It was the beginning of the rout of civilization, of the massacre of mankind,” wrote H.G. Wells in his classic novel “War of the Worlds,” words that then as now tap into man’s fears of being attacked by the unimaginable and indefensible.
Steven Spielberg’s movie treatment of Wells’ 1898 novel (to be released June 29, starring Tom Cruise), featuring an assault from above, works with scarred memories of recent terrorist attacks to make us think that, without warning, some assault will again upend our existence. The idea resonates as provocatively in our post-9/11 world as it did in Wells’ day.
When his novel was published, at the height of British imperial expansion and confidence, Wells audaciously imagined the near-defeat of England and the rest of humanity by technologically advanced alien invaders. What seemed absurd about the book was less the idea of monsters from Mars than the notion that the English might be helpless in the face of a superior power. Its military prowess was as unchallenged, as unassailable as that of the United States now. Yet Wells had the brazenness to imagine the British as defenseless as those they were subjugating. Just as the book might be read as an attack on British imperialism, the new movie might be viewed as a comment on U.S. military actions today.
Calling Wells’ novel “a nightmare vision of humanity’s conquest,” famed science fiction writer Ray Bradbury, who was 12 years old when he first read the novel, says, “I absolutely loved it. It was so paranoid, and all kids are paranoid. But `War of the Worlds’ also reflects the paranoia and horror that would define the coming century.”
From the original book through Orson Welles’ 1938 radio adaptation, the 1953 movie version and Spielberg’s latest incarnation, “War of the Worlds” remains relevant. It’s a warning against the complacency of arrogant cultures, while evoking each era’s greatest threat — the Germans of World War I, the Nazis of World War II, the communists of the Cold War and the terrorists of contemporary times.
The original novel was published at a time when England viewed Germany’s growing war machine with extreme agitation. Fusing that anxiety and a popular fascination with Mars, “War of the Worlds” conceived of devastating Martian techno-weapons. Monstrous metallic tripods crush trees and buildings; an all-penetrating black vapor strangles helpless humans; flying machines emit a heat ray that incinerates everything. This technologized assault seemed to portend the mechanized slaughter of WW I with its tanks, poisonous gas, airplanes and flamethrowers.
Unprepared
Giving the dominant culture a taste of its own medicine, Wells indicts the complacency of the smug, pre-WW I British who are helpless in the face of a superior colonizing force and completely unprepared for any threat to their own status as global superpowers. The Martian conquest is hastened by the population’s initial refusal to take the threat seriously.
With the postwar diminishment of Britain and rise of America, the primary focus of the Martian invasion shifted to the new seat of power in the first adaptation of “War of the Worlds” — Orson Welles’ Halloween-eve, 1938 radio version. Welles and his Mercury Theater group used simulated news flashes to convince more than a million Americans that an alien army from Mars had landed in New Jersey, of all places, to annihilate the human race.
An agitated reporter proclaimed that tentacled, squidlike monsters had slithered from cylindrical capsules. He nervously described a devastating heat ray that torched a nearby crowd and then the reporter himself, as the audio signal went (briefly) dead. New announcements reported the aliens’ relentless mechanized advance toward New York, easily destroying the Army and poisoning the countryside with black clouds of poison gas. Before it became clear that the broadcast was a hoax, thousands of panic-stricken Americans fled their homes in terror that resulted in rioting, looting, hallucinations, aimless driving and various crazy antics, including shooting a water tower mistaken for a monstrous Martian machine. It remains the most widely known mass delusion in U.S. history.
America’s gullibility seemed to result from its shaky mental condition on the eve of WW II. The country, still struggling out of the Great Depression, feared the worst in Europe, where Hitler threatened war. Many even thought the Martian invasion was a disguised attack by the Germans. Contributing to the panic was the rise of a new medium, radio news.
“One year earlier, the Hindenburg airbus explosion became the first disaster to be broadcast live,” says Todd Stocke, supervising editor of the latest “War of the Worlds,” a compendium that gathers the original text, the panic broadcast and the crazed reaction. “People were just getting accustomed to hearing bad news flashes on the radio and that was key factor in its believability.”
Bradbury adds, “Wells and Welles exposed the paranoid madness of the past century and prepared us for the future history of the United States.”
Following World War II, the Holocaust and the nuclear horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the ’50s were dominated by new fears. The threat of communism was amplified by McCarthyism, which fueled the nation’s anxieties. In addition, American/Soviet saber-rattling, atomic bomb testing, the unknown dangers of radioactive fallout and the weekly wailing of air-raid sirens generated a paranoid atmosphere that pervaded American life. Into this Cold War era came the first movie version of “War of the Worlds,” in 1953. The world-destroying alien invasion could easily be seen as reflecting paranoia about a communist attack, the fear of nuclear Armageddon, and a mistrust of science and technology.
Filmed by special-effects wizard George Pal, who won an Oscar, “War of the Worlds” was — for its time — unsurpassed in its fantasy of mass destruction. Like the British in the original novel, complacent Americans react lazily to the invasion. They turn the Martian landing site into a tourist attraction, selling hot dogs and popcorn until they are incinerated by the Martian heat ray. Then the aliens demolish Los Angeles in a spectacle of bloody carnage. Every weapon — including the atomic bomb — proves ineffectual in stopping the onslaught.
`Pretty stupid’
The ’53 version of “War of the Worlds” — which Bradbury calls “pretty stupid” — projects a sentimental image of small-town families huddling together in churches, clutching one another for support and praying for deliverance. Nature, God and family save the day, not technology and science.
With its superior technology and weaponry, Britain controlled the world in 1898, just as the U.S. does today. While evoking the paranoia of the dominant culture, “War of the Worlds” attacks the culture’s complacency as the narrator reminds us in discussing the emotional aftermath of the alien assault.
“It has robbed us,” he notes, “of that serene self-confidence in the future which is the most fruitful source of decadence.”
In its relevance to our anxious post-9/11 world, “War of the Worlds” endures. It will be surprising if Spielberg’s version — which Bradbury expects to be “full of [junk]” — will rise to embrace Wells’ critical values or sink within the sensory overload of summer movie explosions, the silliness of Tom Cruise’s public lovefest and the mind-numbing repetitiveness of blockbuster hype.
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ANXIETY ATTACKS
What makes us nervous?
1953 MOVIE: Nuclear annhilation
1898 H.G. WELLS NOVEL: Payback for British empire’s abuses
1938 WELLES RADIO PLAY: Looming Fascist aggression on eve of World War II
2005 SPIELBERG MOVIE: Terrorism after Sept. 11 attacks
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ctc-arts@tribune.com
