The MArtian Battle PLan.

[I own a cylinder]

O.k. I may have flipped now. And this thread will probably dry up quick. But does anyone else think that the Matrian plan wasn't that good.

During the first Army/Fighting Machine confrontation, the Martains don't seem to have tactical priscision. They jsut seem to be blasting away with heat ray and skeleton beam.

During the attack on LA, they are just blasting buildings randomly yet didn't destroy the farm house immediatly after they knew Forester and Sylvia were there.

They went after the army plane with the heat ray and burned up the surrounding area around the first cylinder, yet they weren't apt to deal with FLying wing.

Does anyone else have the slightest clue of what im talking about or am i talking jibberish. ;D ;D

[EvilNerfherder]

Well, as is stated later in the movie they have arranged their cylinder landings in triangular patterns so they had some sort of plan.
I assume they were also like Wells' Martians.. they didn't want to destroy everything.. just subdue the population. But then the Martian's main reason for this... feeding.. is left out, so who knows?
The first battle was perhaps a taster of what they could do.
Flying wing? Perhaps they didn't detect it in time or knew that the bombs wouldn't have any effect.
Perhaps they were conserving resources.
Or perhaps, even, the script wasn't that well thought out... a case of dramatic effect over logic.

[Bayne]

[glow=red,2,300]That or they didn't think they needed to bother with a good battle plan... being inulnerable to all earthly weapons
[/glow]

[Leatherhead]

Regaurding the flying wing and the a-bomb, I'd say they allowed the bomb to be dropped on them on purpose. I mean, how creepy is that? The Martians pulled some Dragonball Z crap ( those of you who have seen DBZ will know what I mean). Think of it, the Martians may have just been trying to mess with everyones heads. Let the bomb drop, let them think they've beaten you, then dramatically fly out of the smoke to the horror of the onlookers. I mean, how creepy is that?

[Bayne]

[glow=red,2,300]LOL
A Dragon Ball Z WotW crossover.. now that would be amusing.

I enjoyed a good deal of Dragon Ball Z but eventually stopped watching it, renaming it 'Waiting for Goku' [/glow]

[maniacs]

Wasn't the V wing much faster than the jets?

[BrutalDeluxe]

Bayne said:

[glow=red,2,300]That or they didn't think they needed to bother with a good battle plan... being inulnerable to all earthly weapons
[/glow]

True that. Also explains why they weren't in much of a hurry. I swear those fighting machines were powered by a two-stroke engine. I could run faster.

[Zoe]

I have a theory about the Martian battle plan.

The theory involves three hypotheses;

1) The Martian War Machines were not totally invulnerable - they had a weakness.

2) The 'battle plan' was really not war strategy - it was pest control.

3) The film is incomplete. There is missing footage or at least some unfilmed but planned story elements.

The Martians' impenetrable blisters only worked when they were stationary. They had to switch them off in order to move. They moved along until they came across opposition and then stopped moving and put up their screens. In the first version of the film I believe that a machine was hit and damaged because it was moving and the screen was down. Immediately that happened they stopped in their tracks and put up the protective screens.

Note that in the first battle sequence General Mann says "This is the first time we have been able to surround them with sufficient force to contain them!" This suggests that he intends to overwhelm them before they have a chance to fight back. He has some partial intelligence based on previous engagements. Later, after the A Bomb fails he says "We're not beaten yet! We'll form a line and fight them all the way back to the mountains!" This suggests that he intends to sacrifice more materials and personel to slow them down. Note in the first battle sequence that the War Machines are stationary. Why did they not move forward sweeping their rays in front of them? The obvious answer was that they were clearing the ground in front of them. Note in that sequence that they take out guns and tanks before moving forward. By that time the forces are in retreat. The implication is that the forces were more evenly matched at the beginning of the battle but that the Martians wittled away at the army's forces and created disarray at which point the Martians decided it was safe to drop the screens and move forward and take up another position.

What went wrong? I think that the Army reckoned without Uncle Matthew who through his attempt to communicate caused the Machines to stop and raise their screens. Having lost the element of surprise the army found that the Martians had raised their screens and were invulnerable.

Note also at the point in the film where they are preparing to drop the A Bomb that they look at the radar and someone says "They've put up those screens again!" This strongly suggests that the screens are not up all the time. I believe the only time they are up is when the Martian Machines are stationary.

As for the 'battle manouevre' described as 'unique' in the film I do not think it is 'unique' - 'it's magnificent but it is not war'! The weird, zig-zagging that General Mann says 'slashes across the country like scythes' is more like a crop spraying pattern. I wouldn't be surprised if it weren't a kind of joke on the army. Maybe country folk watching the film had a good laugh at this point! What the Martians were doing was 'pest control'. Just like in the book, it "never was a war" it was more like "men against ants".

When a film is being made, scripts go through revisions and even when it comes to filming, much of it ends up 'on the cutting room floor'. If TWOTW53 had been made much later we would have had a 'Special Edition' or 'Director's Cut' by now with restored footage. As it goes, I think anything missing from the film will probably stay missing.

My biggest reason for thinking that the above scenario could be right is that I remember hearing a rumour about twenty years ago that when the film was in preparation one of the machines was damaged by gunfire. I suspect that this sequence was removed because someone wanted a simpler, scarier storyline - just as someone insisted on a Hollywood 'boy meats girl' sub-plot. The film, I believe, was nearly made much closer to the original story but studio bosses put there collective foot down and damn near ruined it.

Damn near - but not quite!

Zoe

[Gnorn]

That was a good read Zoe, well thought out.

About the directors cut, I wouldn't be so sure. There has been even older footage of movies / documentaries and what have you, which suddenly resurfaced. Guess we'll have to wait for the SE DVD to come out this summer to see if we are gonna be treated with extra footage.

-Gnorn

[Zoe]

Gnorn said:

That was a good read Zoe, well thought out.

About the directors cut, I wouldn't be so sure. There has been even older footage of movies / documentaries and what have you, which suddenly resurfaced. Guess we'll have to wait for the SE DVD to come out this summer to see if we are gonna be treated with extra footage.

-Gnorn

I hope you're right Gnorn. That would be great!
The War of the Worlds was a movie I first saw with my big sister back in the 70s when it was re-released. We were both SF and horror nuts and we talked about it all the way home!

Zoe

[krys666]

I always thought the amrtians were pis*ed! They fly around anywhere, shooting at anything they want to, but sometimes stop near farms. [glow=red,2,300]"Oooh! Heh! A little <hick> tiny aminal! Mooooo! Mooooulaaaa! He he he! I'll see if the aminal has any friends inside the <hick> 'ouse!"[/glow]

[keltiksylk]

maniacs said:

Wasn't the V wing much faster than the jets?

In the movie maybe...The actual plane, the Northrup YB-49 was probably just as fast as it's leading competitor, the B-47. about as fast as a modern jet liner (600 mph?)It sure looks dramatic in the movie and was an attempt to show that we were using the latest greatest weapons in our arsenal (and still failed). At the time very few folks knew the YB-49 was a dead end design (at least until resurrected in the B-2)...

The Sabre (! forget the number) jets they show were also top shelf at the time having just proven themselves against the MIG 15 in Korea.

Pal, like Wells, was showing the audience that we aren't so high and mighty after all. The Martians overcome all resistance and sweep it aside. I think Speilberg is heading in the same direction. Maybe the one flaw in the movie is Foresters observation that the Martians are just as curious about us. I think Wells wanted to show the British that the Martians considered us cattle and nothing more. They could care less about our society, culture, and technology. We were animals, probably good for domestication, but only as one of the food groups.

[krys666]

Roasted Human: £2.50
Toasted Human: £2.00
Bloody Rare Human: £4.00

If your human has a viral infection of disease please return him immediatly and a replacement will be retunred swiftly.

[RickyB]

I think the manta's did have blisters when they were moving.

Besides, I don't think they could see straight. I wish I could see more of the martians on mars. That would be totally interesting. I also would like to have seen more nudity, but that's for another time.

R

[Zoe]

rickyb said:

I think the manta's did have blisters when they were moving.

Besides, I don't think they could see straight. I wish I could see more of the martians on mars. That would be totally interesting. I also would like to have seen more nudity, but that's for another time.

R

Are you thinking of the TV series? Anyway, I'm not talking about the final version of the film when the effects were (more or less) finished and the 'blisters' matted in - possibly in places where they were not (originally) intended to be matted in. I'm not even talking about the 'final' script which has none of the 'missing' elements in that I speculate might have been there (i.e. a machine taken out). I am speculating based on a persistent rumour that in an earlier draft that one of the machines was taken out and that some of the inconsistencies in the final version could be interpreted to imply the scenario I outlined above. It is a theory that could be proved wrong by a reliable member of the original Paramount team saying "Nope. That's not how it was planned." In the absence of such direct refutation that is my opinion and you are entitled to disagree if you like.

Scenes on Mars and nudity? Hm..... Not a stickler for authenticity like some of the people on this board are you? I think you would be better watching 'Barbarella'..... sound more like your cup of tea! I have a 'theory' about that film if you're interested ;D

Zoe

[<[Iron Man]>]

I've never really 'Taken' (Spielberg ) to the Pal version, although i enjoyed 'Earth vs the Flying Saucers'!

What the Pal version did was remove the vulnerability the Martians had in the book. In the book if a Tripod was for a better word 'whalloped' by a High Explosive shell then it fell down, in this film it just rebounded any hits with a shield. Ah well i'm one of the few who don't enjoy it lol.

Hey Zoe i'm impressed with your tactical thinking about the battle plan, very practical and logical too! It's a shame that if indeed movement was their weakness then it wasn't explained or elaborated on.

However people may say that this was like 'Man vs Ants' where it's an extermination rather than a war. Well i would disagree, it's obvious that the Martians being our close neighbours were able to spy and observe us. Therefore when they invaded they were adequately prepared, organised, co-ordinated and informed with intelligence.

Now compare this to our Militaries who up until the invasion had no knowledge of the Martians or obviously the impending invasion! So we weren't prepared, organised, co-ordinated nor informed with any kind of intelligence other than what was gathered in the field. That's not a mis-match, that's a gross mis-match.

[morthren]

[shadow=red,left,300]The War Machines generate force shields around them. The "martian" technology, including shields and the ectro-magnetic repulsors beams used in flight were in test mode during the 1950's invasion. Full power mode was not even demonstrated in the bastardly truncated 1980's invasion.

The electromagnetic repulsion force is only limited by the amount of power supplied. So, flying a War Machine into space toward lightspeed, though not part of the invasion plan, is possible. The shields do have an upper limit of protection but the number of atomic bombs needed in 1950's would have wrapped the whole planet in a nuclear shroud that would take eons to melt away.

TO LIFE IMMORTAL![/shadow]

[sunnyrabbiera]

well maybe thier plan might be smarter then we think.
the tactics of the 1953 Martians seemed simular to world war II german blitzkrieg attacks: come in and take the enemy out swiftly

even with just three war machines the Martians were more then a match for the armies best weapons, and even though the main attacks seem random they still make sense:
scare your foes
get them into a panic
wipe them out...

simple war tactics put to a colossal scale