this one gritty,well written and with a story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Da...981_TV_series)
conveys the horror well.
The 1981 series is brilliant. A big influence on Day of the Dead and, in turn, 28 Days Later.
having watched it all (it was broadcast as a two parter overseas) - I was not impressed - the ending in particular.
I'm a huge fan of Wells, and love the Stephen Baxter official sequal to "The War of the Worlds", entitled "The Massacre of Mankind".
So I was open-minded to this new adaptation. Anything that brings Wells to a new audience is usually fine by me.
However, after two episodes I have to say I am very disappointed by just how boring this version is. The script is leaden, as is the pace of the production. I just feel that the writers and producers started with a weak idea, and followed it through. I will watch the final episode, for completeness, but I am not expecting much at all by this point.
There are a few nice ideas that could have been handled differently, but the whole "love story" aspect is poorly judged.
That isn't the worst thing though. What is really grating is the moving around in time between what appear to be current events, then some pointi n the future where they become flashbacks. It doesn't work, and really removes virtually all of the dramatic tension of the story, making it more about a missing father than the invaders from Mars.
The destruction wrought by the Martians is barely seen, and in one particularly poor scene where George has been apparently buried by an improbable pile of timbers in the street - you can clearly see as he struggles free that these supposedly heavy lumps of wood weigh nothing as they wobble in the way that a polystyrene block would.
Shame really, as given the source material the tension and despair of the onslaught should be front and centre, not relegated to the wings as the two leads struggle with their relationship woes.
In the face of the massacre of mankind, their marital issues seem not only irrelevant, but pretty irritating.
So clever my foot fell off.
Well..... what I've learned from this is I'm a sucker for watching all 3 episodes.
^^^
Me too! What a load of tripe!
Had to watch ep3......wish I hadn't....oh well
I enjoyed looking at Eleanor Tomlinson.
Yep, agree with everything you said. I feel like they must have thought, "well, everyone knows the basic story by now, so we'll just skim over that and make it a romantic period drama with a bit of sci-fi makeup instead". The most disappointing thing for me was the battle between the martians and the Thunder Child in episode 2. In so far as it happened. The scene was definitely in there, but at least one critical element was missing. Dramatic tension not being the only thing.
I feel like with a much higher SFX budget and some significantly better editing, this could actually have been quite good. I don't think there was actually anything wrong with the acting or the script (mostly). It's just that the finished result was like someone spliced together footage from a Jane Austen drama with some 1990s Lightwave renderings of aliens blowing things up.
Episode 3 actually had some scenes that reminded me of 70s-80s low-budget BBC sci-fi horror classics like the old Dr Who, which are always at their best when the rubber monsters are hidden in the shadows. Constant menace is implied, no jump-scares needed. Unfortunately it did not live up to that standard, but again, a bit of editing could fix most of it. Every single flashforward should have been left on the cutting room floor too.
I always think when watching something like this is why make the aliens look like an animal or in this case something off starship troopers. How did they build all this advanced tech with 3 spikes as hands/legs? The thought process seems to be Alien = vicious monster.
I said I wouldn't watch part 3 and did - that's 3 hours of my life I will never get back.
What a load of crap.
I'll watch the last episode tonight as I've recorded it but seriously hoping the new Fox 8 episode series is better...
https://www.foxtv.co.uk/special/war-of-the-worlds
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My first thought was that they were another, smaller machine, like an EVA suit. The way the martians are described in the book is basically a huge brain with large eyes and "hands" that have evolved into tentacles. So they are extremely dextrous, but have trouble moving in the Earth's gravity & atmosphere. As soon as they leave the cylinder, they start using machines for everything. That includes some smaller machines that are like little factories, mining the materials and making components for the larger fighting machines. There is no quasi-magical nanotechnology or levitation in the book either.
Sadly, I don't think the series producers actually thought like this as we never see any indication that those things and the aliens themselves are not the same.Originally Posted by HG Wells
I hope so, but this doesn't sound promising as far as keeping to the hard* sci-fi of the original:
Sounds like yet more super-advanced quasi-magical technology as a McGuffin instead of real sci-fi. Their use of the word "unique" here seems ironic. What would be unique would be to make a sci-fi series with actual sci-fi in it.When astronomers detect a transmission from another galaxy...
Emotional, cinematic and rooted in character, it is a unique marriage of human drama and the best science fiction.
* People seem to forget how long ago War of the Worlds was written, how much science in general and knowledge of Mars in particular has moved on since then and how deeply rooted in real, then cutting-edge science the book actually was. Especially since those aspects are generally missed out or glossed over in the adaptations. Just because "invaders from Mars" has since become a sci-fi cliche doesn't mean it was one in 1898.
"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action."
'Populism, the last refuge of a Tory scoundrel'.
I convinced myself that the final episode would make up for the time wasted watching the first two episodes. I was wrong. The first episode had some of the urgency and incredulity that would arise when alien ships land and start melting people, but there was little of the feeling of being amongst people genuinely crapping themselves as the world that they know and love disintegrates around their ears. Remember the various scenes in the Tom Cruise version? Some of that was breathtaking. This was utter crap, with a love story that I cared nothing about, with actors that I wanted to slap silly and with aliens that were more meh than aaaagggggghhhh! The only saving grace yesterday evening was watching His Dark Materials beforehand.
Hopefully this thread will now dissappear forever and we can put this poor bbc adaption behind us all.......It could have been so much more.
Would have loved to have had around 20 minutes devoted to a battle between the martians Vs the Royal Navy.....as it was we just had a little taster
well that was underwhelming! i quite liked the first episode but it was all downhill after that.
ktmog6uk
marchingontogether!
It was like watching a long extended version of an episode of Dr Who featuring Matt Smith .......
That last episode was dire!
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Sadly true...
I'm not one for masquerading my '70s view of the world as a dislike for 'woke'ness (Personally, I find something very distasteful in that expresssion - It's a bit like the way the BNP use the word 'Patriotism', but that's me), but even I found the PCness heavy handed.
I could have tolerated that if the acting, plot, story, cinematography or anything else had been half decent, but after the fairly enjoyable scenes on Horsell Common and one or two of soldiers with Gatling Guns taking on aliens, it's been one long trudge through Rafe Spall looking pathetic, the red head looking miserable and his brother being an upper class twat (but at least he did ACT the part - Alone, as I saw, in the respect that he bothered acting at all!)
I had high hopes for this, but someone at the BBC should have looked at it and said "It's not good enough to show", because it wasn't!
M
Last edited by snowman; 3rd December 2019 at 13:11.
But, but ... it was “only possible due to the unique way the BBC is funded”.
Ah well, that’s it endured, could have been all done in an hour, never mind the “Expanse” on Amazon starts again soon.
The 2005 movie managed to convey a sturdy sense of panic and terror in those opening scenes of the tripods rising and especially the imminent ray zapping of people running away and turning to dust or exploding to dust. That was done great as was the dust body covered Cruise . The sounding of the horns and scale of the tripod rising up and out felt true. Imo of course . Even the aftermath , the plane outside , the scores of people fighting or being collected/ harvested. But the BBCs captures neither the decent CGI aspect of the tripods or the ray gunning. The cast is about as resonatingly dire as the cast of "Doctors" at 1.15pm on BBC in the week. One episode was enough .
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With this having got me in the mood for a decent BBC drama involving martian tripods invading the Earth, I have just received a copy of this, which I barely remember watching when it was on originally:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000R21294/
Here's a clip for those interested and it seems 10x better than the current one, albeit dated but the practical effects look better than this year's version. I noted at 1min 42 seconds into the clip when the tripods sign their alarms it's synced at midday with a close up of a SMITHS wall clock ! Pic added . Well if it's got a Smith's in its already a winner
https://youtu.be/qlla8-aLMX4
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Predator? I think you might be right. That said it's a fairly common sort of "alien noise" that's presumably meant to sound a bit like a rattlesnake, but bassier (hence, bigger and even more threatening). It might be be a stock sound effect, like the Wilhelm Scream. It's not on the Wikipedia page though:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_sound_effect
Ok,
For completeness I have just endured the final episode - all fifty five turgid, inexorable, tedious minutes of it.
That was far, far worse than I was expecting.
The characters, hard to like at any point, became just grating to the extent I was pleased when they were bumped off. The pacing was just dire, and the production appeared to have run out of budget given that it was pretty much centred in one deeply dull location.
There was no tension, nor sense of a story moving to a conclusion. The attempts at emotion and pathos were risible - clumsily handled to the extent of being absurd, and the almost total lack of a dramatic arc coming to a resolution left me entirely unmoved and bored to tears by the time it eventually meandered to it's pointless conclusion.
Episodes one was no better than average, two was weak, and three was possibly the worst hour of TV drama I have seen in many years.
Dreadful. Absolute rubbish.
To take such amazing source material and turn it into such abject dross requires a special kind of non-talent.
Last edited by TheFlyingBanana; 3rd December 2019 at 22:30.
So clever my foot fell off.
I haven't seen it yet but did overhear two luvvies talking in the london hotel bar last week and one saying "it is a superb allegory, dahling"
"Ah yes", was the response "it mentioned that in the "whateverpaper""(indie I think).
"British colonialism wasn't it"
Yah Yah Dahling !!!
So based on that and what some of you have said should I really just give it a miss?
Yeah, that bit did stick out like a sore thumb. It's hard to pick a single low-point but that was probably it.
For the avoidance of doubt, without wishing to "spoil" anything for those who haven't seen it, the whole story isn't reworked into some incredibly subtle allegory full of clever veiled historical references. It's literally one monologue that I am almost quoting word for word as: "this whole situation with the martian invaders is a bit like English colonialism, isn't it?"
I was looking forward to this show,stuck it out to the end,waste of time.
Now that truly is an excellent sci-fi series, possibly the best ever? I've watched series 1-3 three times now and cant wait until the 13th Dec for series 4 to start on Amazon Prime. For anyone who hasn't seen it, the first series is a little confusing but well worth sticking with :)
Last edited by odyseus10; 4th December 2019 at 21:15.
I'm not sure I would go that far yet. I was a bit disappointed that S2 & 3 didn't really live up to the promise of S1, but it's still going in the right sort of direction and I'm looking forward to S4. It still has time to move away from the scooby gang format and start pulling the bigger picture plotlines together in the same way that Game of Thrones got things right.
Speaking of "best sci-fi series" I haven't finished watching Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex yet. From what I have watched so far, that's a definite contender if we're not limiting the choices to live action. I should probably watch the rest but I'm saving it for a rainy day. It's really, really good. Even better than the film, IMO.