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Even the famous Orson Welles radio play deviated from the novel and Wells was happy with that. He even told Orson about it when they met.
The trouble with this adaptation, it was underwhelming and poorly realised. Just how these spider limbed Martians even managed to develop technology given that they have no dexterity?
Writer Peter Harness crowbarred in an ecological message and the perils of colonialism. What we wanted to was some action, instead we got little of that. It might have helped if Robert Carlyle had played the Rafe Spall part of George, who by the end of it was like a limp lettuce.
It was so dark that you could barely make out what was happening (which must also have been convenient for the budget). And the Martians are... three-legged carnivorous spiders? Not exactly the cold, brilliant creatures you'd imagine building spaceships and giant tripods to invade Earth.
The metaphors of what empires do to those they invade, and the results of arrogance, are not so much hinted at or alluded to as beaten home with a hammer. Subtle, this wasn't. To be honest I quickly got so bored that I lost track of what was going on. Not much though, in fact it could have been summed up in a couple of sentences and scenes: "The Martians get sick and die. There are signs of hope for the future."
It is almost as if the fact that invaders from Mars are on the attack is an inconsequential, that they're somehow getting in the way of this uninteresting love triangle. You could argue that at least there are some things happening in Parts one and two, whereas this was just intensely drab. The opening scenes looked very good, sadly the remaining fifty five and a half minutes fell flat.
I see no point in this third part at all, what purpose did it serve? All I could see was padding. Again the time jumps do nothing to help, they just add more laboured scenes.
Couldn't wait for it to end. 3/10
Did you know
- TriviaAlthough this is the last episode and the main antagonists are the huge war machines. The tripods are not seen once (not including the crashed one or the beam of light)
- Quotes
George Junior: Tell me about things.
Amy: Things?
George Junior: In the World.
Amy: Things?
[Amy gets into bed beside George]
Amy: Now move up then, come here.
Amy: [pause and reflects]
Amy: You know George, there's lots of marvellous things. Where I grew up, people didn't look like us, they had brown skin and often they were very poor and didn't always have enough to eat. You know what? They were so cheerful and so happy and they wore really bright colours
[pause and sighs]
Amy: and the sun, and the sun shone there, it was, so warm, so bright and the sky wasn't grey and pink, it was blue,
[pause]
Amy: clear blue. There were lots of animals, all sorts of birds of different colours, tigers, mongooses, snakes.
[pause and sighs]
Amy: Then there were the mountains, the mountains were,
[sighs]
Amy: they were bigger than you could even dream George, they were, gosh, purple, black, grey, some of them were even white with snow,
[pause]
Amy: cold white snow. I use to go visit my father up there, he'd be drawing maps. Then one day, when I was a little bit older, I got on a ship and I sailed across the oceans and I came here. I got off the ship and I thought, it's a little bit rainy,
[pause]
Amy: but I thought it was pretty, with its countryside and its cities,
[pause]
Amy: people, millions of people
[pause]
Amy: and children, thousands of children, children everywhere, they were playing and laughing, singing and eventually going to sleep.
George Junior: One day can we go there?
Amy: [long pause]
Amy: I will start packing our bags.
Details
- Runtime54 minutes
- Color