WELLESNET MESSAGE BOARD

Oops, that's exactly what I meant, I've tweaked the original post to make this clearer. Cheers for spotting this.

Why doesn't Herman Munster ever say, "Hey, I'm strangely similar to the Frankenstein monster that was originally concieved of by Mary Shelley in the nineteenth century novel and then revisioned in the early twentieth century in the Universal horror film directed by James Whale? Its an absurd discussion.

But tadao, many other excellent points. I am now going to think about them while I drink some tea.

Tim

Hey, interesting that R Kadin mentioned no-one had commented on the relationship with the original novella, I typed out a few words after seeing the movie on Sunday...

I can't say I was much disturbed by things like cutting and acting that others have complained about on this thread. I guess it's all to do with not being fully engaged with the movie, and having ones "suspension of disbelief" interrupted. I was majorly skeptical about a lot of the creative choices made for the movie, which seems to show that I felt the same kind of disengagement, but focused my objections on other "problems" with the film...

Harvey's comments about not having referenced the Welles broadcast are of both valid and amusing; but such comments would similarly apply to any update or contemporaneous setting of a well known work, as well as to any naturalistic serialised TV drama. What would the characters in such a show see if they turned their set on during their show's timeslot? What would the protagonist of any version of "Hamlet" set post-16th century, make of the similarity of his own predicament with that of his more famous namesake? It's a fun discussion, but ultimately fairly pointless; if the the work is worth watching, we'll accept the world of the story with willing suspension of disbelief.


With that aside, my own specific objections to the modifications made to the original novella follow. What follows kind of relies on having seen the movie, and also being at least a little familiar with the novel and the Welles broadcast, so SPOILERS aplenty).


HG Wells in 1898 begins with "No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century [...] And early in the twentieth century...." Why not start with "no one would have believed in the early years of the 20th century", and "yet in the early years of the 21st century" or some such, as there is undoubtedly a not-insignificant proportion of the population who might believe (courtesy, in part, of Spielberg's own movies) that aliens could be/are watching us?

The whole "invaders from under the earth" seems a bit of a pointless modification. I'd guess the explanation is because much more is known about the surface of Mars today than in 1898. But equally, there's plenty still unknown about Mars below the surface, and I daresay it's more of an unknown than the depths of our own planet. Why not have invaders from below the surface of Mars?

I'd say Spielberg missed a trick too with the design of the invaders. HG Wells' martians are essentially brains with faces and tentacles. A future stage in humanoid evolution, in which beings live in their mind, depend on machines for travel and life support, and rely on heavily processed food sources is one of the more prescient aspects of the novel; as well as man's inhumanity to man, the vegetarian Wells also makes searing comment on our own treatment of animals. I guess Spielberg considered such an unflattering comparison might not find favour with audiences.

I also wasn't keen on the presentation of the human interaction with the fighting machines. I had no objections to the initial destruction with the heat ray (which is true to the HG Wells original; Harvey, I guess one could speculate it's to immediately quash resistance and cause chaos - snacking can come later!). Wells implies that once the martians take over the globe, they will breed humans factory style, for food; which I think was missing in the movie.

Another objection I had, based on the original, was the rejigging of the success of human attacks on the machines. Wells has the gunship "Thunder Child" successfully bringing down a tripod, at the cost of its own destruction. Welles and Koch do the same thing with a fighter pilot, as I recall. The effect of both is to show that the martians aren't invulnerable, but are as close to being so, based on the accessible technology, superiority of martian machine numbers, and heavy human cost.

I guess Spielberg's "shields" on the machines are necessary to protect them from nuclear weapons, and large scale conventional strikes. In the movie the army manage finally to take down an already stricken fighting machine, but it feels a very hollow victory. Maybe that's Spielberg's point, although it does seem to undermine the idea that man's escape isn't and can't be wrought by human effort. Again, I'd conjecture it's pandering to the audience, who might object to "us" not playing a more active role in the defeat of at least one martian machine, albeit one on its last legs. It all happens so suddenly in the movie, and the Morgan Freeman narration at the end to explain the germ connection feels rather tacked on.

On the alien anus thing- what's all that about then? With the aliens being seen as humanoids in the cellar, what does this mean? We've already seen the alien blood extraction machine (in an authentically Wellsian extended hypodermic), so what is this? Is Spielberg implying a hive existence, or is it just sloppy work, in order to accommodate "grenade up the ass" payoff? Is it simply a means of allowing the protagonist a heightened sense of agency, compared to the somewhat passive (unnamed) narrator of the novella, and equally passive Pierson in the Welles broadcast. In fact, the only agency (correct me if I'm wrong) the narrator of the novella is allowed "against" the martians is to attempt suicide towards the end, at which point the martians have already been vanquished by the infinitesimal disease bacteria.

I also agree the reunion with the estranged son was nonsense. The novella has the narrator reunited, against all odds, with his wife; but the reunion with the ex-wife, love rival, two children (one of whom took a suicidal attempt against the aliens), and the in-laws is both optimistic and demeaning to the sense of deadliness of the aliens.

And a general, post holocaust (which Mr Spielberg should certainly have taken into account) and post-London bombings (which are certainly high in everyone's minds here) is the way in which he presented death and destruction. The lead character's friends and neighbours were easily annihilated, (as well as many soldiers and civilians) in a "carnage candy" fashion; yet the protagonist's entire family escaped unharmed, WITH NO COMMENT. Surely you should know better, Mr Spielberg?


The point I'd stress, in conjunction with the sense of accomplishment (or otherwise) of the movie, is that everybody on this thread has objected to one thing or another about this movie. I guess we all found it to be lacking in some manner; and as such, latched on to the particular objections we all had to aspects of the movie. Still, I suppose that enough people were happy with it, or at least didn't let reviews or word-of-mouth keep them away from the theatre, that Mr Spielberg will be laughing all the way to the bank. Let's wish he would kick a few bucks toward the completion of "TOSOTW"...

Well, there goes my problems with the movie; comments anyone?

Orson & Jazz - you are correct about Raymond's dialogue. In fact, he goes on specifically saying he saw the glass ball hit the floor. The problem is Raymond is simply not shown as being in the bedroom during that opening sequence. Welles could have easily had Raymond's silhouette enter the frame along with the nurse to establish someone else was in the room, but he didn't. Was this something Welles just overlooked, or is Welles implying that Raymond is lying about being there? I tend to think it was just something Welles didn't feel was important enough to include, but it throws the logic off somewhat upon repeat viewings. Also note that it's obvious Welles didn't intend to originally end the opening sequence on that wide shot of Kane in bed covered by the sheet; during editing, Wise used an earlier shot of Kane in bed holding the glass ball, then "blacked out" Kane's outstretched arm and uncovered head with a shadow matte.

Other inconsistencies would include Jed Leland commenting on specific conversations between Kane and his first wife (the great "breakfast montage") which Kane would probably have been too embarassed to relate to Leland. Anyway, just wanted to point out that Welles wasn't always "water tight" with his logic, but who cares with films as dynamic as his.

Didn't Raymond point out in the end to the reporter that he heard Kane whiper "Rosebud", not once but twice?

Once when Susan left him, and "that other time", meaning when he died.


So even if some one, not meaning you Roger, wanted to point out that little "mistake", it wouldn't jive. There was some one in the room.

I could say that "The Stranger", "Lady From Shanghai" and "Mr. Arkadin" are all pretty illogical (however you cut them) and that even "Citizen Kane" has characters recounting events they could not have witnessed (there's no one in Kane's bedroom when he murmurs "Rosebud")...but I would only be doing so as a result of etimh's challenge! The fact is: I love Welles' work and don't feel the desire to denigrate it. Also, I really enjoyed R Kadin's post as well and am very glad I ignored all the recent press surrounding WOTW so I didn't have higher expectations going into it.

oh wow, I totally agree! :0

Damn, R Kadin!

Brilliant.

Anyone have anything to say to that?!

R: you continue to set the bar higher and higher. Totally enjoy reading your posts. Cheers.

Tim

As usual, you make good points, Roger. I would, however, like to offer somewhat more in support of my allegation that Spielberg's WOTW is, on balance, an insult to its audience.

Neither Independence Day nor Godzilla pretended to be much more than action comics on film. They incited few, if any, artistic expectations and none whatsoever in terms of imparting "important messages". As such, they delivered what they promised - which, in terms of quality and substance, might not be saying a lot. But, who cares? Such lofty aspirations were simply not what either product was about. So I find no insult in either instance.

Contrastingly, The Day After Tomorrow, with its embedded global warming message, did make the mistake of taking somewhat higher aim without (regrettably for its own sake) upgrading its plot or dialogue, accordingly. Making matters even worse, in my opinion, much of the script was little more than a cut & paste job from the producers' earlier efforts. That combination I found quite insulting.

Which brings us to Spielberg's current magnum opus, in support of which both Tom & Steve have foresaken no opportunity to promote as something much more than a simple action or sci-fi flick. Much, much more. It's about 9/11, it's about universalizing the whole refugee experience, it's about a still-post-adoloescent society (pre-9/11 America as symbolized by Cruise's character) being rudely confronted with the fight or flight choices that will make it or break it. It's about man's inhumanity to man (woman's inhuwomanity to women?) plus the slender threads by which our species seeks to secure its primacy over this planet. It's about courage, personal responsibility and that old Spielbergian standby, parental love.

Oh, and it's about the wisdom of making sure Tim Robbins shaves daily and eschews a wife-beater wardrobe.

A film that wants to guide its audience's intelligence in the direction of such ambitious messages can't get away with festooning that intelligence with a ridiculous fundamental premise (aliens advanced enough millenia ago to bury attack tripods all over the globe could have simply taken over our far more defenceless planet then and there with not much more than an armory of air guns), truly risible absurdities (e.g., aliens whose futuristic technology can furnish them everything except clothing, apparently), hoary old dialogue cliches (pick a script page, any page), and logically impossible cop-out endings. Then, thinking that all it need do to conceal such gaping deficiencies from its audience is to distract it with a bunch of gee-whiz spectacle simply perfects the insult, IMHO.

And here's where a direct Wellesian comparison can and should be made. As an auteur, Welles never ever insulted his viewers' intelligence. Quite the contrary and often to his commercial detriment. His plots were incredibly intricate and unflinchingly logical, including The Trial (the stark logic of nightmares). Only when meddled with by others did his painstaking constructs falter. Spectacle might not have been his thing, whereas Spielberg has that much in the bag. But Welles the director would never have perpetrated such insults and will, therefore, endure long after Spielberg's latest bid for notoriety fades from memory.

If there's any justice in life or in history, that is.

One really can't compare WOTW to anything Welles put on film, but I would say that Welles' use of the radio bulletin interruptions in his broadcast was a more realistic, unsettling approach than what Spielberg has done. Spielberg chose spectacle, but handled it very effectively. If we're comparing apples to apples, then WOTW goes up against "Independence Day", "Godzilla" and "The Day After Tomorrow" (sorry, I know they're all Roland Emmerich films!) and it trounces them rightly. Those are the summer-oriented, popcorn movies that truly insult their respective audiences. WOTW rises above them to become the "Citizen Kane" of the exploitative alien invasion / disaster genre! Unfortunately, that doesn't really make WOTW a good film outside of this particular genre, nor even a decent science fiction work (and Spielberg has made at least a couple decent ones).

I agree with etimh that a big problem with discounting Spielberg's version due to its characters' non-awareness of the Wells/Welles antecedants is that it's a brush with which the Mercury Theater's radio production could likewise be tarred: all those feverishly chatty news reporters and not one of them alluding to the H.G. Wells novel? And yet that doesn't detract from enjoying the fictional universe conjured up in that broadcast.

Granted, the broadcast was a seminal pop-culture event, whereas the book was simply one more addition to a long line of speculative fiction - making the absence of any reference to the former that much more conspicuous. But we're still talking matters of degree.

Not that I have any greater desire than Roger Ryan to be misconstrued as a Spielberg apologist, I will risk this much in his favour in this forum: in terms of handling the sheer spectacle of physical destruction required to bring this story compellingly to the screen, Spielberg's skill probably surpasses by a significant order of magnitude Welles' ability in that same regard. Not that Welles ever really ventured along that same cinematic path - or ever wanted to, for that matter, making point-for-point comparisons virtually impossible.

The closest Welles might have come, I suppose, were K's final destruction in The Trial, the car-bomb explosion that kicks off Touch of Evil, the shipboard fire in The Deep and the battle scenes in both Macbeth and Chimes at Midnight, none of which approaches, even remotely, Spielberg's bravura and near-documentary depiction of a towering highway overpass breaking apart and collapsing like a set of monstrous dominoes on the hapless little post-war homes below. Thanks in part to Spielberg's commendable decision to let the scene tell itself in a sustained long shot, that, my friends, is truly an awesome sight to behold, ranking right up there with other indelible moments that pepper Spielberg's expansive portfolio. Give the devil some due.

Feel free, of course, to speculate as to what Welles might have been capable of had he been allowed to play with the budgets and the digital wizardry that have become staples in Spielberg's case. Reports of his stage production of Around the World in Eighty Days harken to at least one valiant attempt at spectacle on a grand scale. That Welles later had to limit the scope of his subjects to match far more meager resources is (for the sake of this argument, certainly) a most unfortunate fact.

By the way, the foregoing are merely observations and not judgments on the two men's skills as filmmakers. Overall, Welles will always have it over Spielberg, hands down. Two different leagues, entirely, as I've said before.

Another thing, though: it was mentioned that Spielberg's treatment of WOTW is humourless to a fault. While that might be true on balance, I must admit finding it quite amusing to watch a probe with an unmistakably ET-like face slithering malevolently around Tim Robbins' basement. And, since it worked well as both an in-joke and a little thematic touch, I had to give it credit all the more. And whether that dalliance with an intergalactic sphincter was a conscious satire on Cruise, the Scientologist and (rumoured) pan-sexualist, I'll let others be the judge.

One final comment I'll offer in the film's favour is that, with a few exceptions, it manages to maintain a relatively high level of intensity throughout. Much popcorn and many a sultry summer hour will be consumed in blessedly undemanding diversion.

- END OF COMPLIMENTS -

In far too many other ways to bother mentioning, Spielberg's WOTW is a terrible mess and a virtual insult to its audience. Unfortunately, judging by the film's opening grosses, Spielberg knows too well just how much insult the masses are willing to take. Heaven help us should WOTW go on to do well and egg him shamelessly on to more blatant and bloated exploitations in the future, sponging up scarce investment capital that would be far better deployed funding rafts and rafts of truly imaginative and innovative little indy efforts

Yes, Roger, I totally agree with you about the freeway minivan sequence! It was one of the few moments in the film that was genuinely skillful and I was quite impressed. Thanks for reminding me of this. Other great points as well.

Tim

I don't care much for the role of Spielberg apologist, or whatever one wants to call it, but let me point out one example in "War Of The Worlds" for which the director deserves praise: the minivan freeway escape scene. One of the most difficult things to pull off in any film is to maintain momentum during a dialogue scene taking place in a moving vehicle. Normally, one loses all sense of what is happening outside the vehicle during one of these scenes as the camera cuts from studio-bound vehicle interiors with rear-screen projection (or "greenscreen" these days) to second unit footage of a stunt driver careening down a road and making sharp turns. In "War", Spielberg delivers a much improved version of this scenario with a camera that appears to seemlessly circle the vehicle providing the necessary close-up or medium shots to support the dialogue, then pulling back to reveal where the vehicle is geographically. No momentum is lost whatsoever due to the most innovative use of CGI and greenscreen I've seen in a number of years. True, this only demonstrates the technical excellence of Spielberg's direction, but that is the very reason you would want to see a film like "War".

Sure, I would have liked the script to be a lot better and suspect it suffered when the film was rushed into theatres two years ahead of the original schedule (the idea that the "tripods" were buried in the earth by aliens a million years earlier may have been a clever metaphor for "sleeper cells" but is completely illogical). But it seems that many of the complaints regarding the script stem from the screenwriters simply following Wells' original template. The 1898 novel breaks down in the same way midway through: two men with differing ideologies coming into conflict. It's the same reason no one really remembers the second half of Welles' radio broadcast; after all the thrilling "we interrupt this programming" news reports, the lengthly Welles' monologue just seems rather dull.

Let me throw in a plug for MARCH OF THE PENGUINS, the nature documentary which is beating THE WAR OF THE WORLDS on a theater by theater basis. It is simple, real and magnificent.

Glenn

Fact checkers! Fact checkers! Where's marzol when you need him? Is this true?

Still, as tragically shown by his death the very day AFTER the deal was made, IT WAS TOO LITTLE TOO LATE! Once again.

I'll see Spielberg in hell.

Tim