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The War of the Worlds More at IMDbPro »

4 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
"Wait a minute! Asteroids don't unscrew!!", 17 February 2005

Author: Michael DeZubiria (miked32@hotmail.com) from Luoyang, China

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

There are a few titles that I consider to be perfect science fiction titles, and I mean perfect in that they fit their content and their genre flawlessly. One of them is Star Wars, and another is The War of the Worlds. It's amazing to me that it took 50 years for someone to try to remake this classic, especially since remakes have become the cool thing to do over the last decade or so. This science fiction classic is one of the biggest landmarks of the genre, from director George Pal, who we also have to thank for the 1960 version of The Time Machine and who was probably the most famous name in science fiction in the 1950s.

What I especially respected about the movie was the staying power that it retained by realizing the limitations of its special effects. For much of the first half of the movie, the crash landed space ship is nothing but a crisped asteroid and then a green glow behind the hills while locals and the national guard arrive to investigate. The film easily creates a level of tension and fear that had probably not been seen since Orson Welles did his radio adaptation of the story 15 yeas earlier, causing panic because it was done as a news broadcast and people thought that aliens had really invaded. I wish I had been there for that.

In contrast to the benevolent, even good looking alien that invaded in The Day the Earth Stood Still, which was released a couple of years before this movie, the Martians in this movie are not interested in forcing the earthlings to help themselves, to join us and live in peace or pursue their present course and face obliteration. The three men that approach the craft peacefully and waving white flags are vaporized, turned into piles of ash where they stood. The military respond by firing upon the crafts with everything that they have (including the atomic bomb, which attracted hordes of curious onlookers who wanted to see the blast and probably walked away from it glowing with their hair falling out in clumps), but to no avail.

The three alien spacecraft flying slowly and destroying everything in their path is pretty impressive despite the primitive special effects. I love the design of the ships themselves, very simple but very sleek and threatening and cycloptic, with stolid and constant movement. The effect on 1950s audiences must have been quite a sight to see, especially in the brief glimpses that we get of the Martians themselves, which is mostly just the arm at the end of the film.

I read a review of the movie that made a very good point that the religious context of the final line in Wells' novel (that the Martians were "defeated by the smallest thing in God's creation") was taken entirely out of context, imposing massive religious meaning onto the material when there was never meant to be any there in the first place (Wells, an atheist, meant it ironically, not religiously). Ann Robinson says in the film that she always knew that if she hid in a church her true love would find her there, then sure enough it happened, then the alien ship crash lands in front of a church while the people surround it singing hymns thanking the heavens for their salvation.

None of this really bothered me about the movie itself, although the perpendicular departure not only from the source material but from the author himself is a bit unsettling. What I had more of a problem with was the way the bacteria bringing down the ships was structured. They are going and going and going full speed, flying and shooting lasers at the people until all hope in their survival has been lost, and then just like that they start dropping out of the sky like flies. True, bacteria killed them in the novel, but I haven't read the novel and I like to think that it wasn't quite as abrupt and convenient there.

Nevertheless, this remains a true science fiction classic that should not be missed, and I have great faith that the upcoming Spielberg remake will do justice both to H.G. Wells and to this film. Excellent show.

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