War
The War Of The Worlds
On June 29th, 2005, Earth goes to war. From Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures comes "War of the Worlds," directed by Steven Spielberg and starring international superstar Tom Cruise. A contemporary retelling of H.G. Wells's seminal classic, the sci-fi adventure thriller reveals the extraordinary battle for the future of humankind through the eyes of one American family fighting to survive it. The film also stars Dakota Fanning, Miranda Otto, Justin Chatwin, and Tim Robbins.
Cruise stars as Ray Ferrier, a divorced dockworker and less-than-perfect father. Soon after his ex-wife (Miranda Otto) and her new husband drop off his teenage son Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and young daughter Rachel (Dakota Fanning) for a rare weekend visit, a strange and powerful lightning storm touches down.
Moments later, at an intersection near his house, Ray witnesses an extraordinary event that will change all their lives forever. A towering three-legged war machine emerges from deep beneath the earth and, before anyone can react, incinerates everything in sight. An ordinary day has suddenly become the most extraordinary event of their lifetimes - the first strike in a catastrophic alien attack on Earth.
Ray scrambles to get his children away from this merciless new enemy, embarking on a journey that will take them across the ravaged countryside, where they become caught in the desperate tide of refugees fleeing from an extraterrestrial army of Tripods.
But no matter where they run, there is no safety, no refuge ... only Ray's unconquerable will to protect the ones he loves.
NOVEL INTO FILM
War of the Worlds is a film that has been adapted from the novel of the same name written by H.G. Wells. Filmmakers from every country in the world have often used existing novels as sources for films. In taking H.G. Well's novel, Steven Spielberg, in his adaptation, has decided to alter the time setting of the original novel – nineteenth century England – to the twenty-first century. So instead of a period piece we have a film that deals with modern day themes and ideas.
When 'The War of the Worlds' was published in 1898, it seemed as if H. G. Wells was describing a vision of the future. Wells is regarded by some as having 'invented' futurist science fiction, laying the foundations on which many others built, including George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and PhilipK. Dick. Like these writers, H. G. Wells used fantastical and apocalyptic visions of the future to expose the problems of human society, as they saw it.
In some ways his predictions would prove remarkably accurate. Although no invaders have come from Mars, some of his predictions, such as the lasers ('Heat Rays'), gas used as a weapon and bombing from the air, have all come about. These are now commonplace to us but in 1898 they existed only in the imagination. So what did H. G. Wells intend 'The War of the Worlds' to be about?
Colonisation
H. G. Wells admitted that colonialism was one of the themes of the book – at the time of writing, the British Empire covered much of the globe, usually to the detriment of the peoples who were colonised. For example, the indigenous inhabitants of Tasmania (near Australia) were wiped out in 1876 because of Britain's use of the island as a penal colony. In his novel, Wells turned this on its head, suggesting to the complacent inhabitants of Britain what it would be like to be on the receiving end of aggressive colonial expansion.
…before we judge them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its own inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?
The War of the Worlds (Ch 1),
H. G. Wells (The Modern Library Classics, 2002)
The Fittest Species?
Wells deflates humankind's pride in their technological achievements. Although they give men dominance amongst creatures on Earth, in 'The War of the Worlds' they are dwarfed by a rival civilisation from another planet. Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution, proposed in 1859, had become hugely influential in the popular imagination. Wells is clearly influenced by the theory in questioning our assumptions of being the dominant and most effective species on the planet: it is not humans who eventually defeat the Martians.
Life on Mars
Wells must have been inspired by the vivid possibility of life on Mars. The widespread belief that there might indeed be a sophisticated civilization inhabiting the planet may have arisen from a report about Mars written in 1877 by the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli which described 'canali', the channels or grooves that he had observed on the surface of the planet.
This word was mistakenly translated as 'canals', implying deliberately built structures created, presumably, by civilised life forms.
We now know that there is no life on Mars and so one of the key considerations that both director Steven Spielberg and scriptwriter David Koepp needed to make was to decide where the alien threat was to come from. Would a modern day audience accept mysterious spacecraft suddenly falling from the sky? How would aliens affect life on Earth in a digital, high tech world and how would humans react when their normal, high tech lives are suddenly disrupted?