That trailer looks really great. How does the BBC get the budget to do something this expensive-looking?
Exactly. Nothing mankind does or can do will save them. In the end they just get remarkably lucky… for now. The story is not about how great man is and how he can overcome impossible odds, its about how in the great scheme of the universe, we are nothing special at all and it won’t take much to end us. And not to get too political but that’s a message we could use today. If we don’t get our heads out of our collective asses regarding our ecosystem, we just may end ourselves. And who knows it just may be a microbe that finishes the job.
Remaking stuff that’s been remade before, is just boring…plenty of cool stories out there, pick one plx.
Retro ET agrees but I’m not sure.
I generally agree, but no one’s gotten this one right since the radio play - it’s fair game for a good cinematic version.
I wonder if the rights for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is still floating about. Always liked that rendition of War of the Worlds.
Funny, I just picked up a starter set for a boardgame, Wings of Glory: Tripods and Triplanes, that has you scooting little bi/triplane minis about to fight off the War of the Worlds invaders. Should be a hoot. Must be the zeitgeist.
Do you think Boomers want to be reminded of this? And to say [insert your home country] can’t defeat an enemy if it sets its will to it is unpatriotic. /s
Not rating all that well - only 68% on RT. Still, given that it’s only a three parter, I’ll probably watch it when I get the opportunity.
ending up being World of the War:Threads which i didnt expect. Grimdark
Finally watched this. Had lost a bit of interest due to the low score, but when I noticed that the shows audience reviews were being bombed by the usual snowflakes for whom the presence of any female character with agency instantly ruins their enjoyment of the story, I figured it couldn’t be all bad.
Unfortunately, I think it pretty much is.
I find it hard to find much “wokeness” in this. The narrator in this version is replaced by George and Amy, an outcast couple. He’s pretty ineffectual, while she’s a female scientist (or rather, an assistant) and the main protagonist, but both spend the majority of the series standing around looking pained and doing very little sensibly. In the first half of the series, we probably spend more time in the story on the effects of their adulterous relationship than about the aliens. It is only woke in the sense that she is marginally more sensible than the rest of the idiot characters.
The aliens themselves are… unimpressive, and mostly feature off-screen. Pretty much the only scene of any length is the one shown above, and there the aliens get their tripods handed to them. Apart from that, they’re massive, but it’s hard to understand why people don’t just mostly hide from them and move on when they’ve passed. How is mankind defeated? They just are. People are slaughtered? Yes - lots of dead bodies just turn up; how or why, is very unclear. We are told that the alien machines cannot be stopped by shells or bullets, but the show mostly implies the opposite - that they can be defeated with sufficient firepower. Which is pretty much how the entire show goes - the characters tell us one thing, but the actual show doesn’t back up those conclusions.
Welles’ work has obvious anti-colonial and anti-imperialist themes, though communicated through the subtext. This show clearly doesn’t trust it’s viewers to understand that, and has it’s characters launch into lengthy monologues. “Ooh, this poison gas thing. Think what power our military could have with that weapon” “They are just like us, the white man, sweeping across continents of natives with spear and rocks.” No, you don’t say…
To try and resolve the problem of everyone knowing how the War of the Worlds ends, the show tries to inject a little suspense into proceedings by introducing a parallel time-line where we follow Amy in post-war society waiting for George. Not a bad idea, as such, but the idea is completely ruined by the implausibility of the future being portrayed.
It’s at least 5-7 years in the future after the defeat of the Martians, but:
- No central government has re-established control and people apparently just hang around in the Martian hellscape hoping for the best while waiting to starve, tilling cemeteries and praying. Clearly, no one can be bothered into figuring out how to reverse the damage being done to Earth except a rogue chemist. I guess all the other scientists died in the invasion.
- Not only are children not being born anymore, but also all the children who existed at the time the Martians came have died in the invasion. What bad luck.
- Ogilvy puts Amy down as his next of kin, despite knowing her only for a few weeks before the invasion, and despite having no idea whether she is alive or dead.
- He also theorizes that the Martian machines came to prep earth, when the Martians machines are clearly piloted by organics. As he should have know by this time.
- Amy says they came out of the machines to feed on humans and that is why they get sick and died, but unlike the book (and Spielberg’s film), there is at no point in the show any evidence that the Martians are collecting humans or doing anything but walking around, smashing stuff, and spewing smoke. The ones feeding on humans in this show are already defeated aliens trying to survive after their tripod was destroyed. So how were the aliens defeated? Who knows.
It’s just incomprehensible nonsense from first red-filtered scene to the last. The “sacrifice” of George at the end - although I had seen it coming - was equally asinine. At no point do we get any indication that the aliens are either particularly agile or perceptive (four people literally hide in plain sight of one a few meters away - and later they quarrel loudly - and yet they remain completely undetected). There is no reason to think that they can’t sneak past it during the night (or even the day), or - at the very least - make a run for it. But nope - he just walks out to die at the hands of an alien that can barely walk - and she just lets him do it.
TLDR; this is just an immensely disappointing version of H. G. Wells’s classic. It’s just immensely sad - all of the characters and ingredients for the classic tale are in the show - but it’s just squandered on a poorly written and poorly produced script.
The Fox show, btw, has very little to do with HG Wells’s tale It has aliens (of a sort), but other than that it has more in common with the Walking Dead than H.G. Wells. It would as well have been called Terminator the Series, and no one would have batted an eyelash.
This is the Fox show or the BBC one?
The BBC one. The Fox show just namechecks H.G.Wells - it has very little relation at all.
Shoot. The BBC one looked like fun — I’m sad to hear it sucks.
Yes. Had high hopes for this - found it very disappointing. YMMV, of course.
So I had no idea that the Canal+ version (the modernized War of the Worlds, not the BBC’s Victorian-era version) existed. But I’ve got EPIX and started watching it. It’s not the greatest thing, but it’s not bad. It’s very watchable. You’ve got the tropes about family members being separated by the event, but it doesn’t pull many punches. Apparently the third season just got released, too, so it’s got legs.
It was briefly mentioned here:
This reminds me I should rewatch the Spielberg version again, now that it’s finally on streaming (Paramount+). I haven’t seen it since I watched it on opening night in the theater. It was a bit weird with the Tim Robbins part, but I remember enjoying it for the most part.
And this show falls apart in the second season.
Reason 1: The aliens are fellow humans, which allows them to avoid expensive CG or practical effects, but, come on…
Reason 2: Characters making stupid decision after stupid decision is the primary method of plot advancement.