War of the Worlds
February 8th, 2005… across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.
These lines from the first paragraph of H.G. Wells’ book, “War of the Worlds” still sends a chill down my spine. Written in 1898, the book is undoubtedly one of the greatest, if not at least the most influential and inovative science fiction novel ever written. It was adapted to a highly successful (and equally amazing) musical in 1976 and now is being reborn once again as the child of none other than director Steven Spielberg.
View the teaser
View the website and extended trailer
Although I don’t exactly approve of Tom Cruize as the actor of choice for the lead role, I am hoping that my childhood memories of both the book and the musical will be enough bias for me to overlook it. However, like many classics that are adapted to the big screen, in more cases than not a few hours of film barely does justice to hundreds of pages of the written word. I just hope Mr Spielberg breaks from this trend and the film lives up to the (high) standard set by both the novel and the musical.
For those of you who haven’t read the book, do it. Or at least get a copy of the musical version - I still have a copy on cassette tape I bought in 1986-ish. Both are well worth a few hours of your life.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 8th, 2005 at 6:44 pm and is filed under Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
February 4th, 2006 at 12:29 am
So what did you think?
Rubbish? IMHO it was worse than ‘Hitchhikers’…!!! But there ya go… need to be less of a purist…
February 5th, 2006 at 7:24 pm
I thought it was absolutely terrible. As I expected, Tom Cruise was nothing but less than ordinary, and unfortunately, the book was barely afforded the respect it deserves.
A note to those who have not yet seen the movie. Save your $9.95 from buying movie tickets, and instead go down to your local library, borrow the book and buy yourself lunch with the money you saved. You will be much more entertained, and have a free lunch as well.
Need to be less of a purist you say? I think purism needs to be given a lot more weight in my humble opinion.