H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds
by Timothy Hines
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Anthony Piana, Darlene Sellers, Jack Clay, James Lathrop, John Kaufmann (III)Director: Timothy Hines
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 180 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-06-08
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Allumination
Movie Reviews of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds
Movie Review: What a disappointment!
Summary: 1 Stars
I hated the 2005 film with Tom Cruise: it bore so little resemblance to the novel, it shouldn't have been called "War of the Worlds." (Forbidden Planet wasn't called The Tempest, even though it says it was inspired by it.) I liked the 1953 George Pal film, although it lacked a crucial image that scared me wonderfully at age 10, when I first read the book: the three-legged war machines. (The George Pal version is embarrassing to watch today too: the leading lady's main job is evidently to scream at the Martians.) The Orson Welles radio version is my favorite telling of the story, even better than the novel: it's no wonder many people thought it was a real news report.
I therefore welcomed the idea of this film, as a faithful adaptation set in the 1890s. I enjoyed the scenes of this in Carl Sagan's TV series Cosmos: I long thought it was too bad there wasn't a full-length feature film like this that told the whole story. I don't mind cheap special effects, if a film is fun to watch: indeed, sometimes bad special effects can make a film more fun to watch, as in some old Doctor Who episodes or Godzilla movies. IMO, the only real sin a film can commit is to be boring.
This film was excruciatingly boring. A competent film editor could have reduced it to half its thee-hour length, and should have. Again, I didn't so much mind the over-use of green-screen techniques (for example, for nearly all the scenes riding in carriages): when Oberon waves his hand and says "I am invisible" in A Midsummer Night's Dream, I can see that he's invisible. This film was 90-95% faithful to the original (the author's making his way into a deserted London at the end is cut), but that might not have been advisable: the whole sub-plot of the writer's brother and the two ladies he befriends could have been cut, as it was little more than a distraction, even in the book.
What was inexcusable was how much time I had to spend twiddling my thumbs, waiting for the next scene, in practically every scene of the film. They could easily have cut many of the less-effective special effects, for example the last shot of the first meteor seen in flight, the only one in which one can see it in detail. And why, oh why, do we have to see a human squashed underfoot by a Martian war machine TWICE?!?
It portended badly literally from the very beginning, with the opening narration: "No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that our world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own...Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this Earth with envious eyes and slowly, and surely, drew their plans against us." I still get a chill whenever I listen to Orson Welles read that, even though I've listened to my CD of the radio show hundreds of times; the actor who read it on Cosmos delivered it well, too. When the guy who read that in this film read it, it was flat and lifeless: Bill Gates could have delivered these lines more effectively.
Furthermore, if the audience must be subjected to having to stare at actors for long periods of time, the actors really ought to convey emotion convincingly, or in other words, act. Part of the fault here was the direction: but then, this was so bad, I couldn't discern much of the dialog, even though I knew what they were about to say because I re-read the novel recently. The costumes were OK, except for the leading man's clearly fake mustache: Monty Python did fake mustaches better than that.
That's three hours of my life I'll never get back. This is one of the few DVDs I have actually thrown in the garbage: I don't want to risk subjecting anyone else to this.
Summary of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds
In the year 1898, critically acclaimed author H.G. Wells conceived of a tale so terrifying that it has captured the imagination of millions of readers for more than 100 years. Now for the first time ever, the true adaptation of the classic novel hits the screen with devastating effect! During a time of growth and prosperity for mankind, came the ultimate threat to our very existence. The events that were to take place at the turn of the 20th century would shake the foundations of life as we know it. The future of the human race was at stake as man's greatest fear was realized...Suddenly we are no longer alone in this universe and to preserve our species, we must be victorious in The War of The Worlds.]H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds is a quirky if well-meaning, labor-of-love adaptation of Wells' seminal 1898 science fiction novel. A website for the film's production company, Pendragon Pictures, explains that this version of Wells's thinly disguised prediction of World War I actually began as a modern-day variation on the story. Terrorist attacks in America on September 11, 2001, however, convinced co-writer and director Timothy Hines to set the project instead in the late 19th century period Wells imagined.
By coincidence, Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise's contemporary take on War of the Worlds began production shortly after Hines's adjustment. While hardly a competitive threat to Spielberg's movie, Pendragon's War might have made an interesting complement to it. Unfortunately, Hines and company seriously blew their opportunity. While there is some money and impressive special-effects wizardry on the screen, this embarrassing, seemingly endless feature is doomed by a crazy effort to marry the look and texture of Silent Era epics to Computer Age manipulation. Not that War is a silent picture, mind you. But much of it is tinted in expressive rainbow hues that were common in films a century ago; the cast of unknowns' performances are mannered and exaggerated in a silly impression of pre-optical soundtrack acting; and primitive effects (e.g., printing a scene backwards for an ethereal feel) are unflattering. As if that's not bad enough, no one involved with this movie appears to know basic editing principles for compressing time and action. On the plus side, the extraterrestrial killers and their awesome machines of destruction are startling to behold. The image of Big Ben's clock tower blown apart over a flaming London is persuasive indeed. --Tom Keogh
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