty clothing, torn from the dead, rains to the ground; and aliens snap up humans with frightening speed.
None of these adaptations entirely satisfy. The Asylum/Latt version is unrewarding and the Pendragon/Hines version should be avoided by all but the most committed masochists, the Spielberg production is plainly the superior film of the three – and not just because it has vastly higher production values. His War of the Worlds retains enough of Wells’ novel to pay proper homage to the source material and it is the only film to demonstrate even a sliver of the original’s intelligence and dramatic power. However, its flaws as an adaptation and as entertainment in its own right, prevent an unambiguous recommendation.