Post by eveofthewar on Feb 23, 2005 18:41:44 GMT
FROM : www.scifi.com/scifiwire2005/index.php?category=0&id=30445
Doug Chiang, the conceptual artist on Steven Spielberg's upcoming War of the Worlds movie, told SCI FI Wire that he relied heavily on the detailed descriptions in H.G. Wells' original book for the look and feel of the film's aliens and tripod war machines. "As much as we could, yeah," Chiang (Star Wars: Episode II) said in an interview at WonderCon in San Francisco last weekend. "I mean, we wanted to be faithful to it, because ... we think it's best to go to the source material versus other interpretations, as great as the other interpretations may have been. It's always nice to see where the inspiration came from. And then Steven, of course, takes it to a whole new level."
In Wells' book, the aliens are Martians who are described as having two large, dark-colored eyes; a V-shaped mouth; a mass of tentacles; and "oily brown skin." The Martians' war machines are described as 100-foot-tall tripods with domed canopies and mechanical tentacles, one wielding a box that emits an invisible Heat Ray. (By contrast, In George Pal's 1953 film adaptation of War of the Worlds, the Martians were depicted as leathery red creatures with one huge, trifocal lens as an eye and three-fingered hands; their war machines were hovering boomerang-shaped saucers with glowing green wingtips and a cobra-like Heat Ray that emitted pulses of green light.)
Chiang and production Rick Carter declined to give details about Spielberg's aliens, who are not from Mars. But, he added, "We're kind of trying to create fear, or an image of fear. And whatever that is to each individual person is always different, so there's always shadow images and stuff. So in some ways we're trying to create these creatures or these machines or whatever as sort of manifestations of what terrifies me or what terrifies Rick. And it may not terrify everybody else. But I think we're trying to capture that essence."
Carter, for his part, alluded to Spielberg's last alien movie, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, in describing his and Chiang's approach. War's aliens "would be the opposite of the little fingers going and getting candy," he said. "It would be the opposite of touching a flower that's dying and making it be alive." War of the Worlds opens June 29.
Doug Chiang, the conceptual artist on Steven Spielberg's upcoming War of the Worlds movie, told SCI FI Wire that he relied heavily on the detailed descriptions in H.G. Wells' original book for the look and feel of the film's aliens and tripod war machines. "As much as we could, yeah," Chiang (Star Wars: Episode II) said in an interview at WonderCon in San Francisco last weekend. "I mean, we wanted to be faithful to it, because ... we think it's best to go to the source material versus other interpretations, as great as the other interpretations may have been. It's always nice to see where the inspiration came from. And then Steven, of course, takes it to a whole new level."
In Wells' book, the aliens are Martians who are described as having two large, dark-colored eyes; a V-shaped mouth; a mass of tentacles; and "oily brown skin." The Martians' war machines are described as 100-foot-tall tripods with domed canopies and mechanical tentacles, one wielding a box that emits an invisible Heat Ray. (By contrast, In George Pal's 1953 film adaptation of War of the Worlds, the Martians were depicted as leathery red creatures with one huge, trifocal lens as an eye and three-fingered hands; their war machines were hovering boomerang-shaped saucers with glowing green wingtips and a cobra-like Heat Ray that emitted pulses of green light.)
Chiang and production Rick Carter declined to give details about Spielberg's aliens, who are not from Mars. But, he added, "We're kind of trying to create fear, or an image of fear. And whatever that is to each individual person is always different, so there's always shadow images and stuff. So in some ways we're trying to create these creatures or these machines or whatever as sort of manifestations of what terrifies me or what terrifies Rick. And it may not terrify everybody else. But I think we're trying to capture that essence."
Carter, for his part, alluded to Spielberg's last alien movie, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, in describing his and Chiang's approach. War's aliens "would be the opposite of the little fingers going and getting candy," he said. "It would be the opposite of touching a flower that's dying and making it be alive." War of the Worlds opens June 29.
