Unsolved problems

Rating: 7/10 (4 July 2006)

Wells's book was a sensation. Partly, I suspect, because of the timing. The end of the Nineteenth Century was a period of great optimism and confidence. Technological advances were transforming the world and Britain was at the heart of these developments.The British Empire spanned the globe and to many of Wells's readers it must have seemed as if the Pax Britannia would ensure order and progress for the foreseeable future.
Wells set about puncturing that complacency. He envisaged intelligences greater than ours: "vast, cool and unsympathetic." The Martians sweep aside Britain's military might as easily as swatting flies. By the end of the book one character, the Artilleryman, is speculating that the only future for Mankind will be to burrow underground and live like rats in a Martian sewer system. It was this startling new perspective on Man (reduced to vermin to be casually exterminated) that must have shocked Wells's readers. Of course, this fate is averted, but not by our efforts. We are saved by bacteria: "the humblest things that God in His wisdom put upon this Earth." I suspect that the irony and bathos of this ending were always part of Wells's scheme for the book, but what works on the page does not always work on the screen. From a film maker's point of view the book has three problems.
Firstly, it is a piece of archaic science fiction. If you update it, our own military technology is already more advanced than what Wells envisaged for his Martians. Secondly, Wells's hero is essentially passive: he observes events but cannot shape them. Then there is that damp squib of an ending: the Martians catch cold and die!
Spielberg's film is a combination of the book and George Pal's 1953 version. Like Pal, he updates the story. But now the Martians are confronted by the whole infrastructure of a modern military machine. Spielberg tackles this problem in three ways. Firstly, (like Pal) he equips the Martians with a defensive shield to negate the much more powerful weapons now arraigned against them. Secondly, he tells the story entirely from the point of view of an ordinary man, so he never has to confront the issue of exactly what weapons the Martians have or how successful the military are in fighting them. These devices work well, but I am less sure about his third strategy.
Wells's capsules are fired across space by gigantic cannons and when they land are too hot to approach. Spielberg obviously felt this was too clunky for a contemporary audience, so his war machines are already here. This is scarcely any more plausible and has the disadvantage of robbing him of his first Act. In Pal's version the arrival of the first capsule gets the story off with a bang and waiting for it to cool allows him time to introduce his characters. Spielberg has to spend ten or fifteen minutes introducing the characters before anything happens.
Spielberg's solution to the second problem is more satisfying. His character is not a shaper of events, but he has a purpose: he has to get his children safely to their mother in Boston. The movie becomes a story of survival and resourcefulness and generally works well. The only flaw is his treatment of the son, whose constant bickering soon starts to grate. We are supposed to applaud his eagerness to fight the Martians. Instead, we are exasperated by him for being so pigheaded and selfish that his sister is nearly lost as a result.
Despite this cavil, this part of the movie works well. It is the ending that has disappointed most people. In Pal's movie the irony of Wells's ending is entirely lost. When the voice-over narrator repeats that famous line Pal invites us to conclude that Man has indeed been saved by divine intervention. Wells would have hated Pal's religiosity.
Spielberg seems much more aware of the irony and wants to preserve it. Perhaps he saw a parallel between Wells's Britain and post-communist era America. Both countries were at the height of their power and needed taking down a peg or two. He retains the scene with the Artilleryman - but doesn't know where to put it. When it occurs, the movie seems to grind to a halt for 20 minutes. To compensate, he adds another big action sequence (not in the book or in Pal's movie) but, as other reviewers have pointed out, this turns his Everyman into just another action hero.
Following the escape from this peril Ray Ferrier and his daughter trudge on to Boston. As they do so, it slowly dawns on them that the Martians are all dying. Finally, they arrive at the parent's house and we get the emotional climax where Ferrier redeems himself in his wife's eyes by restoring her daughter to her.
This all falls a bit flat, because Spielberg has staggered his big action climax, the resolution of the plot and the emotional climax over about fifteen minutes. The movie just seems to peter out. Pal was more successful at orchestrating these three elements so his movie doesn't have the same sense of anticlimax.
I feel Spielberg's movie was just made too quickly. It needed time to iron out the problems in the screenplay. Despite these reservations, Spielberg's movie captures the spirit of the book much better than Pal's version. Overall, it is not quite as successful, but is good enough on its own terms.
It is no classic, but no turkey either.