MOVIE REVIEWS ONLY.

[Phil]

I've never been particularly pro- or anti- Pendragon and preferred to make up my own mind on the basis of seeing the finished product. After years of waiting the DVD finally arrived yesterday and at last I can say I've finally seen the beast. It was a tough job as despite being factory sealed, whoever had stuck the DVD into the box had something weird and sticky on his fingers leaving indestructable fingerprints all over it. I had to scrub with soap, water and alcohol to make the DVD playable. Most peculiar; perhaps I have just removed Mr Hines's DNA from the disk? So was it worth it?

There are some excellent very lengthy reviews above that cover pretty much everything that I could only repeat. I could emphasise the dreadful effects, the peculiar filter changes, the endless wandering around fields and lanes especially in the first half, the appalling acting from pretty much everyone except Piana and the overlong narrative. But I won't....

However, the strange thing is that I found the film strangely enjoyable even though it was not a good film by any stretch of the imagination. I can only really put this down to a form of morbid fascination. Maybe it was listening to the bombastic score, and watching Piana trying to stretch his acting abilities in a gammut of emotions in which he has to carry pretty much every scene. In fact I thought the best scene by far was between the Narrator and The Parson at the ruined house in the pit, the Parson's panic acting was quite good and the pulsing green light certainly brought an alien feel to the scene.

Worst acting moment, aside from every scene with the Narrator's wife, has to be the bizarre Scottish/Irish/cockney artillery officer who not only looked like James Doohan, I genuinely expected to say "the cannons canna take it, Captain" in his best Scotty impression. I can only assume there were no accent trainers in this film!

And did I spot an obvious unfinished effect? Watch the scene closely with the top of Big Ben, which incidently seems to be a free standing structure, hitting the bridge. There is a coach in white which looks like a white cardboard marker waiting to be rendered in! It just looks deeply strange.

Anyway, yes it was bad. At least it stuck close to the book, I just wish it had had better support actors, a decent script editor, decent effects and no stick-on moustaches. I genuinely think that long ago there was a genuine desire to create a decent adaptation but the project just became too big and daunting for the budget available. The path to cinematic hell is paved with good intentions they say......

For technical ability I would rate this 2/10 (for the score at least), but for entertainment 6/10. OK, that balances to 4/10 which seems about right. Even so, I don't regret buying it. Still, it's not as bad as 'The Mumbo-Jumbo' believe me.

[MikeH]

My main issue is that the pacing is rubbish. An hour or half goes by, and you suddenly realise that there's been very little action.

[amber14]

Okay! I watched the filum last night. Overall I think it was a brave attempt.
Yes it did follow the book closely though I thought the ending poor, more of that later.
I'll tackle what I liked about it first:
Mostly the whole filum bizarrely enough. I closed my mind to thinking how bad I'd read here that it was and found it really enjoyable.
the filum had a whole dream-like feel to it. Very surreal.
The start was really good, I liked the long build up though only once I'd got over the jerkyness and filtration which was totally bizarre.

The way is stuck to the book was an achievment I really enjoyed the dialouge, if not the accents!
Even the endless walking was fine.
I jumped once when the writer and the artilleryman were walking down the street and the house got hit by the heat ray, that was a nice touch, didn't expect that at all.
The way the red weed wasn't explained it was just there.
we had black smoke even though the martians didn't turn to black dust
The suicide creeped me out. That was more scary than the feeding squence.
The victorian underwear!

What I didn't like was the strange filtration, it was hard to see detail.
The strange daylight shots with a half night sky I had trouble working that out.
That bloody kid running around in a red waistcoat, god how many times did that turn up during the whole three hours?
Didn't like the tentacles on the FM's, they stuck out too much, prefer if they hung down loosely.
the Artilleryman saying they held the 'eat ray like a camera when it was clearly on it's back.
The Americans inabilty to say Aluminium they pronounce it Aloominum..hmmm Alloo isn't that what the martian's are meant to say?
Infact the whole pronunications were off...where the F*** is Harwick? Did they mean Harwich by any chance?
The lack of crowds, infact I see more people in Aberystwyth than I did in London that really got to me.
The architecture looked wrong and American.
Btw anyone spot that some of the railway carriages were not english? i'm not sure but I think one of the trains was odd too, bit later than Victorian?
The steamer didn't look crowded enough either.
The ending seemed rushed, no playing cards or much interaction with the artilleryman and total lack of dead London! Did Hines run out of money? Time? Or interest?

This filum would have been even more enjoyable if the score was the Planet suite.

yes i'll defintely watch it again soon.
And at least it was Victorian and not some rubbish set in modern times Euckk!

[chickenstu]

Can this movie really be THAT bad?

[mctoddridesagain]

Buy it.

Watch it.

Realise it.

[Lensman]

chickenstu said:

Can this movie really be THAT bad?

The more I reflect on this film, and on what others have said about it-- I note particularly the post which said their computer animation was done by *costumers*!-- the more I think this is strictly an amateur production. I don't mean that as an insult, but rather as an honest description. Given that it's an amateur production, the truly remarkable thing is not how bad it is, but rather that Hines/Pendragon managed to get it nationwide distribution at Wal-Mart.

[<[Iron Man]>]

amber14 said:

And at least it was Victorian and not some rubbish set in modern times Euckk!

What's wrong with a modern interpretation? The story's timeless that's the endearing thing about it. Have you actually seen The Asylum or Spielberg versions?

[jeffwaynefan]

emyr said:

What's wrong with a modern interpretation?

It's not every WOTW fans cup of tea!

Who fancies a brew?

[dalek]

Hi,
my four year old could have made a better attempt.
Shoe string budget is an understatement!
dalek

[Phil]

Nice avatar, Dalek.

You know, I watched the film a second time a couple of nights ago and was really quite entertained by it. It's so terrible, bar the beginning and the view from the pit scenes, that I, and a couple of friends, were laughing all the way through it.

The scene with the narrators wife saying "What a terrible tragedy" whilst pulling a bizarre po-faced and somewhat constipated expression at the breakfast table was timeless. And the dinner table 'comedic' 'playing with food whilst winking scene' we must have rewound four or five times. What was going on there, it defies all rationale?

Don't take it seriously and try to watch it for a laugh and one might be quite entertained. I've spent a lot more on worse. (Bob, I'll never forgive you for recommending that I buy Deep Blue Sea, y'hear?)

[Zoe]

phil said:

Nice avatar, Dalek.

You know, I watched the film a second time a couple of nights ago and was really quite entertained by it. It's so terrible, bar the beginning and the view from the pit scenes, that I, and a couple of friends, were laughing all the way through it.

The scene with the narrators wife saying "What a terrible tragedy" whilst pulling a bizarre po-faced and somewhat constipated expression at the breakfast table was timeless. And the dinner table 'comedic' 'playing with food whilst winking scene' we must have rewound four or five times. What was going on there, it defies all rationale?

Don't take it seriously and try to watch it for a laugh and one might be quite entertained. I've spent a lot more on worse. (Bob, I'll never forgive you for recommending that I buy Deep Blue Sea, y'hear?)

Well, to be honest..... this sounds like an act of desperation from someone in denial; "I did NOT waste my money!"

Zoe

[Killraven]

Hi everyone! And long time no see!!

My brother ordered a copy of this from the US and I saw it a few days ago. Again, most things to be said have been said but I thought I would mention the things that 'got me'...both bad AND good!

Ok overall this is a pretty awful film if you view it in the same vein as you would any other - but this one is so unique that when I came to the end, I didn't think 'what rubbish was that'... I was just struck by how different it was. To those that haven't seen the film, I can guarantee it is totally unlike anything you will ever see. I can therefore heartily recommend you watch it if only to see how 'different' it is!

I'd comment in particular:

DETAILS
This is where the real let downs are for me. It is the small things that often make a film. There are the scientific clangers (most have commented on these, e.g. regarding the position of Mars, etc.); those which are daft misinterpretations of the story, and those which just show Hines' research of the local areas close to negligible. Things I hated particularly include:

London - apart from the crap CGI (why didn't they just go to Eastern Europe??!) just looks nothing like London. You see shadow from trees everywhere - on a main street?

Weybridge - sorry, this town has no underground system or subway so WHY ARE THEY SITTING ON DOWNWARD STEPS??

When the brother buys a paper, the boy says a pound and he flips him a coin. Sorry, correct me here if I'm wrong but I thought we'd moved onto pound notes by then??

On a lighter note - the narrator's servant is far too "well fed" to be realistic - and what's with the Queen Latifah hairdo??

ACTING
Oddly, by far the best for me was Kaufmann - he managed to sustain at least a consistent accent throughout the film and come across as genuinely distraught and bonkers. Secondly - well i was quite impressed with the lady that nurses the narrator at the end of the film - enough to say she would have made a far better stab at being the narrator's wife than the real goofy attempt. They also look better together (look closely!) and are of more comparable age (though maybe the narrator fancied older women?? I doubt this was the case with Mr Wells himself! ). Thirdly Piana did a workmanlike job, in spite of the "HorSELL" and "MayBERRY" (why say Mayberry when you can quite easily pronounce 'Sunbury' you dozy idiot??). I also thought Piana did a semi-convincing job of playing the two parts (you know before I saw the film I honestly thought the brother was played by another actor!!?). One wonders if this film really was filmed sequentially as some believe - if so, I guess 'The Moustache' retired to its trailer during the quick role changes! Finally, I have to say I was quite impressed by Mrs Elphinstone - typical hysterical female! ;D

DIRECTION AND CINEMATOGRAPHY
There were so many pointless scenes, and others which are unintentionally hilarious. In the book, the scenes with Ogilvy discovering the cylinder and reporting it take only a page or so, yet we have to put up with about 3/4 hour of irrelevant running about.. The potman scene can be ditched in particular, as can the totally irrelevant visit to Lord wotsisname (invokes in me a similar level of mirth as the current run of Vodaphone ads - "Dad, I'm gay"..."Excellent!" ). More than anything though I was virtually rolling on the floor with the narrator's 'escape' from the martians at Weybridge: he slumps weak into a boat... on shore, he regains his strength and runs for cover...then collapses spent...then sprints off again...then collapses again...then..(watch that bit again and try not to laugh!!). Also, I split my sides when the 'shopman' does a comedy pratfall into the pit...without anyone going near him...

Generally, I was annoyed by the various refugees with their freshly dry cleaned outfits and immaculate makeup, but more so with the slapstick running back and forth (presumably to make it look like there were more of them). Surely in a stampede away from danger you all run IN THE SAME DIRECTION???!

I did however think the Ruined House segment was truly superb. However, it was spoiled by the fact that Hines' was obviously too gutless to have the narrator kill the curate (even though the battering administered to the curate's head might mirror that given by Faroe Islanders to passing whales). And as for the 'coal bunker' that he made Piana crawl into...I suddenly had dialogue from Dog Soldiers pop into my head "quick son, let's get in the cupboard!" ;D

DIALOGUE
I'd agree that the dialogue was verbose when it appeared, but I found it strangely sparse throughout the film. My dad appeared partway through and summed it all up really "there's a lot of sitting and looking isn't there?" ;D "Much like a silent film."

The narration was utterly silly in places. Like when the narrator collapses in a ditch after running from the pit. "I must have lain there some time". Yeah, sure seems like five seconds to me!!

MUSIC
Start and end credits was quite good - a suitable dramatic thudding at the beginning. However, I think people have been far too charitable to our Mr Hall. The never ending score drove me round the bend...if I hear another synthesised trumpet again I think I'll strangle someone with it!

EFFECTS
I really liked the handling machines. The deaths on the common would have been far better handled just cutting off after catching fire, then simply obliterating them with the CGI flames, then cutting to a charred corpse perhaps. Enough of the thrashing living skeletons! The meteorite could have been done better... I would have much preferred a larger cylinder, buried in the earth, with a proper, large screw cap covered in ash that moved slowly - rather than levitating out of the hole on cooling! Finally, the CGI tentacle in the Ruined House was also extremely amusing...

Overall, an interesting curio. If you've read the book you'll enjoy picking out the various scenes that you enjoyed in the text. But you'll also wail at the shoddy execution of most of them. With laughter or tears - I'll leave to you.

KR

[tug]

hi. ok seen both movies and sad to say i preferred the pen dragon version ...for all it's faults...it is actually a movie that could be enjoyable just about. there if the post prod is realized .prof uplift by a some post production work on the fx and the sound fx. having worked in the film and tv industries
i know this can be done. some editing needed ,come on we have been waiting all our lives for this ... let's get it right

[RickyB]

Well, I have seen four War of the Worlds films lately and I have the following review about Tim Hines version.

Firstly let me say that films are all about entertainment. If the audience is not entertained then it is not a very good film. I missed all the initial hype about this film, as I came here when I heard Paramount was re-making War of the Worlds. I also have read a LOT of negativity about this film, so my expectation was about as low as you can get. In fact I bought it for a laugh.

So, with such low expectations in mind, I put it in my computer and had a good watch.

I’ll cover the good things first and be as positive as I can about the bad things. One thing I DID like about this film is that it stuck as close to the original story by H.G. Wells as one could. That I liked a lot. The Martians were pretty much as he described it too. That was pretty cool actually. The heat ray was not too bad a design and it did rise and lower itself pretty well. What I was not looking for was a film that blew me away with special effects. If I had read what Tim Hines said about it then I would have been very disappointed. It also stuck to the correct period of the book and that gave the gulf between the Martians and us a little more of the correct perspective. They were vulnerable but superior. They looked every bit of the part they should have been. The invasion was also not world wide, but local as in the book.

Then we come to the problems and I have some suggestions for anyone who is making a film such as this. The key to a science fiction film is to have a good grasp of science while making it. This avoids such pitfalls such as the one in the film in “Mission to Mars” where one scientist looks at some three-dimensional structure of DNA and excitedly exclaims that it, “Looks like human DNA”. How one could make such a conclusion based on five or six turns of DNA is beyond me. So this film is in good company. The problems with the science in this film have been well documented. When a person is reduced to their skeleton, it can not writhe around on the floor in the absence of muscle. In addition, a heat ray would disintegrate the bone too, one would imagine. However, I suspend my disbelief to say merely that it is a special ray that does this. Secondly, if you drain the blood of anything then the entire tissue does not shrink as was seen with the Martian cow (it was Martian and not an Earth cow) and the woman. That indicates that all tissue is being drained and not just the blood as in the book.

The special effects were of low quality, as has been suggested. However, as someone who has done 3D animation on a computer I challenge anyone to do the same as they did. What Mr. Hines should not have done is promised special effects beyond what he could deliver. I think that at least some of the special effects were done in 3D studio max. If not, then it was some similar program as I noticed some of the errors in it that they could have avoided. For instance, if you watch the flying machine the lights on it continue to flash THROUGH the metal of the machine. It was curious and I know from 3DS that adding flare effects (which the lights were) show through in exactly that way if rendered incorrectly. The models themselves were actually very complex and it took a long time to make them. However, that said, they were not of high enough quality to be mixed with real footage as their obvious cartoon appearance makes them sometimes look a little comical. The Thunderchild scene being the obvious example.

Another problem I had, which I have frequently with films, is the use of trains. I’m a railway fanatic and if I see an American train being passed off for British it spoils the film. Likewise if steam and chuffing noises are added to a diesel locomotive I am disappointed. How deep does that insane feeling go for me? Well, in the James Bond film, “Golderneye” a class 20 locomotive was painted black and made to look like a bullet train. The sound was dubbed to hide the natural sound of the locomotive (which sounds like a clunker normally). Spoil the film, no. That’s how my eye is for trains. Also the station was clearly not a station, but just some old building made out to be one.

A note about speaking parts. This was a British film and it was made in America. There are a lot of British actors around and I was wondering why more British people couldn’t be found to play the main parts. The artilleryman was clearly American or Canadian. His British accent was worse than Dick Van Dyke’s in Mary Poppins. I don’t mind normally, but when describing the look of the machines he quite clearly says, “Aluminum” and not “Alum-in-i-um” as a British person would say. I did chuckle a bit at the soldier in the red jacket that the narrator comes across. He started in Irish and dipped into Scottish. Sounded like my American friends doing an impression of Scotty from Star Trek.

Finally, the houses that were cuts and pastes of film from the UK gave the film a look like the sort of images in a Monty Python Film…

I did have one Mystery Science theatre 2000 moment. When the hero ran up to the tripod at the end of the film, I started singing "The Hills are alive with the sound of music" I was drunk. Maybe I had to be.

www.intriguing.com/mp/_pictures/compdiff/killerca.jpg

However, I knew it wasn’t going to rival any other film but I did enjoy it for what it is worth – as a WOTW fan. And that, as I said at the outset, is what makes a film a film.

R

[Ashe Raven]

I have glimpsed the film but I will watch it in full soon

I see some great strength in an otherwise lost opportunity. I can only hope that the new edit wil be a vast improvment. My God, it could be so much better, if only more time, and less tosh (IE: Hinesy excuses) was put into it.

[Poyks]

Well shave a frickin snake, I've got it today and watched it three times!!

What a totally bizarre watching experience. I've read all the other reviews and I know where everyone is coming from now. The first time I watched it with the kids, and next door would have thought we were watching Bill Bailey or suchlike. There was a lot of laughter! I've been reading about the acting, effects and accents for a long time, and was amazed to see that they are still worse than I expected. Yet strangely at the same time there is that compelling, addictive almost endearing quality that is hard to explain. Even though it's not the makers intention at all, we were laughing with it more than at it! I found it better to think of it as a cartoon rather than live action due to the basic but warm CGI, with the extreme colour filtering (a lot of the CGI reminded me of Terry Gilliams work during the Monty Python years). Some of the effects are totally strange, like when the journalists brother is with the Elphinstone girls on the chaise; the characters are blue-screened with the background detail in almost stop frame slow motion. It would have been easy surely to keep a camera alongside a pony and cart at five mph! But, strangely enough again this supposed short cut adds to the (accidental?) arty dreamy feel.
Yes, the tripods rarely seem attached to the ground, but what's with the sudden sliding lurch forward they make?
The Thunderchild part made the kids laugh the most. The background looks like it was filmed from a moving boat (stock footage?), making the cartoonish boats appear to be moving strangely sideways. The solitary Thomas Dolby looking bloke on the steamer looked like a giant (I think Nerfington mentioned this), but the most comical part was the changing emotions of Piana and the girls on the "steamer".
Acting wise, Piana is generally good, Kaufmann was actually quite brilliant, but the comedy award goes to James Lathrop; the accents put Leigh Francis (Bo' Selecta) to shame!! Jack Clay was ok, Susan Goforth was dim but nice, and Nerfingtons dream bird Jamie Lynn Sease was well.....American (at least Lathrop tried the accents).

Generally, I find the whole film kind of quaint and very much like a crazy dream after eating a bucket of cheese. The main thing is that I have seen the film at last, and I will keep watching it over and over as a devout WOTW fan, and as accidental as it may be, it is a bizarre, original, preposterous, hilarious and facinating peice of work. How many films have all of those qualities?

[EvilNerfherder]

I agree with you on all counts there Poyks. It really is a surreal, odd but strangely watchable movie. And you can never quite figure out what it is that keeps you watching. The connoiseur of the unusual within me laps this movie up.
I have to take my hat off to you.. three times viewed in one sitting? Nine hours of Timmy's weirdness? Didn't your brain start leaking out of your ears like your beloved custard?

[Poyks]

Mmmm custard!!! ;D

<dribble, shudder, convulse>

[jeffwaynefan]

Oddly enough I had trouble sleeping last night. I got up and went down stairs with the Pendragon visual feast tucked under my arm for viewing - better than counting sheep jumping over a gate. I thought "give it 20 mins and I will be in the land of the nod". I ended up watching the entire film. Now my wife is not happy with me today because I kept her awake with my laughing.

[David Faltskog]

Same here Horselle, i spent most of the night tossing and turning (well mostly tossing) no wonder i feel so weak, my Girl Friend will be the death of me.

D.F...In love but knackered out.