WAR OF THE WORLDS Discussion

Well, the book plays out in almost complete real-time, so I have no clue.

Then agian, the book takes place in the 1890's, so my guess is that it'll keep the basic concept and run with it.

Or maybe it just means that they'll already be on the ground before we know they're comin'. In the book, they landed in the form of meteors, and no one knew what was happening until the huge machines sprang up and started blowing shit up.

I think it's going to be hard to pull off a sneak arrival in the modern era. Unless it's some kind of "cloaking" system the Martians use. How will Spielberg get past the fact of all the probes to Mars have revealed no sign of any civilization? Underground dwellers perhaps?

I'm looking forward to hearing more about this movie & its storyline, the Wells book is one I re-read every year or so & I still like the 1953 movie version. I hope I won't be disappointed next July but I have faith in Spielberg.

I still listen to the radio broadcasts occasionally on a late drive home.

Please have someone in there twatting Martians with a cricket bat !!!!

Prehaps there working on the premis that the book (set in the 1800's) happend and was hushed up? So some of the blighters survived?

I'm not sure how they could even begin to "hush up" half of England smoked to a cinder by an army of giant, clanking tripods wielding death rays.

That type of news tends to make the front pages.

I'm not sure how they could even begin to "hush up" half of England smoked to a cinder by an army of giant, clanking tripods wielding death rays.

Sorry i should have been clearer, what i meant was prehaps they hushed up a smaller attack in the 1800 only some survived. Paying some kind of lip service to the orginal book, but ensuring you could have the big fight present day.

I have to admit though as much as i have faith in speilberg im dissapointed he didnt make it a period piece.

Isn't that part of the plot for Independence Day ?

It's Spielberg. It's huge. It's sci fi. It has Tom Cruise in it. I don't see how it won't be pretty solid entertainment.

Concept art look a little Mars Attacks!-hokey though. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It ain't Chekov and I'm glad they know it.

Im not saying it wont be great (although it isnt even filmed yet so how can we know).

Just a big part of me wants a war of the worlds film set in the time of the book. Where the whole concept of an alien invasion would have been so much more freekish to the inhabitants of earth.

Yah, but how many cars and trucks and things filled with petrol (excepting vagrants) were there to blow up in the stupid olden days ? Huh ?

Well i suppose there is that, wanton destructon on a global scale is always good.

this is just a theory, but their new tagline "they're already here" and the image of the hand looks almost like roots of some kind. I wonder if the catch is that they are here and have been growing underground or something...

What? Like Invasion of The Body Snatchers?

Now that you mention it....

I can't imagine they'd try and do something like Body Snatchers.
It just looks like a root or something.

great teaser. I'm really looking forward to this one.

ANYONE ELSE NOTICE THE EXPLOSIONS CAME FROM THE TREES?
(see me theory above)

I don't know if the explosions came from the trees, it just looks like the trees were hit when everything went to shit. It makes it look like just a big wave of destruction coming over the hill there.

As to the tagline, it does give me a Body Snatchers vibe. Maybe there were some deep insertion teams that came in to do recon. Maybe he's taking a page out of V also, or They Live.

I would love to see it set in 1800's as well, that would be sweet! But alas instead we get to see Independence Day Part 2.

If the method of attack is different (something to do with the roots perhaps?) and the reaction of the populace is different then the film could be very different from Independence day, especially in the last hour.
It would be difficult for the set up not to be very similar, but it could quite easily become very different as the humans react in different ways. remove the military triumphalism, add one or two acutal characters and anything could happen.
it is, of course, impossible to discern thematics from a teaser trailer, but notions of collapse, of fear, of human arrogance, of facing defeat - interesting stuff if it happens.

it could just be two hours of shit blowing up of course.

that's also a good possibility...the V or They Live angle. I just have to imagine they'd come up with something totally different than anyone previously thought - otherwise us sci-fi fans wouldn't be all that impressed (and I expect good things from steve and tom on this one).
If they decided to stick with the original story then it would be a simple invasion like ID4, in which case everyone would compare it and blah, blah, blah...
I'm stickin with the shrubbery angle in some way.

Isn't that Day of the Triffids? Never seen it, but that's what it sound like. Space plants tearing shit up.

Never saw it either. May have to make an effort and watch it before next summer.

So the aliens would attack through mother nature? mother nature becomes our enemy and humans are powerless to stop her...until they are defeated by walmart, who concretes over the entire planet.

If they do go down the v or body snatcher angle then in a way it ceases to become War of the Worlds.
Much as i trust Mr S im not sure what he is doing here but i have faith.......i have faith.

The tagline makes me think this is going to be a post 9/11 action movie...with the aliens representing terrorists.

If you are going to watch it, try and get hold of the BBC's adaptation. Hollywood's take on it is absolutely dreadful.

This has a 70's Spielberb vibe to it. It looks like Stephen is getting back to his roots.

Oh, and there's already a faithful, period-set adaption of the book. It's in post production now and was made in England, somebody linked it further up. It's not Steven Speilberg, but at least it's better than nothing:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425638/

Could be good, interesting to see both movies coming out at a similar time. I wonder which version will be embraced by the fans?

maybe the martians are really Red Lectroids from Planet 10 by way of the 8th dimension.

Fuck that. I don't want a re-make. I want my Buckaroo Banzai vs the World Crime League like I was promised all those years ago.

It should be fun to see how and where Spielberg takes this adaptation.

I remember reading about this sometime last year....
Wondered what ever happened to it.

Call me crazy, but wasn't there a WotW TV show years back where the aliens WERE actually body-snatchers? I sure hope they aren't mining that TV show for material...

AHA! Found it. Crazily enough, the tagline for the show is "They never left!" http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet...of_the_Worlds/

Don't know if anyone has seen this yet but here's a link to an article on AICN about some of the shooting for WOTW. It took place in the woods and the scooper snagged some shots.

Now giving its source this could be B.S. but who knows....
Whatever it is it certainly gives credit to the whole idea that trees/roots/mother nature is involved in some way.

http://www.aintitcoolnews.com/display.cgi?id=19027

"I wonder which version will be embraced by the fans?"
Unfortunately, the quality of the period WOTW does not seem to be high from the clips they have up at their website.. It looks like a made for cable TV movie or "B" theartrical movie.in terms of quality. Professional level but not anywhere near the polish of a major motion picture. It's a small budget indie trying to do a large budget subject matter.
I don't know about the fans, but considering that Speilberg will be able to spend One hundred dollars in marketing and advertising for every dollar that Pendragon (The company making the other WOTW) can spend, I know which one is going to win at the box office.
Pendragon is apparently having problems finding a distributor for their WOTW.
It looks to me like they are trying to do a film on a shoestring budget that requires a large or at least medium scale budget to bring off. The quality of the acting in the clips I have seen leaves a lot to be desired also.
I respect what Pendragon is trying to do, and I would love to see an Edwardian period WOTW done right, but the Pendragon film does not appear to be it.
And that this is the first feature film for the writers,producers, and directors, is not promising either. It's a huge leap from doing commericials and industrial films to doing a feature film on the scale of this.

"It's in post production now and was made in England, "....
That's not quite the case. It is set in England but the film itself was mainly shot in Washington State. They might have sent a couple of people over to the UK for some second unit "Atmospheric shots" but almost all the main footage was shot in the American Northwest. Not a biggie but for the producers to give the impression that the bulk of the film was made in the UK is disingenious.

Re: They're already here tagline, I thought that it could be like Quatermass and the Pit style invasion. The pods from mars arrived an awful long while ago and have been uncovered in the modern time unleashing some grouchy Martians, pissed at being woken up after a 2000 year lay in.

Still that said they did that with Reign of Fire and that was shit!

As far as the setting / time frame is concerned, I'm not too worried because as the Orson Wells radio play proved, the story can be set in any time frame. It becomes even more relevent in someways because our tech is so much more advanced than the victorian era, yet even with nukes, stealth planes, laser guided shit and chemical weapons we still can't beat the Martians and in the end the only thing that does kill them is the one thing we still cant get rid of ourself even with all our knowlege.... The common cold.

In the end its a morality tale about the over reliance on technology....

BTW I watched 20 seconds of the Pendragon Pictures trailer and while I admire their attempts, it just screams fan film.....

But will it be the cold?

it is one of the interesting mysteries of this film to know what will defeat them. or whether, in spielberg's post-AI phase, he's going to pull some sort of last 20 minute twist where they win...

yes. unlikely. but the morality play part of it will be mostly in how it turns out. i guess we wait and see, unless someone has the final shooting script.

unless it plays as a dark and ambiguous movie then cops out in the last 20 minutes like minority report (yes, i'm in that camp) with a happy ending.

discuss: are the happy endings of minority report and total recall supposed to be taken at face value, or can they still be legitimately be seen as possibly just dreams...

I think Total Recall's ending is deliberately ambiguous (SP?) and a lot of clues at the start of the film, such as the tech at Recall strapping Arnie in to his chair while mentioning the sim was called "blue sky over mars" kinda throws you towards the whole thing being in his head. Especially the desolve to white at the end showing you nothing after, what you would guess is the end of the simulation..... so I would say that you still can take total recalls ending either way...

Nothing like that can be applied to Minority Report really.


Re: The Cold killing martians, I think it has to be that because frankly to do anything else would draw unfavorable comparisons with Independance Day's own version of giving the aliens a cold or rather a Virus.

As the virus in independance day was a nod to WOTW in the first place it might be difficult to get away from.

so we shall see how much Spielberg takes Independance Day into account because, whether he likes it or not (and whther we like it or not) this is an 'aien invasion!' movie post-ID4.

Especially so because Emmerich is seen by us terribly clever internet folks as such a Spielberg rip-off.

Welcome to the boards by the way, Lee.

This is true, I suppose theres no real way to avoid a comparison with IQ4 *ahem* I mean ID4 and thats sad because you just know that some twat who knows nothing about War of the worlds will pop up here or elsewhere on the net and review War of the worlds as "A rip off of Independance Day"

BTW I heard a rumor the other day that because Pendragon Pictures got the rights to War of the worlds first and started making a film based on the book, that, thats the reason that Spielberg & co had to set the film in a different era with different characters..... still that sounds like total BS to me but I thought I'd mention it incase it turns out to be true one day....

And thanks for the welcome... this is a cool forum to hang out in....

that rumour is...unlikely. Spielberg is like Godzilla compared to pendragon's Godzuki. money solves everything.

Oh, and this is just a bugbear of mine, deliberately mispelling things is one of the worst traits on the internet - Micro$oft, Lucass, IQ4. it's cheap.

and anyway, you need an IQ in at least the mid teens to get ID4.

ID4 was a rip-off of V and a dozen other movies anyway.

Well, as you all probably know - there will be a 30 second teaser/trailer debuting during the Super Bowl. This is supposed to include actual footage from the movie. Maybe we'll learn a little more about the direction Spielberg is taking this thing and if the aliens are anything like what has been theorized and what we have seen before. I doubt we'll see any actual aliens but there may be a hint or two at how they arrived and what exactly they want.

I see that Tom Cruise is going to act the aliens to death.

There's a few trailers for the Pendragon version linked from their site. It looks cheap, obviously, but you get a glimpse of one of the martian machines - and Big Ben gets blown to bits.

I think it looks...interesting, and you've got to admire their sheer big shiny brass balls for even attempting it.