One of the earliest and most influential pieces of science fiction, and easily the most sensational after a 23-year-old Orson Welles got his hands on it, "The War Of The Worlds" has been with us since H G Wells’ original novel was published in 1898.
Since then, it's been an album musical, a stage show, a terrifying piece of radio and, of course, several movies. And its latest incarnation has just arrived today [Wednesday, July 30] without any fanfare in the shape of Prime Video's War Of The Worlds, bringing the story slap bang into the 21st century.
The novel told its story through the eyes of an unnamed narrator, an educated man who is one of the first to notice strange flashes from Mars and escapes to the country when London and the south of England are invaded by Martians. But this is a narrative that can easily move to just about any other time and/or place.
Notoriously, for his 1938 radio version, Orson Welles shifted it to New Jersey and presented listeners with news bulletins so convincing they caused panic in the streets. It wasn’t until 1953 that the first major film appeared, this time setting the invasion in small town California, where excited residents watched as a flaming meteor lands in the hills and fled in fear when they realised the visitors were less than friendly.
It's 25 years since Steven Spielberg took a more blockbuster approach to the classic novel. While no stranger to science fiction, his War Of The Worlds was a long way from his earlier, optimistic forays into the genre such as E.T.(1982), following instead in the darker footsteps of A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) and Minority Report (2002) and turning it into more of a disaster movie, this time set in New York.
The brand new version from debut director Rich Lee doesn't just move location — this time it's Washington DC — but the premise and style come in for an overhaul as well.
It's a screenlife movie — think Searching (2018) and Host (2020) among others — so the majority of the action takes place on a computer screen, with the audience’s attention alternating between the pc itself and the face of the operator.
In this case, it's Ice Cube as Will Radford, a high-level government surveillance operative who is first alerted to strangely violent weather conditions around the world, only to find they’ve landed at his doorstep in DC. Long-legged invaders modelled on the film’s predecessors and Wells’ book rampage across the city, but this time with specific targets in their sights. They feed on data and are aiming for the main repositories. It could mean world destruction and, in trying to prevent it, Radford also uncovers a massive government conspiracy.
A cyber-thriller, then. A low budget one — it was filmed in 2020 under COVID restrictions and it shows — but one that allows us to focus very much on the impending catastrophe, whether we’re looking at it through our own eyes or that of Radford as he stares at the screen in disbelief. And he’s juggling personal issues at the same time, none of which he can control as he’d like: his daughter is heavily pregnant and his teenage son is turning into something of a rebel.
The introduction of a family takes its cue from Spielberg, as do the fractured relationships, but the difference is that we’re not allowed to get really involved with any of them. In the 2005 movie, Tom Cruise is an essentially unsympathetic father figure: his children have grown up knowing they can’t count on him and he uses them as weapons in his battles with his ex-wife. Radford, by contrast, is a widower, struggling to bring up his son and daughter all on his own.
Director Lee and his writers Kenny Golde and Marc Hyman haven't just taken War Of The Worlds into cyber territory, but used it to major on concerns about data safety and high-level conspiracies.
Controversy seems to stalk Wells’ original story, from the headline-hitting chaos following the 1930s radio broadcast to criticism of Spielberg’s post-9/11 setting and scenes, such as the crashed airliner and crowds fleeing the city, that could have resurrected painful memories. By venturing into more political territory, the makers may find themselves courting unwelcome controversy, but, once again, it shows how a late Victorian novel can be as relevant as ever some 30 years later.
War Of The Worlds is on Prime Video in the US and UK now.
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