B.A. in Futurism

You have to respect H.G.Wells (1866-1946). Not many people have written 20+ books. And despite titles like Love and Mr. Lewisham, he managed to be world renowned without the benefit of a video weblog. He’s the father of an entire genre of fiction! The guy had “futurist” on his business card, how awesome is that? I bring all this up because I finished listening to War of the Worlds on CD in the lab the other day. The only other Wells work I’d read previously was The Time Machine, which I enjoyed but the point of which I completely missed. How was I supposed to get all that?

After reading the book I wanted to see a movie version, to see how they portrayed the book. I chose the most recent version, with Tom Cruise. Granted, the book was published in 1898 and the movie made 107 years later in 2005, so some things will be different. I could tell that the screenwriters had read the book, at some point in their life, maybe when they were kids. Some of the points were right: aliens in enormous tripods, heat rays, blood-drinking, and the eventual death-by-bacterium (sorry if I spoiled that for anyone). And I could tell that certain scenes were inspired by events from the book, and one character (just one) was the amalgamation of two characters from the book. Other than that, nothing can be attributed to Wells. Wells’ aliens didn’t have protective force-shields (lame!), they didn’t plant the tripods here centuries ago (at lease I don’t think that was in the book; I might have zoned out for that part), they didn’t come to earth in a lightning storm, they did have cool black-gas that they used on the humans. There is no analogue for the Cruise character or the aggravating Dakota Fanning character (I really wish the aliens had eaten her). But I’ve seen worse adaptations, so I won’t complain further. As an adaptation it could have been better: more suspense and less action. As a summer blockbuster popcorn flick it was just what you would expect.