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War of the Worlds
USA 2005
Director: Steven Spielberg
With Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Miranda Otto, Justin Chatwin
Certificate 12A 116m 21s
In 1976 Philip Strick wrote: "War of the Worlds deserves to be remade, many times." And so far HG Wells' 1898 novel has inspired Orson Welles' 1938 Halloween radio broadcast, the George Pal/Byron Haskin 1953 film (which, Strick observed, "deserves to be remembered with affection"), Jeff Wayne's 1977 concept album, Howard Waldrop's short story 'Night of the Coolers' and various depictions of the Martians and their war machines, ranging from the original illustrations accompanying Wells' text in Pearson's Magazine to a commemorative statue in Woking - the scene of the alien landings in the novel. Surprisingly, Spielberg's version is only the second film adaptation, though directors as diverse as Cecil B. DeMille, Sergei Eisenstein and Alfred Hitchcock were tempted by the material. It seems that one reason it has taken so long for any new War of the Worlds film to get made is that Wells' material has so completely been absorbed into the SF genre that there hardly seemed any point. Independence Day and Mars Attacks! are already modernised, American takes, and they both have an oddly retro feel, looking back not to 1898 but 19 5 3 as if Pal's film, with its manta-ray-like floating machines, had completely overwritten the still vivid, still pertinent book.
Given that Spielberg was responsible for Hook(1991) and made a film called The Lost World(1997) as if he'd never heard of Arthur Conan Doyle, there was some trepidation from Wellsians who really want a faithful big-budget adaptation in period and set in England. As Strick indicated 30 years ago, that film still needs to be made. But while Spielberg's version, scripted by David Koepp, would be hard-pressed to stir anyone to misty affection in the way the 1953 film does (you can tell Spielberg feels that tug himself because Gene Barry and Ann Robinson, Pal's stars, have wordless cameos), it is nevertheless excellent, thoughtful, often sobering and terrifying.
Koepp wrote and directed The Trigger Effect(1996), an underrated film about the collapse of suburban society after a power breakdown, and draws on that material here, with people milling about after the shock of the aliens' violent intervention...