H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds (2005 film)

For other uses of "The War of the Worlds", see The War of the Worlds (disambiguation) and The War of the Worlds (film).

Not to be confused with H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds (2005 film) or War of the Worlds (2005 film).

H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds
Poster
Directed by	David Michael Latt
Produced by	David Rimawi
Written by	David Michael Latt, Carlos De Los Rios
Based on	The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
Starring	C. Thomas Howell Rhett Giles Tinarie Van Wyk-Loots Andy Lauer Peter Greene Jake Busey
Music by	Ralph Rieckermann
Editing by	David Michael Latt
Distributed by	The Asylum
Release date(s)	June 28, 2005 (2005-06-28)
Running time	90 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds (also known as Invasion and H. G. Wells' The Worlds in War internationally, or simply as War of the Worlds) is a science fiction horror mockbuster by The Asylum. It is one of three 2005 film adaptations of H. G. Wells' 1898 science fiction novel The War of the Worlds.

Much like Steven Spielberg's film version, War of the Worlds is a modernized adaptation, but was released by independent production company The Asylum, whose budget may be more on par with the Pendragon film version. No theatrical release date had been planned; instead the film was a direct-to-DVD release. All three were released in June of the same year.

The story tells the experience of an astronomer, George Herbert (C. Thomas Howell), who is separated from his wife and son when a Martian army invades the planet, driving massive "Monkeys". He tries to make his way to Washington, D.C. to reunite with them as the human race faces extinction.

Unlike other adaptations, The Asylum intended to make this War of the Worlds film more of a horror film. It was rated R in the United States and 15 in the United Kingdom for strong violence and gore, language and some nudity. Director David Michael Latt describes the film as The Pianist with aliens instead of Nazis, comparing the tale of one man's story of survival.

The DVD was released on June 28, one day before Spielberg's film, and has a few notable stars including C. Thomas Howell, Peter Greene, and Jake Busey. The alternate title of Invasion is likely for the film's overseas distribution since Paramount claim to own exclusive film rights to the War of the Worlds title in the European Union. The film is one of The Asylum's most successful, having sold over 100,000 copies from Blockbuster upon its release. The original poster has a striking resemblance to the Independence Day poster.

The film was followed with a sequel in 2008, War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave, directed by C. Thomas Howell.

Plot

George Herbert is an astronomer, and he and his wife Felicity are awaiting their 10th wedding anniversary. George and his son Alex watch through their telescope in search of Mars. Instead, they see a meteor-like object. George is called up by his boss, who wants him to investigate the object. Felicity decides to take Alex to Washington, D.C. without George, who promises to see them when he's finished his work.

As George is driving to work, his radio makes strange sounds. His car then breaks down, before he sees a large, flaming object crashing to the hills ahead of him. He goes to the crash site, where a massive crater houses a large meteor. He finds that all the cars and cellphones have somehow shut down. A young woman, Audrey, races to George, scared because her boyfriend Max (Edward DeRuiter), has fallen into the pit. George attempts to encourage Max into climbing out, but the young man is distracted by activity coming from the object. A clawed, metallic tentacle pulls Max back in and emerges again to grab other humans before a large, crab-like Martian walker emerges and fires at the humans with a heat-ray. George manages to escape and make his way home, where all electrical equipment is deactivated. He decides to walk to Washington and hopes to meet his family at the Lincoln Memorial. He sets off to meet his brother, Matt, a ranger in Hopewell.

The next day, George finds a bridge, on which refugees are held back by soldiers. A mother who thinks the Martians are terrorists tells George that Washington, along with New York City and Los Angeles, was invaded first. Another meteor crashes, and a walker emerges to fight the soldiers. George escapes and meets a soldier named Kerry Williams, whose whole squad was killed in battle. He agrees to travel with George to Hopewell. They meet Lt. Samuelson, a soldier outraged at the aliens for killing his family, interested in recruiting George as a scientist. He tells George that Washington was completely wiped out and there are no survivors, not even the President. George and Kerry reach Hopewell, but the town is invaded by walkers. George and Kerry find Matt, George's brother, fatally wounded. Matt eventually dies of his wounds and George and Kerry are separated in the panic, though George is able to escape in a canoe.

After spending a day drifting downstream, George catches a terrible fever and spends the next two days in an abandoned car. He is found by an Australian Pastor named Victor. They find an untouched neighborhood, and enter the house of a veterinary doctor where they find food and clothes. George and the Pastor hide upstairs from the aliens' poisonous gas, where they find rabies vaccines. A sudden crash causes the house to collapse. George wakes hours later to find that a meteor has destroyed the neighborhood. He observes what the aliens are doing in the crater; draining blood from living humans.

George plans to use a rabies vaccine against them. When a Martian enters the room, George injects it with the rabies vaccine, and it quickly leaves. The alien returns and sprays Victor with the acid, killing him in seconds. George hides silently in the ruins of the house until the aliens abandon the crater days later. He later runs back into Kerry and Samuelson. Kerry insists that George cannot fight them, but the enraged Samuelson shoots Kerry in the head. George then kills Samuelson and finally reaches Washington, where the whole city lies in ruin. Unable to find his family, he spots a single Martian and offers his life to it, having lost everything to the invaders. The alien however drops dead. Out of nowhere, a group of human survivors appear and reveal that the aliens have been dying for several days due to an airborne virus. Alex and Felicity appear among the survivors and the family is tearfully reunited.

The Martians have been killed by bacteria, and with most of humanity wiped out, the survivors are left to rebuild.

Cast

• C. Thomas Howell as George Herbert
• Andy Lauer as Sgt. Kerry Williams
• Rhett Giles as Pastor Victor
• Tyranie Van Wyk Loots as Felicity Herbert
• Jake Busey as Lt. Samuelson
• Peter Greene as Matt Herbert
• Dashiell Howell as Alex Herbert
• Edward DeRuiter as Max

Adapting the novel

Director/editor/executive producer/co-writer David Michael Latt (who admits to never seeing the Byron Haskin/George Pal version or the 1988 television series, but has been a fan of the H.G. Wells novel since childhood) has made it clear that his film has changed certain aspects from the source material outside of the shift of time and location. Most notable is that the tripods have been changed to six-legged crab-like machines called "walkers" (a conception that mainly stems from allowing the effects team creative freedom).

The aliens are indeed Martians (though the film never states this, but this is confirmed by Latt complete with an opening credit sequence over shots of the Red Planet's landscape), but bear little visual resemblance to their novel's counterparts. Whereas Wells described his invaders as bear-sized tentacle creatures, the film's Martians are insect-like in their appearance with a torso like a green disc and four tentacle-like legs. These aliens also have the ability to spit acid from mouths on their feet, which melts entirely anyone who is unfortunate enough to be attacked. Inside the Martian mouth, three tongues can be seen which closely resemble the Martian fingers from Byron Haskin's 1953 film version of The War of the Worlds and the 1988 television series version. They also have an appetite for humans as in the novel. In the sequel War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave, it is made clear that the aliens need human blood to survive.

In terms of their military action: the war machines are not tripods, but are crab-like "walkers" with six legs. A Heat Ray is built into the machine's "head", and is fired from a single eye. By all accounts, their fighting machines do not appear to have much heavy protection against modern human artillery (avoiding the "invisible shields" seen in the 1953 film version and Steven Spielberg's 2005 film), leaving their ability to effectively crush resistance unexplained. The aliens do have a substance vaguely similar to the black smoke, which they distribute in shells, but is more of a green-colored toxic gas with a notable inability to rise above ground level due to a similar density, allowing the characters to escape by getting to high places.

The protagonist of the film is named George Herbert, a reference to H. G. Wells. Rather than being a writer, as in the novel, he is an astronomer, perhaps in reference to the character of Ogilvy – in a related deviation, the film does not attempt the voice-over narration that accompanies other versions of the story. The film also leaves the eve of the war storyline and its characters almost completely absent. He also has a son, who is portrayed by Dashiell Howell, who is actually the son of George's actor C. Thomas Howell.

Despite these differences, George nevertheless goes through much of what befalls the novel's protagonist, even up to preparing to sacrifice himself to the Martians, only for them to drop dead of infection before he has to do so. He is also separated from his wife and son with whom he tries to reunite once the invasion begins, and, like the novel, she and their son are alive in the conclusion. George's brother, a Ranger, is less fortunate; he is seen only briefly, after being fatally wounded in the trail of destruction left by the invaders. In the book, the narrator's brother has a much bigger involvement in the story, as the perspective is shifted from the narrator to that of his brother in Book One: The Coming of the Martians.

A major deviation from the text is that the protagonist actually tries to produce a means of stopping the Martians, but the film does not elaborate on whether their eventual downfall is due to these efforts, or whether their deaths simply coincided with his efforts.

The role played by the novel's Artilleryman is here divided into two characters, rather than being a single developing personality. The first time he is seen (as the character of Kerry Williams), he exhibits the initial, defeated status of his novelistic counterpart. He accompanies George as they move to unaffected areas, meeting soldiers oblivious to the danger they will soon face, until they become separated when George takes refuge underwater to elude the Martians. After his ordeal in the ruined house, George encounters Williams again, but the latter remains very much as he was before. Instead, the Artilleryman as he is portrayed in the novel's later stages is signified by another soldier, Samuelson (portrayed by Jake Busey), who both George and Williams encountered earlier.

Though in a similar vein to the novel there is talk of recapturing the world, the plan to achieve this is by regrouping with military units in the mountains instead of rebuilding civilisation underground. In the pursuit of this plan, George is quickly realized as being more valuable to humanity than either Williams or Samuelson, as the efforts of scientists have won many wars before.

The unnamed Curate from the novel is portrayed in the film by a pastor (portrayed by Rhett Giles) named Victor. While the two characters are very similar (the pastor mentions his church was rebuilt three years prior to the Martians), the pastor is depicted as being fairly calm and is sure that the invasion is the Rapture. However, his faith is deeply shaken when he meets a congregate whose loss at the hands of the invaders has her screaming against God, causing the Pastor to question events and why he himself has yet to be taken.

Unlike the Curate, the Pastor manages to keep his composure when he's trapped in the ruined house with George as he wrestles quietly with his thoughts. Whereas the Curate caused the narrator to subdue him and then taken away by the Martians unconscious, the Pastor regains his faith just before he is killed directly by the Martians.

Some of the chapters on the DVD are given the same name to chapters in the novel, a similar idea used in the Dreamworks version.

David Michael Latt and producing War of the Worlds

David Michael Latt often expresses his fascination for H.G. Wells' novel in the DVD's Audio Commentary and Behind the scenes features. He had written a script for War of the Worlds a year before production of the film, and upon learning that Dreamworks were making their own War of the Worlds film, The Asylum soon began production.

David Michael Latt based the themes of the film (internationally titled Invasion) on the 2002 film The Pianist, which tells the true story of a Polish Jew who struggles to survive the battle between the Wehrmacht and the a Jewish resistance in the Second World War. Latt used the similar themes of a man's survival as civilization around him reduces to ruin, stating:

"I tell my friends [War of the Worlds] is like The Pianist, but instead of Nazis you have aliens."

Like the protagonist of The Pianist, the main character of War of the Worlds is not shown to have any kind of resistance or plans to fight back, only a persistance to keep alive. The film is considered by some to be the darkest retelling of Wells' novel, and described by actor Andy Lauer as a "sci-fi noir".

The casting for Andy Lauer was almost sudden, himself having an interest of working with The Asylum. Latt had concerns about Tyranie Van Wyk Loots' casting, assuming she may object to her naked sequence at the beginning of the film. However, Tyranie had no objections and was more than happy in starring in War of the Worlds, being a fan of science fiction (admitting to have seen "every episode of Star Trek ever made"). The casting of C. Thomas Howell seemed to be more complicated, as he was currently starring in an American TV show. David Michael Latt and Andy Lauer were confident in getting Howell in the film, and Howell was happy to read the script and accepted (in fact, he was so happy with the film that he would eventually direct the sequel). Howell offered his son Dashiell as a role to play Alex Herbert, when he found that Latt was looking for an eight-year-old to fill in the role. Jake Busey's audition was successful, having won the role on the first day of auditions. His scenes were all filmed in one day. He tells that one of his favorite films as a child was the 1953 War of the Worlds.

The development of Invasion's plot and characters was a challenge. Adapting the characters and plot faithfully from the novel was tricky to retell for a modern audience, so there are some significant changes. For example, readers will notice that the "eve of the war" arch is almost absent from the film, skipping the novel's earlier characters and details of the "safe and tranquil" world before the invasion begins. This is, however, easy to understand because of the film's length. The film also ignores the sub-plot of Book One: The Coming of the Martians, in which the book's perspective shifts to the narrator's brother, who accompanies two women to safety and witnesses the battle between the aliens and the HMS Thunderchild. A sub-plot would violate the nature of the film, and also increase its length.

Sequel

Main article: War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave

On April 1, 2008, a sequel, War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave, was released. C. Thomas Howell directed the film and reprised the role of George Herbert, and his son Dash Howell reprised the role of Alex. The film also starred Christopher Reid.

See also

• War of the Worlds, Steven Spielberg's 2005 blockbuster which is also a contemporary adaptation of H. G. Wells novel.
• H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, a more faithful, lower-budget film adaptation of the novel.
• The Pianist, a 2002 film that inspired this film's themes.
• The Day the Earth Stopped, another Asylum film starring C. Thomas Howell that features an invasion by extraterrestrials.

External links

• H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds Official page.
• H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds at the Internet Movie Database
• H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds at Rotten Tomatoes