No one would have believed in the last weeks of 2019, that the BBC would release a production of the classic HG Wells novel as appalling as this. Yet in that very time, came the great disillusionment.
Yup, this one is a stinker. It's not just bad, it's an insult on virtually every level possible. There are production, character, editing and scripting decisions going on here which are so clumsy, ill-advised, bereft of sensibility for the original work, and just plain wrong, that it is difficult to imagine these artistic faux pas even making it past a preliminary suggestion stage, let alone numerous scripting and production meetings without someone having the nerve to just open their trap at least once and simply say: 'but, this is awful, can't we just film the book as it is?'
To save you the trouble of having to endure this utter rubbish, on the off-chance you might be thinking: 'surely it cannot be that bad, I'll give it a try', I'll point out the main travesties and why you should not even come near this steaming pile of garbage for any other reason than perhaps to use as a screenwriting tutorial on how not to do it. You can thank me later for saving you from sacrificing three hours of your life that you will never get back by having actually watched this load of embarrassing cack. So, here goes...
First up, you've got the bogus attempt to make you think it is an authentic adaptation, by setting it - visually at least - in approximately the same time period as the original book. But the illusion doesn't last long I assure you, as you pretty much instantaneously witness 21st Century politically-correct sensibilities clumsily tacked onto a story which is set in 1897. This in itself is bad enough as a concept, but when it is done in such a staggeringly inept, historically anachronistic way, it is just embarrassing to watch it unfold.
Not content with this, the script then adds an extra-marital affair to the storyline for no readily discernible reason in terms of improving the tale. If they'd had the intelligence to perhaps contrast the shock of infidelity on period sensibilities as an alien concept, with the shock of an alien invasion, then as an idea it might have just possibly had some merit conceptually for a dramatic device, but nope, it's just thrown in there to try and make it a bit 'modern' and 'racy'.
Worse still, scripting efforts at making the female lead into a 'strong modern woman' (TM) or at least cookie cutter version of one, end up making her male partner come across as one of the most simpering wet blankets that has ever been committed to film. This to the extent that any notion such a progressive firebrand vixen would find such a man worth having a romantic crack at in the face of the obstacles the time period would throw at her, stretches credibility to breaking point as it collapses under the weight of its own failed internal logic.
But this is just for starters as far as cack production, adaptation and editorial decisions go. We are treated to a series of intrusive flashes-forward to a misery-laden post-invasion Earth, where strong female lead struggles to bring up her Victorian designer urchin (TM) offspring. A child who is so well-scrubbed that he looks like he's auditioning for a RADA production of Oliver! All he needs to do is launch into a Lionel Bart-esque song perhaps entitled: Cor Blimey, it's tough being invaded by Martians' or some such and it's West End here we come.
It is at this point we quickly realise we are being robbed of even the remotest chance at suspending our disbelief and going with the story as it unfolds chronologically, as the story behind this adaptation is quite literally telegraphed to us courtesy of an appalling chronology mash-up editorial decision. But whilst this offers no dramatic purpose whatsoever, in fairness, it does at least serve to give us fair warning that HG Wells' classic has not merely been butchered with a PC agenda, but also pretty much trashed in terms of how it plays out too.
Not content to mess about with so many of the elements of the classic sci-fi novel already, the trend continues as we get a bloody awful side story of a confrontation with the aliens who have disembarked from their craft, revealing themselves to be rejects from the Klandathu homeworld of the bugs in the screen adaptation of Heinlein's Starship Troopers. At least in the Starship Troopers movie, choosing to make the aliens look like that was okay because their design was not contingent on them believably being able to operate spaceships and attack vehicles, yet in this production, despite the Martians apparently not having the appendages necessary to be able to perform such delicate feats as constructing spacecraft, launching and landing them successfully, then mounting a land-based invasion, they nevertheless appear to have pulled it off for some inexplicable reason. Frankly, this takes us so far into bad b-movie territory rather than an adaptation of what is literally one of the first and indeed finest sci-fi novels ever written, that it makes Independence Day look like Lawrence of Arabia.
As we know, in the original novel, there is very little concerning the creatures themselves other than to mention their difficulties in coping with Earth's gravity and atmosphere, most of it is wisely left by Wells, to one's imagination, but no, the screenwriters of this travesty think they can do better. It's really quite something to witness a production by a bunch of collectively amateurish buffoons who have the temerity to suppose they can improve on Mr Wells' classic by messing about with pretty much everything which make it the classic it is. You would have thought they'd realise there is a rather obvious reason why people are still reading the original novel after well over hundred years of having been in print; that's because it is good; it doesn't need a collection of talentless fools to re-write it.
So, is there anything good about this production at all? Well, some of the effects and CGI matting into live footage is pretty good. Some of the costume design is nice and the locations are not bad. Sadly, all of that is not enough window dressing to save what is just a very ill-advised venture. Mr Wells deserves much better than this, and so do we.
Yup, this one is a stinker. It's not just bad, it's an insult on virtually every level possible. There are production, character, editing and scripting decisions going on here which are so clumsy, ill-advised, bereft of sensibility for the original work, and just plain wrong, that it is difficult to imagine these artistic faux pas even making it past a preliminary suggestion stage, let alone numerous scripting and production meetings without someone having the nerve to just open their trap at least once and simply say: 'but, this is awful, can't we just film the book as it is?'
To save you the trouble of having to endure this utter rubbish, on the off-chance you might be thinking: 'surely it cannot be that bad, I'll give it a try', I'll point out the main travesties and why you should not even come near this steaming pile of garbage for any other reason than perhaps to use as a screenwriting tutorial on how not to do it. You can thank me later for saving you from sacrificing three hours of your life that you will never get back by having actually watched this load of embarrassing cack. So, here goes...
First up, you've got the bogus attempt to make you think it is an authentic adaptation, by setting it - visually at least - in approximately the same time period as the original book. But the illusion doesn't last long I assure you, as you pretty much instantaneously witness 21st Century politically-correct sensibilities clumsily tacked onto a story which is set in 1897. This in itself is bad enough as a concept, but when it is done in such a staggeringly inept, historically anachronistic way, it is just embarrassing to watch it unfold.
Not content with this, the script then adds an extra-marital affair to the storyline for no readily discernible reason in terms of improving the tale. If they'd had the intelligence to perhaps contrast the shock of infidelity on period sensibilities as an alien concept, with the shock of an alien invasion, then as an idea it might have just possibly had some merit conceptually for a dramatic device, but nope, it's just thrown in there to try and make it a bit 'modern' and 'racy'.
Worse still, scripting efforts at making the female lead into a 'strong modern woman' (TM) or at least cookie cutter version of one, end up making her male partner come across as one of the most simpering wet blankets that has ever been committed to film. This to the extent that any notion such a progressive firebrand vixen would find such a man worth having a romantic crack at in the face of the obstacles the time period would throw at her, stretches credibility to breaking point as it collapses under the weight of its own failed internal logic.
But this is just for starters as far as cack production, adaptation and editorial decisions go. We are treated to a series of intrusive flashes-forward to a misery-laden post-invasion Earth, where strong female lead struggles to bring up her Victorian designer urchin (TM) offspring. A child who is so well-scrubbed that he looks like he's auditioning for a RADA production of Oliver! All he needs to do is launch into a Lionel Bart-esque song perhaps entitled: Cor Blimey, it's tough being invaded by Martians' or some such and it's West End here we come.
It is at this point we quickly realise we are being robbed of even the remotest chance at suspending our disbelief and going with the story as it unfolds chronologically, as the story behind this adaptation is quite literally telegraphed to us courtesy of an appalling chronology mash-up editorial decision. But whilst this offers no dramatic purpose whatsoever, in fairness, it does at least serve to give us fair warning that HG Wells' classic has not merely been butchered with a PC agenda, but also pretty much trashed in terms of how it plays out too.
Not content to mess about with so many of the elements of the classic sci-fi novel already, the trend continues as we get a bloody awful side story of a confrontation with the aliens who have disembarked from their craft, revealing themselves to be rejects from the Klandathu homeworld of the bugs in the screen adaptation of Heinlein's Starship Troopers. At least in the Starship Troopers movie, choosing to make the aliens look like that was okay because their design was not contingent on them believably being able to operate spaceships and attack vehicles, yet in this production, despite the Martians apparently not having the appendages necessary to be able to perform such delicate feats as constructing spacecraft, launching and landing them successfully, then mounting a land-based invasion, they nevertheless appear to have pulled it off for some inexplicable reason. Frankly, this takes us so far into bad b-movie territory rather than an adaptation of what is literally one of the first and indeed finest sci-fi novels ever written, that it makes Independence Day look like Lawrence of Arabia.
As we know, in the original novel, there is very little concerning the creatures themselves other than to mention their difficulties in coping with Earth's gravity and atmosphere, most of it is wisely left by Wells, to one's imagination, but no, the screenwriters of this travesty think they can do better. It's really quite something to witness a production by a bunch of collectively amateurish buffoons who have the temerity to suppose they can improve on Mr Wells' classic by messing about with pretty much everything which make it the classic it is. You would have thought they'd realise there is a rather obvious reason why people are still reading the original novel after well over hundred years of having been in print; that's because it is good; it doesn't need a collection of talentless fools to re-write it.
So, is there anything good about this production at all? Well, some of the effects and CGI matting into live footage is pretty good. Some of the costume design is nice and the locations are not bad. Sadly, all of that is not enough window dressing to save what is just a very ill-advised venture. Mr Wells deserves much better than this, and so do we.