News that a new screen version of HG Wells' classic sci-fi/horror novel The War Of The Worlds would finally be set in roughly the right time and place for the story (Victorian/Edwardian England) was most welcome, after so many dismal attempts to set it in later years, or even other countries. The story, after all, was intended to shock out of their complacency people who were living in what was then the world's biggest and most powerful empire. The message was "what if there was something even bigger and more powerful and more deadly than us?"
That said, the production values are great, the special effects excellent, and the brooding, haunting atmosphere of the alien and unknown permeates the story as it should.
Sadly though, the screenwriter and producers just couldn't resist the temptation to insert their 21st century sensibilities into a late Victorian story. So, instead of an ordinary husband and wife of their time separated by a cataclysm, we get an unmarried couple rebelling against the norms of Victorian society by openly living together - and then being separated. Add to that a heartless and unforgiving elder brother of the main character, plus an equally unforgiving and bitter deserted wife, and much of the first half hour to an hour is wasted on a completely unnecessary and irritating sub-plot. Granted, the producers may well have been eager to enhance the role of the wife beyond that in the novel - but that could have been just as easily achieved by simply showing her own fight for survival when separated from her husband. But that wasn't enough for the writers. They had Eleanor Tomlinson in that role, so they wanted Poldark's Demelza in the character. And, of course, the men in the story must be shown to behave so chauvinistically towards her that they deserve the inevitable slap-downs.
The other distraction to the story is the strange jumping forwards and backwards in time. This not only destroys the pace of the story but also undoes the suspense to a huge degree. We need to see how bad things can get in progression as the forces of the British Empire are overwhelmed by the alien invasion - not to be shown how it ends and then shown in stages how it got to the end point.
H G Wells' story included brief hopes of a fightback against the enemy, followed by repeated defeat and despair, and that's what is needed to keep us invested in the narrative.
I will watch the series to the end but unfortunately that end will have been signalled far too soon to anyone who has never read Wells' original work. I also fear we will have even more gratuitous social lessons thrust at us from our own time and society. Such a shame that they couldn't have just left the story alone to tell itself.
Review of The War of the Worlds
