The War of the Worlds (1953)

The War of the Worlds (1953): Produced by George Pal; directed by Byron Haskin; based on the novel by H.G. Wells; [Cast and Crew]: For all its flaws, this adaptation of H.G. Wells' seminal novel of alien invasion is far superior to the Spielberg/Cruise film of a few years back. 

Producer George Pal was a great devotee of science fiction and fantasy, from the earlier Destination: Moon (1950) through The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964) all the way to his final production, Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze (1975).

Visual effects technology circa 1953 pretty much ensured that the Martian ships would fly rather than walk as tripods, though they do have (mostly) invisible electromagnetic 'legs' that can be seen in a couple of scenes. The focus of action moved from turn-of-the-century England to the Western United States, with the invasion going on world-wide just as in the original.

The movie does an impressive job of ratcheting up the fear as the Martians shrug off all attempts to stop them and stomp all over humanity, and specifically the American war machine. The cast is solid. We even have Gene Barry as a scientist-hero and his love interest has an advanced degree in mathematics. Compare this to Tom Cruise as a lunkhead, deadbeat Dad and one weeps for humanity.

Scenes of a rioting Los Angeles, followed by a burning, depopulated LA, still work really well, as do most of the shots of those pesky Martians incinerating soldiers and weapons and even a trio of ordinary Americans waving a flag of peace. Burn, puny humans, burn!

The design of the aliens themselves is also superior to that in the Spielberg movie, though not faithful to Wells' octopus-like blancmanges. As in Spielberg's movie, the Martians' vampirism has been eliminated (yes, I know the Martians use people for fertilizer in the Cruise movie, but that's still not vampirism). This is a shame. Wells' novel was also an allegory of colonialism, with vampirism as a pretty transparent metaphor for what Europe was doing to all the non-European people of the Earth. Recommended.

The War of the Worlds (2005)

The War of the Worlds (2005): adapted by David Koepp and Josh Friedman from the novel by H.G. Wells; directed by Steven Spielberg; starring Tom Cruise (Ray Ferrier), Dakota Fanning (Rachel Ferrier), Justin Chatwin (Robbie Ferrier), Tim Robbins (Harlan Ogilvy), and Miranda Otto (Mary Ann): 

Spielberg and company's so-so, 9/11-inflected update of H.G. Wells' seminal tale of alien invasion has some nice moments between about the 20- and 80-minute mark. Unfortunately, the movie features two of the most annoying offspring in film history for Tom Cruise to bond with during an alien invasion because alien invasions just aren't interesting unless they involve Steven Spielberg's go-to trope, The Absent Father.

It's important for Spielberg, as Old Hollywood's last air-bending Avatar, to remind us that even when billions of humans are literally getting dusted, as in 'turned to dust,' FAMILY IS THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS. 

And what a family! They're so great that the kids' grandparents live on the only street in Boston that doesn't get destroyed by marauding alien tripods who thirst for human blood to... fertilize their plants? I think Wells really nailed the concept of 'Keep it simple, stupid'  by having the Martians suck human blood out of people for their own dining pleasure, and not to feed their high-fructose corn crop. 

The tripods look nice. The redesign of the tentacled creatures of Wells' novel sucks, though. They look like teddy-bear versions of the aliens from Independence Day. Tim Robbins is wasted playing a guy who's somehow found safe haven in the basement of a house located about three feet from a major battle between aliens and the U.S. military. 

Tom Cruise plays Tom Cruise. He's supposed to be an unlikeable cad who LEARNS BETTER, but he mainly seems justified in his animosity towards his annoying children. He also turns out to be the most competent man in the world, single-handedly taking down an invulnerable tripod with a hand grenade, among other things. Yet he doesn't know his ten-year-old daughter is allergic to peanuts! Ha ha! Absent Dad, you are such a card.

With about 30 minutes to go, the film-makers seem to lose interest in their story, sticking us in that basement with Tim Robbins for an eternity before rushing through the last 15 minutes of the film like holiday travelers with a plane to catch. Oh, well. The ferry scene is pretty swell, as are the early city scenes with the tripods rising out of the ground. Lightly recommended.

Tom Cruise vs. The Berserkers

Oblivion: written by Joseph Kosinski, Karl Gajdusek, and Michael Arndt; directed by Joseph Kosinski; starring Tom Cruise (Jack), Morgan Freeman (Beech), Olga Kurylenko (Julia), Andrea Riseborough (Victoria), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Sykes) and Melissa Leo (Sally) (2013): Most of the plot problems of Oblivion can be explained away with one simple premise: the alien invaders in this film are like Fred Saberhagen's Berserker machines insofar as the whole point of their existence is to seek out intelligent life and destroy it, while inspiring as much despair and terror along the way as possible. Accept this as a given and most (though not all) problems can be explained.

While the film could survive a bit of tightening up (at about two hours, it's draggy at times), it's certainly watchable science fiction, with some interesting production design and a certain level of thought put into the characterization. The direction is solid and imaginative when it needs to be, and the visuals of the burned-out Earth, while familiar at times, still manage a few surprises.

Tom Cruise is fine as the protagonist, who begins the movie as a sort of Watchman for the power supply of what remains of humanity. Cruise could stand to start showing his age more, though, and tailoring roles to reflect that age -- I think some of the critical and commercial backlash against him at this point comes not only from some of his weirder public moments, but from a problem similar to what almost every action-heavy movie star of the last 40 years has faced at this point in his career and which only Bruce Willis and Clint Eastwood seem to have to at least partially solved. Your audience will continue to love you if you act your age.

We begin with a devastated Earth and a "destroyed" Moon. Most of the Moon is still in orbit -- it's just in several pieces, a relic of the First Strike of an alien race of hooligans whom humanity calls The Scavengers. Humanity has relocated off-world to the Saturnian moon of Titan, leaving behind machines and technicians to harvest what's left of the Earth while simulataneously dealing with the remnants of the Scavenger invasion force.

Of course, there are twists. Oblivion shares a lot of characteristics with the late 1960's and early 1970's science-fiction films of Charlton Heston. Had it been made then, it would probably be remembered fondly. As is, it's better than all of Heston's science-fiction output other than Planet of the Apes, and better than a lot of cult movies in the genre as well (Silent Running comes to mind). It certainly didn't deserve the critical lashing it got when it came out -- there are an awful number of worse science-fiction films out there, past and present. Recommended.

Veggie Tales from the Crypt

The Thing from Another World: adapted by Charles Lederer, Howard Hawks, and Ben Hecht from the novella "Who Goes There?" by John Campbell Jr.; directed by Christian Nyby and Howard Hawks; starring Margaret Sheridan (Nikki), Kenneth Tobey (Captain Pat Hendry), Robert Cornthwaite (Dr. Carrington), Douglas Spencer (Scotty) and James Young (Lt. Eddie Dykes) (1951): I suppose it's a measure of the contempt the producers and writers had for the source material that almost nothing remains of that source novella except the temperature (it's still cold) and the general idea (crashed UFO with an angry survivor).

The Thing from Another World nonetheless remains one of the minor science-fiction classics of the 1950's, but it's amazing how much is changed from John Campbell's 1938 original: not even the original names of characters survive in the screenplay.

Anyway, a UFO crashes at the North Pole near a U.S. experimental base. Some Air Force guys, led by the wooden Kenneth Tobey, arrive to help investigate. Soon, an alien with remarkable recuperative powers and an unquenchable thirst for blood starts rampaging around the experimental station. As he's a giant carrot, shooting him does no good, and unlike later versions of The Thing, there aren't a lot of flamethrowers lying around the base.

The movie's quite tense, with the hulking, monosyllabic alien -- who turns out to look like a bald Frankenstein's monster in a jump-suit -- kept offscreen most of the time, possibly because he looks like a bald Frankenstein's monster in a jump-suit . Campbell's paean to the resourcefulness of civilian scientists and engineers here becomes a paean to the resourcefulness of the Air Force. The chief, Nobel-winning scientist is an idiot who keeps trying to make peace with the alien even as the human body count mounts.

Though Professor Quisling really does have a point -- who wouldn't be pissed after crashing on an alien planet, getting frozen in a block of ice, and then almost immediately getting one's arm ripped off by a sled dog when one awakes? This has to be the worst first-contact scenario ever. Especially since the Air Force accidentally blows up the guy's UFO with some thermite while trying to excavate it from the ice. I'll be damned if I know why there were in such a hurry, and I'd hate to see them at a major archaeological dig.

It's fun to chart the differences between this film and John Carpenter's later, much more faithful adaptation of Campbell's novella. Only the giant carrot is a justifiable change -- visual effects of the early 1950's weren't up to a shape-changing alien. Watch the skies! Recommended.

Dim Bulbs

The Darkest Hour: written by Jon Spaihts, Leslie Bohem, and M.T. Ahern; directed by Chris Gorak; starring Emile Hirsch (Sean), Olivia Thirlby (Natalie), Max Minghella (Ben) and Rachael Taylor (Anne) (2011): Bastard great-grandchild of John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids, The Darkest Hour even lifts the Wyndham novel's celestial lightshow that ushers in apocalyptic events.

A bunch of bland American visitors to Moscow (well, I think Rachael Taylor's character is either British or Australian, but as almost no characterization beyond the Marvel comic-book level occurs in this movie, it's pretty much moot) get caught in an invasion of lights from outer space. The lights disintegrate people and are pretty much invulnerable to all Earthly weapons. Or so it seems! Luckily, the aliens don't check the basement the visitors hide in. Huzzah!

Other stuff happens, including the revelation that the aliens are basically really greedy leprechauns from outer space. What is it with movie aliens and their new obsession with strip mining (see also the naked space leprechauns of Cowboys and Aliens)? And why do highly developed alien species never wear clothing? And I'm looking at you, too, E.T. Put some pants on!

The movie is short and vaguely watchable, with a few interesting visual effects. It's not bad enough to be fun very often, and not good enough to be good. Full-frontal nudity from Olivia Thirlby would have made things a lot more interesting. Not recommended.

The World Eaters

The Forge of God by Greg Bear (1987): Bear's apocalyptic alien-invasion novel stands in the first rank of novels in that sub-genre. It's a page-turner, light on its feet for a nearly 500-page novel without sacrificing characterization or an exploration of society and individuals under pressure.

And the science is plausible for its time (and pretty much still ours). One of the pleasures of 'hard' science fiction lies in the attention to scientific detail. Bear augments this with an attention to sociological detail: the alien invaders have been watching humanity for awhile, and they enjoy playing mind games with humanity while the doomsday clock counts down.

Bear's narrative hits the ground running, as one of the protagonists (an American scientist) learns that one of Jupiter's moons has vanished. This causes something of a mainstream buzz for a short time, but Bear's near-future world (our past, now -- 1996-1998) has become as inattentive to astronomy as our world. The buzz dies. And then, in a nod to 2001: A Space Odyssey, strange, seemingly alien artifacts are found in Australia, Death Valley, and Mongolia.

And then things start to get worse.

As in H.G. Wells's seminal War of the Worlds, humanity here faces aliens who are far more technologically sophisticated. Wells's aliens, though, had a pragmatic reason for their invasion: they were hungry. Bear's aliens don't have that motive. What is their motive? Why do they do the things they do? Read the novel to find out.

Bear gives us a sublime sense of scale that often isn't there in apocalyptic novels, rendered with technical skill and not a little poetry: the science goes down smoothly and the enormity of the horrors visited upon the planet -- and upon the deftly drawn characters of this novel -- lingers in the memory. Highly recommended.

Defend the Block!

Attack the Block: written and directed by Joe Cornish; starring John Boyega (Moses), Jodie Whittaker (Sam), and Nick Frost (Ron) (2011): Fun, brisk alien invasion movie that bits some of the younger residents of a low-income London (England) housing project (or 'block') against furry, eyeless aliens with sharp, pointy, fluorescent teeth.

Will a non-British viewer have some problems with slang and accents? Probably -- I did, and I'm pretty good with these things. But the movie is clearly plotted and laid out. You'll know what's going on at all times.

The early stages may be a bit rough going for some people, as most of the heroes start off, unsympathetically, mugging a young nurse who also lives on the block. But alien invasions have a way of changing people. Or so I've learned from the movies. The protagonists all live in Wyndham Block -- I don't know whether this is a real housing project or an homage to British science-fiction great John Wyndham or both.

There are clever elements of other classic British alien-invasion movies and novels to note along the way, while the climax reminds me (in a good way) of the denouement of a lot of Dr. Who episodes. John Boyega is charismatic as the leader of the youth gang who learns better through adversity, Jodie Whitaker is suitably spunky as the nurse, and Simon Pegg's perennial on-screen and off-screen collaborator Nick Frost shows up to lighten things up as the flunky of a drug dealer. Recommended.

Brain Candy

Skyline, written by Joshua Cordes and Liam O'Donnell, directed by The Strause Brothers, starring Eric Balfour (Jarrod), Scottie Thompson (Elaine) and David Zayas (Oliver) (2010): I guess the directors of this film were originally visual effects guys, and the selling point of this movie was that it was made for the princely sum of $10 million despite having something on the order of 800 visual effects shots in it. Huzzah! Too bad about the writing.

Unlikeable couple Jarrod and Elaine visit friends in Los Angeles. The morning after a drunken party, aliens invade and start vacuuming people up into their garbage-pile-shaped ships. The aliens' primary abduct-humans machine is a hypnotic light that makes people develop black veins where there were no veins before just prior to their abduction. Various shenanigans ensue.

Did I mention that our unlikeable protagonists are in a high-rise apartment building so they can watch the invasion as it unfolds? Did I also mention that there's a hilarious anti-smoking scene at a point where only an idiot would be worried about somebody smoking? Or that nuking a large portion of Los Angeles doesn't result in clouds blocking out the sun?

Why are the aliens here? Well, based on what I can piece together from the movie, these aliens don't actually have their own brains. They steal them from other species. I'd love to know what ingenious alien genetic engineer thought that was a good idea. Even though the aliens we see only make 'gronking' sounds and various hisses and wheezes, they're apparently an advanced star-faring civilization. Either that or they stole a lot of spaceships and then got really lucky.

In any event, people do really stupid things and then either die or get vacuumed up. The aliens aren't much better, coming as they do from a civilization that's impervious to nuclear explosions but susceptible to fire, rocks, axes, car crashes and gunfire. One group of alien harvesters looks like the robot-squids from the Matrix movies; the other is essentially the StayPuft Marshmallow Man with a spider grafted to his face. To up the creative ante, the movie ends on a cliffhanger. Then you think the story's going to end in the series of stills played with the end credits. But it doesn't. That ends on a cliffhanger too. Yay! Maybe a Skyline 2 will come out! Recommended only for hilarity at the general ineptitude.