Steven Spielberg is a director, screenwriter, producer in one person.
We are all familiar with him, as a fantastic director who created a whole science in the cinema, applied a special technique of shooting, and developed his own individual approach. He putted his soul in the cinema and, undoubtedly has not lost (Witalec, 2004). By most contemporaries, it is Steven Spielberg who is considered as the most powerful of the filmmakers working in our time.
This is because of his incredible fertility: more than forty films and another half dozen at work, colossal energy, he was the executive producer of more than a hundred paintings, have a record for general box office fees. More than one generation has grown up on his numerous movies. The list of his works is rich and varied. His work with the War of the Worlds started with the purchasing the copy of the radio script on the motives of the novel War of the Worlds.
This radio version was made on the eve of Halloween in 1938 by Orson Welles, a great hoaxer who made everyone believe that this radio show was real. Almost all population of America withdrew, people in a panic was thinking how to refuge from extra-terrestrial monsters.(Schwartz, 2015). With each new adaptation, the twists and turns of the story have been modified in the light of the current scientific situation, on the basis of real technical capabilities, the plot was filled with the appropriate content. It is clear, that today every child knows that there is no life on Mars, but everyone knows that the Universe is infinite and somewhere there is an inhabited planet. Son it is possible to play and scare on this. To make someone believe, there is a need to make special effects so authentic and impressive, that the viewer feels himself at the epicentre of events, show them through the eyes of an ordinary person, or through the eyes of a child. The Martians attacked the Earth.
And in his interpretation this, perhaps, is not exactly Martians. And they chose as the object of attack, not only England, but the entire globe. This, undoubtedly, is a tribute to globalization. Differences between the book and the film are numerous, because the action takes place in our time. But the idea remained the same – the invasion of powerful outsiders into the ordinary life of people. The film has the same fear of unknown alien force, despair, struggle for survival, as in the novel. But the heroes are different.
Instead of English family with husband, wife, neighbours in movie, the heroes are a man in divorce, which is in conflict relationships with his own children. The main characters of the movie are Ray Ferrier, his daughter Rachel Ferrier and son Robbie Ferrier. Ray Ferrier in the movie tries to save himself, his daughter and son. In addition, if Wells leads the story of narrator and long wanderings of the hero alone, and the story turns out to be very natural, but in the movie, the hero need to communicate with someone.
Thus, the atmosphere of the film completely changes. If in the novel, hero saved himself, dreamed of finding his wife, went mad with loneliness and upheaval – here the hero in the movie cares about children. The hero is completely different – he is a hard worker, but loser. The social type which is closer to the modern viewer. He does not really think about the meaning of life and his place in the world. In the movie England of 19 century turned into America in twenty – first. Replacing the broughams with cars, kerosene lanterns with searchlights, emergency issues of newspapers with the broadcasts on the radio.
A powerful electromagnetic impulse brought all the electric out of action, destroying the power grid – and America plunged into darkness, and people began to walk, but there was a serious trick, if in the Britain you can walk to London, because it is possible, it’s not an immense American space, so in the movie, there was a need to revitalize some cars and military equipment. Escapement from the landing site of the Martians is justified, but when they are everywhere – it makes no sense. Also in the movie there is neither an astronomer, nor a vicar, nor an artillerist, who we paid much attention in the novel. In the movie there is a certain image of the Ogilvy – Tim Robbins.
In the movie he invites the main character and his daughter to hide in the basement of his house, assuring that they can stay there for a long time. And then exposes all to the danger, trying to fire from a shotgun to the tentacle of an alien mechanism which was at that time learning the basement. In the end he becomes totally uncontrollable, which forces Ray to use the most radical method known to mankind to calm down. And there in the basement, for the first time we see aliens. And they all not look like the creatures described in the book. Coming out of the basement, Ray and his daughter turn out to be in a tripod’s basket, where people already were there. From time to time a tentacle comes out of the apparatus and chooses another victim.
From a victim the tentacle suck the blood, which is used to irrigate the extra-terrestrial grass planted everywhere. However, Ray manages to use the grenade and with this he helps all to be free from tentacle. When Ray arrives to Boston, he sees that some tripods stopped, and all alien plants dried. Ray draws the attention of the military to the fact that the protective field around the last working tripod was disconnected. And the military destroy it.
Ray finds his ex-wife and discovers that Robbie, with whom he became apart on half way also returned home.
