h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

According to a random fly: 'the Adelaide Advertiser' , there is going to a UK film version of war of the worlds which isn't going for any of this modern adaption rubbish and setting it in the 19th century, as the book was written. So anyone, any opinions???

The version by Pendragon Pictures? It was due for release in March, but Spielberg put a block on it, due to the fact it might take attention away from his bloated monstrous perversion of the story.

Sounds good is that based on the CD version?

I liked the Jeff Wayne pop version. This was a purely audio version of the story with narration by Richard Burton and songs by Justin Hayward, David Essex etc.

That version still gives me the creeps.. my imagination is too vivid!!

I like the CD version it is true to the book.

I really hope there is a film of the CD version. They could even update it but stay true to the original story.

No I think they should base it in the early 1900's like the book

It's interesting (as sci-fi author Michael Morcock pointed out)that the very first place that gets trashed by the Martians in the book is H.G. Wells' home town, as if he had an awful lot of grudges against the place that he was vicariously playing out! (I forget the name, it's a London suburb, begins with "B", Brockley? Bromley?)

If the film is going to be true to the book, this district of London should get comprehensively stomped again...

My own preference is that it be done as animation, in the spirit of the drawings that accompany Jeff Wayne's double LP. (Or is the soundtrack anathema to Wells fans?)

Incidentally, is there a place in Britain or anywhere on earth that you'd like to see get stomped by aliens, and if so, why?

I'd vote for Rhyl, Denbighshire, if only because a person I had a bad time with and a place where the said bad time occured are both in that dingy grotty seaside resort (which can only be improved by alien prejudice)

There's a hideous chemical factory at/near Runcorn that deserves to be stomped on.

Oh yes, I uncritically loved Jeff Wayne's version for about a year. Then came Douglas Adams, and an alien race with a far more plausible reason for destroying the planet. (The Vogons). Not because they wanted to live here - it was just in the way and needed to be removed.

And does anyone remember the advert for mini's, where the alien tripods are finally overthrown - by cattle grids?

British film makes a good at alien type films if you think all Alien films were made in the UK

The Pendragon version is a direct enactment of the book - http://www.war-ofthe-worlds.co.uk/war%20of%20the%20worlds%20pendragon%202005.htm

Jeff Wayne, however, is releasing a CGI film based on his musical interpretation of the book next year - http://www.thewaroftheworlds.com/news/newsstory.aspx?id=1

The 19th century setting is and remains the only true and fitting setting for the story, popping as it did from a 19th century mind.

Any temporal shifting simply aggravates the basic premise, creating insurmountable anachronisms and impassable credibilty gaps. The very idea that Aliens would be dispatched by the common cold!

It seems silly to us today but obviously if they'd come any later we could have offered them a cure or at least a brandy.


~jwf~

Exactly. It is clear from the original that the Martians weren't all that further advanced than us. They had their cylinders, metal skeletons and heat rays, but that's all.

If this story was set in modern times, we could probably have defeated them without too much trouble. The "immunity" to nuclear bombs in the '60s film was a good example of a contrived and fairly ridiculous attempt to comtemporise it.

Places thatI could happily consign to destruction by invading aliens: Bracknell and Slough.

Come happy bombs and fall on Slough
It isn't fit for humans now

RF

I recently had a dream in which aliens attacked London and then a bloke came on the radio and said "why don't all the survivors move to Wakefield? Why would the aliens want to come to attack Wakefield never mind come to it?"

I only know the Jeff Wayne version .

When I was in the final year at primary school, which would be, erm, around 1982 I think, our class teacher used to put it on every Friday afternoon while she did some sorting out/paperwork instead of reading us a story. I liked it so much I saved up for ages to buy my own

My sister used to run from the room when I played it, especially the beginning, she was terrified

I left primary school in '83, so there's no need to feel unusually old. Crikey, you had a good teacher!

>Or is the soundtrack anathema to Wells fans?<

Dunno about that but it's ghastly prog rock doodlings are anathema to most music fans.