| RavenBlog |
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| Comments on Wednesday 21 August 2002: |
| War of the Worlds: The movie was mediocre, but the spinoff series was excellent - I hope they cancel the 2004 Tom Cruise remake.
[14:23] |
| Tom |
| Have you ever heard the Orson Welles radio broadcast? Really brilliant stuff. Much superior to the movie. They've rebroadcast it here a few times. You have to listen to it live on the radio of course - any other way is cheating. Always scares the hell out of me. And I'm easily scared! Personally, I think a Tom Cruise remake is a good idea. The old one is wearing a bit thin and I can no longer believe it feels the need ... the need for speed adequately. It never closes its eyes anymore when I kiss its lips. And what the hell was it thinking when it got rid of the Nicole module? |
| Kevan |
| http://www.upcomingmovies.com/waroftheworlds.html if you want more information than the fact that Tom Cruise is directing and H G Wells wrote the original book. That they're keeping the 19th-century England setting seems quite promising. Can't remember the 50s film very clearly, but I sat through a lot of the awful spinoff series at university. It turned into a massively unoriginal "aah, aliens that can masquerade as humans!" thing, didn't it? And killed off the entire cast in a big explosion at the start of its second series, because nobody wanted to be in it any more. |
| Kevan |
| Of course, the Jeff Wayne musical version was the best of all. |
| Tom |
| The fact that Tom Cruise is directing is enough for me thanks. I'm indifferent as to the fact that Mr Wells wrote the book - not one of his best IMHO. |
| Kevan |
| Really? I'm reading it at the moment, which led to me stumbling across the film, and it seems consistently good. Its Martian technology is impressively "modern" for something that was written in 1898, and shows up the technology and society of the age quite eerily (to the point where you feel a greater societal affinity with the invaders, even moreso than would have been intended at the time). And it's a smallest-possible-viewpoint-of-the-end-of-the-world story, which is always good, for my money. Are his other books significantly better, then? |
| RavenBlack |
| The repetitive unoriginality of the series is part of what made it entertaining, much like the A-Team formula of "one car flip, BA hits either Murdoch or Face, Hannibal says 'I love it when a plan comes together'". The A-Team movie and/or remake will neglect to follow the formula, and ruin it all, I bet. |
| Tom |
| Personally, I enjoy H.G.Well's short stories more than his novels. He's more inclined to tell a good story without worrying about preaching, I think. He seems to have to make a moral point in his novels. |