The War of the Worlds Experiment

In August of 1953 the first and best film version of one of the most famous Sci-Fi books ever written showed in theaters. War of the Worlds is by far "the" definitive alien invasion story. It doesn't much matter that we know Martians aren't going to attack us. If anyone in Hollywood is going to tell any kind of invasion story it will be held up to this movie. Without it Independence Day would never have been made, and that movie is the closest to the impact and emotion of what people must have felt in 1953. The best of Science Fiction should challenge how we think, scare us just a little (or a lot), and probably teach the audience something we never thought possible. This story is so well known I'm not going to dwell too much on the plot.

Martians attack the Earth, using meteors for cover. Slowly the world governments begin to respond and no one, not even the US Marine Corps can put up a fight. In the middle of this are two scientists, Dr. Clayton Forrester and Sylvia Van Buren, that spend much of the movie either advising the military, or trapped "behind enemy lines". After the final strategy of dropping an atom bomb, ten times as powerful as the two used in World War II, fails, all cities that have not already been destroyed are ordered evacuated. This includes Los Angeles, where a group of scientists from Pacific Tech have been busy trying to find a weakness in the Martians or their technology. Once the evacuation order is called, they are to head for the Rocky Mountains. When this plan fails due to rioters, everyone heads to church to prey for the end or a miracle. At the last moment all the Martian ships crash to the ground and are defeated by the microbes in the air that all life on Earth has become immune to over thousands of millennia.

Most Sci-Fi movies of the '50s all seem to think we need a narrator to tell us what's going on. I don't always agree with this because it can be used as a crutch for bad writing. Not for the opening of War of the Worlds. The narration actually explains the thought processes of the Martians as they decide to leave their dying world and head to Earth. Along with this is gorgeous space art showing (not always) accurate pictures of all the planets but Venus. The movie feels more modern for it and the fact this was all done by Bonestell, the most influential space artist of all time, goes a long way in showing how careful George Pal was in making this movie. There's even a bar named after him in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

War of the Worlds has fantastic alien tech. The Martian Tripod is about the only piece of tech we get to see, but boy does it have a lot. The eye-stalk is a nightmarish periscope that doubles as a heat ray, and the fins on the side each fire some green stuff that is just as deadly. They don't fly so much as hover, and you can see what appears to be three static-distorted beams underneath. For protection they have an electric shield of some sort that can withstand an atom bomb. Dr. Forrester even mentioned he thought their power source was an unshielded nuclear engine, accounting for all the radiation detected early on. Lastly they have another eye-stalk which comes out from the underside to scope out smaller things like the interiors of buildings. Unlike the main eye, this one sports the optic lens of the Martians themselves (a circle trisected into a Red-Green-Blue lens). I don't care if you can see strings in some of the scenes, just pretend it's part of their hover system.

There is a sound associated with most of these early Sci-Fi movies created by a Theremin. You know it when you hear it. It is so synonymous with Sci-Fi it becomes a brilliant decision not to use one for the primary sound/music of the Martians. Instead they use a sound that is still kind of terrifying today. And the use of this new sound and music elevate it way above everything that has come before (except maybe The Day the Earth Stood Still). Each element of the Tripods and even the aliens themselves have unique sound effects. You learn them quickly and it almost feels like a drum beat to the movie, rushing humanity to oblivion.

The Science part of the Science Fiction is handled very well. There is technobabble, but most if it makes sense. When the first meteor crashes in California, people start talking about why it didn't leave a bigger crater, and why is it so hot, and what about radiation. These are things that people should worry about if this really happened. The more exotic explanations have to do with the alien weapons, which Dr. Forrester says destroys the nuclear bonds within atoms that causes the target to vaporize. Visually this is done showing an inky black spot on the ground our a human outline in ash when the heat ray is fired. Once again this brings to mind Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The scientists even look at some Martian blood and start to figure out that biologically they are very primitive, but they didn't know how to use that against them, yet.

The use of the military is handled incredibly well, and any stock footage inserted looks like it was shot for the movie. Most '50s stock footage looks very grainy and doesn't visually sync well with the filmed components. Even though War of the Worlds is in color, the few times they show black & white footage of World War II it blends seamlessly. There is the famous scene of YB-49 Flying Wing headed to nuke of the Martian Tripods, that must have been stock, but it fits beautifully. All this makes the movie more believable. I want to contrast this with Invaders from Mars, where the stock footage never matched any of the filmed scenes and appeared to be used for filler.

I would say 90% of the time Sci-Fi, especially old Sci-Fi, tends to serve up humanoid alien design. I know it's cheaper to put a stuntman in a suit, but every once in a while it's nice to have something different. Because different can be scary. As weird as the monocular design of the aliens in It Came from Outer Space, it wasn't scary. In one of my favorite moments of all Science Fiction (which should also be one of the most famous), Dr. Forester and Sylvia are trapped in a farm house while Tripods are pacifying the country side and new ones are landing. Trying to get to the attic, a Martian walks up behind Sylvia and puts more terror into her than any human being deserves. It just looked at her (and put a hand on her shoulder). This alien design is so unsettling and terrifying it works beautifully. It has a strange gait, spindly arms, three fingers with suckers, no head, and a three-colored lens which glows in the chest. Presumably the chest is really the head. Dr. Forrester then picks up a 2-by-4 and whacks it in the body, which lets out a horrible scream. Growing up I wouldn't again be that scared of an alien design until I was 10 and watched John Carpenter's The Thing.

All the failed alien invasion movies should look to what War of the Worlds is and what it means. Humans are fighting for their lives, but don't win because of preserverence. An odd message at the time. I'm not sure how Spielberg's War of the Worlds failed (Okay, I know all the characters were completely unlikable), but I think it had a lot to do with not letting the audience know what happened. By the end, the tone of the movie changed to make it look like humans won, but they didn't. Skyline would have been better served if told from an entirely different perspective, or else you risk turning aliens in magical creatures that can do what they want. V and V: The Final Battle showed a convincing occupation which eventually led to a resistance that kicked the Visitors off Earth. Falling Skies fails for me because no one is trying to figure out the invaders, or even realize the human race is losing the Earth.

Of course the source material was written in 1898, but some of the best themes, ideas and stories carry on. Independence Day is the best balance of all, and the humans even manage to take back the Earth on their own terms. And, for those paying attention to Mystery Science Theater 3000, the chief mad scientist is also named Dr. Clayton Forrester.

On a side note the final four episodes of The Quatermass Experiment aired during this time on BBC, but they were never recorded and lost to the ether. Maybe, one day we can make a Faster-Than-Light ship with a big signal amplifier and recover these missing TV transmissions that are just floating in space.