"Against all this the the 1953 War of the Worlds is watchable today"
The book is one of my favourite H.G. Wells novels.
I've always thought that he films (the 1953 version and the 2005 Spielberg remake) miss the point entirely. The novel is full of criticism of the attitudes and prejudices (the insane clergyman) of the Victorian age, particularly attacking the belief in the (purely superficial) splendour of British imperialism and the invincibility of its "state of the art" weapons (Thunderchild and the artillery).
At the same time the artilleryman and his belief in a new world in the sewers illustrate the weaknesses of Utopian systems and lays bare Wells' socialist roots and beliefs.
Then, at the end of the day, bacteria win the war without out any human intervention (or maybe some - from
Martians eating Englishmen)
It should (must!) be set in the Victorian era and depict the arrogance of the industrial and military complex and the vulnerability that underlies it. Instead, it always turns into a sickening "God bless America" action movie.
Spielberg missed a great chance to put it all into the right context. The artwork of the Jeff Wayne's WOTW "musical" perfectly captured the atmosphere as it should have been.
My rant for today
Cheers
D.
I agree, and Jeff Wayne WOTW is my favourite music, however a few points.
Wells was at least 10 years behind the times in his understanding of the military technology of the time, assuming that the war takes place in 1898 being the year the book was written.
The ‘Thunder Child’ was quite obviously the Polythemus, being the famous torpedo ram of the Victorian era named after the son of the Greek god of thunder and the seas, by 1898 obsolete. The Channel fleet of the time was mostly composed of Majestic class (Barnaby era) battleships whose main armament was 12 inch wire guns capable of firing shells that weighed over a ton for a range of 6 miles.
The Martians primary weapon was the heat ray which as a linear point target weapon incapable of indirect fire, it is therefore logical that the heavy guns of the time would have been able to engage the Martian machines before they could bring their heat rays to bear. The Martian machines were very vulnerable to shell fire as the book describes in a direct hit from a 12 pounder.
The ‘black smoke; a form of poison gas was also of limited range, and could be bad news for whoever deploys it if the wind changes direction as was found out in the first world war.
To go even further with my arguments, the Martians came here with no logistical support at all, the book describes incidents where several Martian personnel would have died and this is through the eyes of a narrator and therefore only references incidents seen by that person so could logically be the tip of an iceberg. How would they have replaced the mounting losses?
We had a similar situation in the second world war where we could easily replace lost planes but struggled to come up with pilots to fly them. The Martians had no means at all of replacing personnel at all.
Humanity was taken completely by surprise, but how long would it have taken to get organised. By 1898 there was a telegraph infrastructure.
The book also refers to “rumours of automatic mines” being deployed. These would have certainly brought down the Martian machines. Taking the book at face value, I think the Martians would have lost anyway.
My avatar is a poor likeness.