War of the Giant Pelicans

Watched Spielberg’s War of the Worlds with Ling today and though I liked it a lot, it was, film-wise, one traumatic experience for me. Forget the little bits of exposition they had to furnish concerning Tom Cruise’s Ray Ferrier’s household mismanagement problems. Forget the slightly cheesy-by-modern-day-standards explanation on how the alien lifeforms landed on (or rather into) Earth. If one were expecting an alien-invasion movie similar to, say, Independence Day, one might be sorely disappointed, because there were no Earthian heroes with the talents or the technology to defeat the mighty giant armoured machines. The film was instead one grand statement about the fragility of Man and his ugly nature when the desperation to survive supersedes morality.

This is one film that was based on a late-1800s novel by H.G. Wells, with a famous radio series in the 1930s by Orson Welles that sent people who believed the invasion real into panic. It would have been a horror tale more for the imagination than a visual exercise if not for the advances of cinematic technology. Just recently this year, I had a nightmare that was rather similar to this, except that rather than hostile aliens, the attackers were giant pelicans. (Sounds cheesy? But was horrifying for me in my dreams.) I don’t know how it is for most people in their nightmares, but in mine, they are usually about how catastrophic changes in the environment affect the visceral — and they are often accompanied by very little dialogue. The genocidal brutality of H.G. Wells’ original novel is updated and fleshed out into one visual masterpiece in a manner reminicent of my nightmares. While far from the cailibre, in terms of storyline, of Spielberg’s Minority Report, it is nevertheless a wonderfully disturbing sci-fi horror film.

Subjects: Film, Television & Anime 映像

Mood: Raves and Rants

Tags: cinema, H.G. Wells, Minority Report, Orson Welles, pelicans, PKD, science fiction, Steven Spielberg