Editorial Reviews and
DVD Information about
H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds
Description
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.]
Amazon.com
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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Customer Reviews for
H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds
What a disappointment!
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.H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds
don't waste your time or money!
This movie will give "Plan Nine from Outer Space" a run for worst movie ever made. There is truly nothing redeeming about this. Please, take my word for it. I know how it feels to want something new from this great story, but this is NOT it.
I would give you specifics but the fact is I would have to recount the entire movie. The acting is terrible, the cinematography would not pass a college course, and the interpretation of the original material is by far the worst.
It took WEEKS for me to get through the whole film. I literally had to stop over and over because I just couldn't take it! When I eventually did finish I put the CD away and swore I would never inflict such pain on myself again. If I could give this no stars, I would.
H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds
Do your research before seeing this movie
You're probably an H.G. Wells fan.
You're probably appreciative of independent, low-budget cinema, and unfazed by poor special effects. You can see past the gloss, and artistry brings more value to a film than millions of dollars of slick production value.
On the flip side, you might even fetch some amusement from occasional bad movies.
Having read the bipolar reviews for this film, you're probably thinking that you can't lose. If it's good, everyone wins. If it's bad, at least it should be fun to watch. But read the reviews carefully. You might think you can take this movie on, but it's out of your league. This movie has left a trail of dead optimistic movie buffs in its wake. Like the rest, it will crush you and dance on your grave.
I was one of those left-for-dead optimistic movie buffs. I love movies, with my tastes ranging from Harmony Korine to Ed Wood. I regarded this faithful version of "War of the Worlds" as a worthy gamble, capable of a great payoff, and invited over two other optimistic movie buffs to share the risk. We even had a few drinks, to temper our expectations.
The movie held up for thirty minutes, max. At one hour, I was embarrassed. At two, I was wishing I was dead. During the final scenes of this film's three-hour runtime, I was wishing I had never been born.
Why? The pacing was painful. While Anthony Piana and a few other actors earned their paycheck, the rest of the cast was straight out of a high-school talent show. The special effects were worse than distracting, in that frequently you couldn't actually tell what was supposed to be happening. (And if this was supposed to be 'artistic style', it clearly didn't work, and the director should've recognized that.)
This was a movie that clearly didn't have any feedback during its production, was created by a director who lacked an eye for competent cinema, and was probably just an avaricious ploy to scam money by pushing a substandard product into the marketplace concurrently with Spielberg's version and riding its wave of publicity.
Still, some people claim to love this movie, and some people do, I'm certain. Even so, there's a good reason for the bipolar nature of these reviews, and there exists much controversy regarding their veracity. Not just on Amazon, but in other sources as well. To whit:
-- The film company (Pendragon) insists that they are the subject of a guerilla smear campaign by Paramount, which is using a nameless PR firm to debase the value of this film, since it is viewed as a competitor to Spielberg's version.
-- Many film enthusiasts believe that numerous false positive reviews have been issued by Pendragon, with the intention of misrepresenting the public opinion regarding their movie (i.e., making the film appear better than it actually is), and thus inflating their sales.
With such identical accusations being flung from both sides of the fence, it implies that one of the parties is likely to be correct: that several of the reviews are fabricated, of either the highly-positive or highly-negative variety.
My one-star review probably indicates where I stand, and I'm so annoyed by Pendragon's apparent act of deception that it fueled me to write this review. But don't let me alone convince you:
-- Browse the other reviews here on amazon.com. Be sure to get a representative sample. (And to get a feeling for their sincerity, browse the reviews for other products written by those reviewers.)
-- Read the discussions/forum about this movie on amazon.com.
-- Read the reviews on IMDB.
-- Check out the Wikipedia entry for this movie.
-- Look at the trailers on youtube.com, as well as the blackmoon spoofs.
You might think, Why do all this research for just a movie? But this is a *three hour* movie, which hundreds of people claim will ultimately be a waste of your time. You owe yourself twenty minutes of confirmation before taking the plunge. There are lots of data out there, and it will certainly sway you one way or the other. I wish I had done it myself before pushing "PLAY".
Personally, I recommend that you quell your curiosity and stay away. I don't regard this as a movie, but a scam-job disguised as art. (And honestly, the premise of this film is so promising, I would've been interested in viewing one of the shorter, revised "director's cuts" that have since been released, to give the film another chance. But because of the apparent deception by Pendragon, I'm not going to fall for that again.)
Still, if you decide to venture forth and give this movie a day in court, I'd encourage you to rent it, and of the three versions of this film that exist, you should watch the original, full-length (three-hour) version, so you can see what all the fuss is about.
H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds
Everything about this movie is awful
If given the choice between watching this mess of a movie or being sucked dry by the Martians, guess which one I'd prefer.
Horrible acting
Terrible directing
Annoying music
Awful special effects
Continuity problems galore
Fake moustache!
Endless shots of one or two characters walking/running through the countryside
Endless expression shots of actors who can't express
Did I mention the fake moustache?H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds
Our Gang does H. G. Wells
Remember how the gang in the "Little Rascals" shorts would "put on a show" to earn some money and the show would be staged with cheap home-made props and laughably terrible performances? Well that "let's put on a show" spirit survives in the Pendragon version of WotW. Unfortunatly the home made props and bad performances also survived.
I really wanted to like this DVD because the idea of doing WotW in the appropriate time period is an admirable endeavor. However, after seemingly neverending shots of men walking (or running) along an unpaved road and hundreds of reaction shots of actors(?) reacting to something other than what was being shown on the screen, my patience wore a little thin. By the time I got to the incredibly bad Thunderchild sequence, I was sure I had been transported to the satellite of love but Mike or Joel and the robots were nowhere to be found.
I guess good intentions don't always make for good entertainment and this isn't good entertainment!H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds
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