“And now, as we see American adventure abroad,” he [David Koepp] continues “in my mind it’s certainly back to it’s original meaning, which is that the Martians in our movie represent American military forces invading the Iraqis, and the futility of the occupation of a faraway land is again the subtext.”There is no shortage of evidence in Koepp’s own script that shows this comparison is preposterous. For starters, the conflict is said to be not a war but an “extermination.” The description is precise. The Martian invasion was, indeed, genocidal. But that’s only the beginning. It was also an ecocide. Not only did the wicked machines massacre human beings everywhere, they also began “terraforming” the Earth with their own psychedelic red vegetation, apparently so their newly conquered planet would more closely resemble their home world.
Iraq ain’t Texas on the Tigris. And we certainly aren’t “exterminating” Iraqis. We demolished Saddam Hussein’s unelected fascist regime and are helping Iraqis build democratic institutions in its place. Saddam, not US soldiers, is guilty of both genocide and ecocide. He destroyed the marsh ecosystem in the south of the country - along with the people who lived there - and turned it into a desert. US soldiers (exterminator monsters in Koepp’s mental universe) helped the Iraqis restore this region.
Hully freaking Jehosaphat. What hubris. Its original meaning, had he actually been willing to treat the text of Wells' work fairly, includes none of what he makes it out to be.
What I get out of WotW includes things such as,
* "don't be too complacent or parochial" and
* "get to know your neighbors better" and
* "be better prepared to do your best for your friends and neighbors" and
* "take the opportunities the world provides to do something positive even in adversity over which you have little influence".
Wells is widely reputed to have "not thought much of" Orson Welles's radio adaptation. I can only think that this propaganda putsch has his corpse rotating fast enough to catch fire by friction.
I haven’t seen the movie. But I’m interested in how the three versions — the novel, the radio broadcast and the film — all echoed contemporary fears.
The novel was one of many written in Britain after 1870 reflecting fears of the rise of a unified Germany. In fact, it was written at the tail end of a whole generation of “invasion literature.” The narrative style, and the attention to local details, are that of the hypothetical future-history writing in the cataclysm of novels that poured from British publishing houses in the wake of George Chesney’s “The Battle of Dorking” (1871).
The French were even more obsessed with Germany, of course, but Germany also had its own version of invasion literature. And everyone, including the Americans, was reading novels about the “yellow peril.”
I was going to go dig through my library for examples, but I found this neat little essay online, Future-War Fiction, by “I.F. Clarke.”
Among the examples I learned about in this essay is Capitaine Danrit’s “three-volume tale of L’Invasion noire (The Black Invasion, 1895-6).”Impossibly far-fetched at the time, and yet …
I watched the movie. I think those monsters were Al-Qaida attacking free world (innocent people).
Am I right?
:P on
No no, wrong movie. Batman Begins is the movie about Al Qaeda.
Osama bin Ghul is the head of the evil organisation, which had its headquarters in the land from which psychoactive flowers come. The evil organization is magalomaniac, and it has a long historic memory, rejoicing in the downfall of Rome and Constantinople. But it can't actually build any cool technology, it has to steal it (from Wayne) or get a Westerner (Doctor Crane) to make it. The League has attacked Gotham before, economically. (I imagine petrol prices went up a lot.) This time it's to be terror.
The solution is for wealthy America to stop bumming about on the hippie trail inhaling drugs, get back to tradition, and get into body armour and light armoured vehicles. Kick some tail, and stop thinking you have to rescue everyone in trouble whether they're your friends or not.
Oh, and trust the British: they may be doddering, but when your home comes crashing down in flames you'll want a friend you can count on.
The tripods, on the other hand, are nature's revenge for global climate change. They look like metallic jellyfish, which obviously points to the sea rising as a result of the non-ratification of Kyoto. (etc.)
:P off
Politics is everywhere if you look for it. It can even be fun.
Remember that Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn) thought, and for all I know still thinks, that the orcs at the siege of Helm's Deep (an army built for one purpose, to end the world of man) were a satisfactory metaphor for American and other Coalition of the Willing forces invading Iraq - presumably to kill every man, woman and child there, sonce that is what Saruman's orcs aimed at.
This is not so out of line for liberal thinking. Noam Chomsky and people who like his talking points were addressing our obvious genocidal agenda in the attack on Afghansistan. I never heard any big apologies for that either.
Nor do I expect any, not do I hang around those sorts of people waiting for a great light to dawn. It never will.
So much is in the eye of the beholder, and effectively beyond argument.
In the end, you just have to decide to get with the program as people like this see it, or else put them on the equivalent of "ignore" for the rest of forever, along with Jaun Cole, all his fans and friends, and many, many others.
Off-topic and completely without excuse, I want to praise The Island, a much more intelligent movie than the dull, same-old-same-old trailers and advertising campaign made it look. It deals with bio-tech ethical dilemmas in a pointed and rather chilling way.
Is that "point" political? It looks that way to me, because these are hot issues for me, but obviously it didn't look that way to the people who made it, or they could have used that angle to sell it. (They couldn't have done any worse at the box office if they had.) One guy's obvious political/ethical issue is another man's setup for an exciting highway chase sequence.
Having said all that, those Martian machines are nifty. When can the U.S. military get some?
I mean, those no-good layabouts at Roswell and Area 51 have had over 30 freakin' years already! Ship some f---n product! ;-)
And we certainly aren’t “exterminating” Iraqis. We demolished Saddam Hussein’s unelected fascist regime and are helping Iraqis build democratic institutions in its place.
Hmmmm, charming idea.
Native Americans and Japanese civilians learned the hard way that Americans exterminate.
How about Iraqi Shiites in 1991? How many 100,000's died for H.W.'s "rise up and overthrow Saddam"?
We sat back and WATCHED.
Let's wake up and realize what is going on. Sounds like a Hollywood scriptwriter has done just that.
I propose we:
1. Tar and feather the whole Bush family and run them out of town.
2. Banish with them the whole rotten torturing gang, from Alberto to the Generals down to that pathetic Private England.
3. Start again. Win the war on terror. And set the example by being the good guys.
Because we're not right now.