Based on the H.G. Well’s Novel, Martians invade Earth, easily defeating all opposition. Scientist Clayton Forrester (Gene Barry) attempts to help in the fight, but soon finds himself trapped with Sylvia Van Buren (Ann Robinson), just trying to stay alive.
Ever notice how scientists are expected to know everything in films? The “meteor” hits and the word from the police is to check with some campers, because they’re scientists. I’d have loved it if they were all oceanographers. “Well, I don’t know what it’s made of, but I am reasonably certain it has no tides.”
Is there a scene in War of the Worlds that hasn’t been copied? The film, in pieces and as a whole, has been swiped for movie after movie. Extraterrestrials had their celluloid invasions before these Martians attacked, but this is the one that gave birth to the sub-genre.
Changing the setting to 1950’s America, and ripping out all of Wells’ social commentary, producer George Pal streamlined the story to make a fast moving action picture. It is that, and if the characters are two dimensional, it doesn’t matter as long as the Martian ships blow things up. They are the real stars. I saw War of the Worlds for the first time well over thirty-five years ago, and I’ve seen it more times than I can count over the years, and it is those Martian machines that I remember. The swan-like design, with a curved, fire-spouting head and sloped wings with disintegrators, has become the iconic alien vehicle. Even its beam weapons’ sound is remembered and has recently been used for a similar purpose in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
So much is right with War of the Worlds, but it leaves other films to take the crowns as the best alien films due to two major flaws. The first is the character of Sylvia. It was 1953, so I’m not troubled by her bringing tea in to the men who are figuring what to do about the invasion. That was the times, and there’s nothing wrong with bringing tea (somebody should do it). But when things get stressful, all she does is scream, and that’s no longer just a social placement, that’s proclaiming the weakness of women—that in a real emergency, they can’t cope. Sylvia yelps, faints, and cries. The ’50s were a troubling social time in the U.S., and the government, the media, and religious institutions did their best to paint an artificial world, which was happy with blacks in their place, where real Americans would proudly toss away freedoms to fight the communist menace, and where women were fragile things that could breed and cook, but otherwise needed saving. War of the Worlds, like so many films of the time, did its best to propagate all those.
A bigger flaw was the hammered-in-your-face religious subtext. Wells, an atheist, never intended War of the Worlds as a statement on the glory of God and the importance of faith, but Pal, taking literally a figurative comment from the book, makes it God who defeats the extraterrestrials. Apparently, God, “in his wisdom,” filled our world with disease so that one day, the bacteria would kill off the invaders. I guess Pal’s version of God didn’t care about all the people who died in agony from disease over the centuries, nor was he wise enough to stop the aliens before they killed millions. This blind, religious zeal would have disgusted Wells, and slashes the drama and irony out of the story.
Watch for the ships, ignore the themes, and War of the Worlds becomes great mindless entertainment.