War Of The Worlds (EPIX 2020 Series)

[Nutso]

[Graham Kennedy]

Okay, I was kind of disappointed in the BBC's take on the story recently, especially as it was billed as a "more faithful" adaption. This obviously isn't that, but it could be good. Fingers crossed.

[Nutso]

Didn't know there was another one out. The BBC made a great Dracula mini, modernizing the story while putting in new elements to make it their own adaptation of the Dracula tale. It's an unfaithful adaptation but, it's good. That actor, Claes Bang, has an almost Pierce Brosnan-like charm about him. I would think they'd have similar success with War of The Worlds.

[Graham Kennedy]

Didn't know there was another one out. The BBC made a great Dracula mini, modernizing the story while putting in new elements to make it their own adaptation of the Dracula tale. It's an unfaithful adaptation but, it's good. That actor, Claes Bang, has an almost Pierce Brosnan-like charm about him. I would think they'd have similar success with War of The Worlds.

The BBC War of the Worlds is kind of odd. They decided to PC the story up, so we get a fair chunk of the first episode (of three) exploring the relationship between the protagonist and his wife - he divorced his previous wife to marry her, which was a huge scandal, and there a lot of stuff about how everyone discriminates against them, etc.

They also modify how the story plays out a lot. Spoilers...

After the introduction the story moves ahead some eight or so years. The Martians have been defeated, but the whole world is in ruins - the Martians began a terraforming process and there's virtually no Earth vegetation now, disease has wiped out most of the human population, what's left live in awful conditions struggling over what's left of the food supply. It's implied that the Martian invasion was just a disposable vanguard intended to spread the terraforming effects, and the actual invasion will be along soon, with Humanity utterly powerless to resist it. Oh, and it's revealed that the main protagonist died in the invasion, so all this centres on his wife and son. The story of the initial invasion is largely told in flashbacks as it plays out.

Some things I did like, though. The heat ray is closer to what Wells described, for one. And the Tripods don't have invulnerable shields - we see a couple hit by artillery, and they die just fine, as in the book. It's not terrible, but I found it a bit disappointing.

[Nutso]

Didn't know there was another one out. The BBC made a great Dracula mini, modernizing the story while putting in new elements to make it their own adaptation of the Dracula tale. It's an unfaithful adaptation but, it's good. That actor, Claes Bang, has an almost Pierce Brosnan-like charm about him. I would think they'd have similar success with War of The Worlds.

The BBC War of the Worlds is kind of odd. They decided to PC the story up, so we get a fair chunk of the first episode (of three) exploring the relationship between the protagonist and his wife - he divorced his previous wife to marry her, which was a huge scandal, and there a lot of stuff about how everyone discriminates against them, etc.

They also modify how the story plays out a lot. Spoilers...

After the introduction the story moves ahead some eight or so years. The Martians have been defeated, but the whole world is in ruins - the Martians began a terraforming process and there's virtually no Earth vegetation now, disease has wiped out most of the human population, what's left live in awful conditions struggling over what's left of the food supply. It's implied that the Martian invasion was just a disposable vanguard intended to spread the terraforming effects, and the actual invasion will be along soon, with Humanity utterly powerless to resist it. Oh, and it's revealed that the main protagonist died in the invasion, so all this centres on his wife and son. The story of the initial invasion is largely told in flashbacks as it plays out.

Some things I did like, though. The heat ray is closer to what Wells described, for one. And the Tripods don't have invulnerable shields - we see a couple hit by artillery, and they die just fine, as in the book. It's not terrible, but I found it a bit disappointing.

Was it poorly advertised, in your opinion? Because I would have posted the trailers here if I had seen it. Like I did for Dracula, or for EPIX's War of The Worlds. If I didn't see the advertising I either had a bad week, or the people I rely on for these things didn't see the ads either. I was searching reviews for the BBC WoTW and I saw one article suggest that the BBC new this was a stinker and so intentionally buried it. Personally I don't think that's possible since the BBC has to be careful with it's money, unlike Hollywood which can release "Cats: The Musical: The Movie" unfinished and opposite the final Star Wars Sequel movie.

[Graham Kennedy]

Was it poorly advertised, in your opinion? Because I would have posted the trailers here if I had seen it. Like I did for Dracula, or for EPIX's War of The Worlds. If I didn't see the advertising I either had a bad week, or the people I rely on for these things didn't see the ads either. I was searching reviews for the BBC WoTW and I saw one article suggest that the BBC new this was a stinker and so intentionally buried it.

Perhaps somewhat. I knew it was coming for most of a year before, having seen a couple of articles talking about the filming. I wouldn't say they really pushed it hard, in terms of peppering ads around, though.

I've seen it said that the Beeb largely buried Dracula because they thought it was weird and there probably wasn't an audience for it - only to find that it turned out to be significantly more popular and well regarded than they'd expected. I kind of stumbled on Dracula myself, only discovering it more or less by accident.

Personally I don't think that's possible since the BBC has to be careful with it's money, unlike Hollywood which can release "Cats: The Musical: The Movie" unfinished and opposite the final Star Wars Sequel movie.

The Beeb is an oddity when it comes to things like that. It's not ad driven, obviously, so poor ratings don't strictly matter because they don't cost it anything. Their mandate is to produce quality material. And in fact the government has even suggested that the BBC has been "too aggressive" in chasing ratings against their commercial rivals and should avoid doing that.

That said, they also need to avoid the appearance of wasting money, spending huge sums on shows that people don't watch. There was an infamous case where the BBC created a soap opera called El Dorado. They spent £10 million on it, including building an entire village in Spain as an outdoor set. The show turned out laughably bad - infamously they had to pay for several of the main cast to have acting lessons, months after the show started! People tuned in mostly to laugh at it, and it was eventually cancelled. The BBC was mocked over it for years afterwards.

Ultimately the BBC only survives because people like it, and they'll only like it if it's giving them entertainment. So they are bound to popularity... to some extent.