Netflix has a hilarious summary for this movie.
“When a scorching meteor-like object crashes to Earth, a scientist waits three ill-fated days for the object - a Martian-filled spaceship - to cool.”
What a bizarre summary.
The story is pretty well-worn territory at this point. Most people know the ending, they know about the idea of the martian tripods, and so on. I didn’t expect any surprises. The Day the Earth Stood Still came out two years prior, and that played a little better, but this follows suit by upping the action and effects.
The effects work is interesting. A lot of miniatures, and some of them are really well done, like the buildings during the last act. The color effects seem kind of silly.
The one spot where the movie really suffers is the reliance on stock footage. It’s sprinkled throughout, and for such a globe-spanning movie, it almost feels like a newsreel. I couldn’t help but think of Ed Wood’s enthusiasm for using stock footage. Almost all of the movie is shot on a soundstage. There are fake trees peppered here and there. At one point, a pair of characters run across some ground, and you can hear the wooden floor rattling.
The one thing that surprised me about the movie was the religious elements. These aren’t focused on now, but an early victim of the aliens is a priest that approaches the tripods, hoping to initiate peaceful overtures. The movie ends at a cathedral, where a group of people have refused to evacuate the city, and are praying that God will deliver them from the aliens. I would be able to disregard this ending, since it seems kind of silly, except that the ending voiceover specifies that God is responsible for the defeat of the aliens because he created the microbes that killed the aliens. I guess I was interpreting the writing of the religious characters are being purposefully naive.
No comments:
Post a Comment