The many movie versions of War of the Worlds

[Christopher]

Heck, I didn't even have a color TV when Space: 1999 was on. As it happens, I'm currently in the middle of a rewatch via Netflix (6 episodes into the second season as of this writing), which the first time I've seen the show in over three decades and, as far as I know, the first time I've ever seen it in color.

 

[Klaus]

I believe I saw every episode of TOS in b/w before ever seeing one in color. It took decades for it not to look a little garish to me in color ...

 

[Christopher]

I grew up watching TOS in black and white, and I remember when I first saw it in color on a neighbor's TV, and later when I first saw "The Immunity Syndrome" in color on a hotel TV, which was quite an impressive sight.

On that same hotel TV, I got my first look at Jason of Star Command in color, and was startled to discover that Commander Stone was blue-skinned!

 

[RAMA]

I saw The Great Martian War 1913 - 1917..It was well made, but repetitive and not too well thought out.

Other stories that paralleled WOTW but don't count:

The Tripods. Another homage you might say.
Skyline: Shows us what the inside of a human harvesting machine might look like. Used that aspect of the novel. Not as bad as...
Battlefield Earth: Awfulness incarnate. Original is an obvious L. Ron Hubbard remake of WOTW.
Battleship: Pointless, senseless. The Thunderchild on a mass scale.
V: One of the first shows to show us a good version of the iconic saucer hovering in the atmosphere vision.
Arrival: A better movie than usual about aliens terraforming Earth. The general theme of the WOTW novel about aliens terraforming (red weed) for their own purposes and supplanting another species on the evolutionary scale is carried through. Humans were doing a terrible job.
Day the Earth Stood Still(2008): The remake is closer to the themes of the original novel. Similar to The Arrival except Planet Earth was a reboot.

I'm sure there are others!!

So those Pendragon versions got released? I remember reading years ago and all of the ridicule over claims of multimillion dollar budgets and really dodgy trailers but it always seemed like vaporware and pipe dreams.

Straight to budget DVD, but yeah, it got released.

Sincerely,

Bill

The 2012 version had a theater release.

Independence Day doesn't count? Alien invaders? Killed by a virus (albeit computer virus).

Nope, ID4 had a few homages to the 1953 film, but it was not a direct version. I'm not talking about movies in the same genre (of which there are many) but direct versions of the original WoTW or it's sequels.

Yeah, and that's what was startling to me when I revisited it -- how crude and cheap the production values were compared to TNG. It wasn't just the dreadful video FX, but the bare-bones production values, the shooting on video, the awful sound quality, the inept writing, really amateurish stuff in a lot of ways. Paramount put their best effort and top dollar into TNG, but I guess WOTW was left with the dregs.

I stopped watching part of the way through seaon 1. I was excited by the promos, but the series just made no sense, and like you, I thought it was cheap compared to STNG.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I actually thought the second season of WOTW-series was cooler than the first. I would have liked to see an explanation as to how the world got to be in such a sorry state, though.

Now, I actually have to give second-season showrunner Frank Mancuso, Jr. partial credit for that, because his thinking was that the world should still be suffering from the devastating environmental and economic aftereffects of the '53 invasion

Really? I didn't think of that. Although the opening narration to all the S2 episodes implies that it's a recent event ("There's rioting breaking out in the city...").

 

[Christopher]

V: One of the first shows to show us a good version of the iconic saucer hovering in the atmosphere vision.

Well, that was based more on Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End. The image of giant alien ships hovering over cities, the powerful aliens presenting themselves as benevolent but manipulating us for ends that may or may not be harmful -- those are very much from Clarke's book, and are completely unlike WotW (which had no saucers, just meteoric impactors that discharged walkers).

 

[RAMA]

V: One of the first shows to show us a good version of the iconic saucer hovering in the atmosphere vision.

Well, that was based more on Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End. The image of giant alien ships hovering over cities, the powerful aliens presenting themselves as benevolent but manipulating us for ends that may or may not be harmful -- those are very much from Clarke's book, and are completely unlike WotW (which had no saucers, just meteoric impactors that discharged walkers).

True. The closest parallel is that they were to use the humans and water as resources. The image of the saucers is what stuck in my mind, but that's mor3 accurate.

 

[RAMA]

Just a head's up. The Golith WoTW DVD is available at Walmart. Just saw it the other day.

 

[Redfern]

Really? I'll have to invsetigate!

Sincerely,

Bill

 

[RAMA]

Really? I'll have to invsetigate!

Sincerely,

Bill

Yup, I got it! I'll try and watch it later tonight..