Investigating, the townsfolk find that the rocky masses are in fact space craft and bug eyed machines are coming out of them that can render people and objects into thin air. A trio of scientists handily fishing tripping near by are asked to come and help but they can do little. The military is called in and begins a campaign of escalating futility against the Martian invaders, up to the ultimate weapon whose atomic blast leaves the invaders somewhat unmoved.
From scenes of mass panic, despair down to the localised skirmish level we find out that the metal things are not the Martians but their attack craft and that they themselves are squat frog limbed things with tricolour eyes. The stage is set for conquest.
Bryon Haskin's film of Barre Lyndon's adaptation of H.G. Wells's novel (in the court of King Caractacus) is an update of both the original source and the other Welles's radio play by removing the emphasis on a single narrator and spreading the action among the wider world of mid-century American society, from farming folk to the Pentagon. There is a small coterie of characters and they are gathered around the development of the central couple Clayton and Sylvia. This is significant as it allows the film to avoid the rule of the source's difficult to love narrator and suggest a community expressing the humanity well and badly.
The other updates are of course the post war technology available to counter the invasion and the politics of superpowers still emerging from the ashes of the second world war. With this in mind there is little need to push the Martians as being from the Reds Under The Bed Planet as the equivalence would have felt clear to contemporary audiences. As far as the technology goes, though, we're having a ball on screen with armouries of new weaponry are paraded out to kick the Red Planet guys' asses. This culminates in the delivery of the atom bomb in the awe inspiring flying wing. But all of this is as nothing against the oncoming invaders and this Cold War science fiction goes with the conclusion that Wells so cannily imagined.
If none of that interests you then I can recommend the spectacle of the rich Technicolor pallet on display that shows the landscape smoking convincingly beneath the disturbing beauty of the alien craft as they hover without hurdles over the land. The experiment to recreate how the Martians see from a captured piece of their equipment is sublime as Ann Robinson looks in terror at her own image through the filter of the aliens. Even if you feel it lacks a payoff the sheer imaginative construction of it and use of facial expression should nudge you a little in the right direction.
Apart from these, the 1952 War of the Worlds has little more to offer as an epic of imagination. Clayton and sylvia are believable as a couple and other set pieces like the square dance work a treat and the reveal of the Martian in the farm house is genuinely eerie but what's on offer here as a rasion d'etre beyond the film technology and the military technology it depicts, is a story of human resilience that would have held greater substance to an audience fresh out of both World War II and the Korean War. The Martian/Soviet transference is quite easily sidestepped today and the impact on community looms a lot larger. If you're concerned about an overall lack of depth in favour of action it's no worse here than any given comics universe instalment or macho star vehicle today. There's still so much on screen to enjoy with this one.
Viewing notes. I watched the spiffy 4K presentation made available through Australia's own Imprint label which I'll happily plug here for consistently stunning work.
SPOILERS AHEAD
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The religious figure in Wells's novel is a snivelling bronze age minded goose whose end feels deserved, even if you don't share Wells's contempt for religion. In this film, his equivalent seeks reconciliation with the invaders and he goes to a Martyrs death as the flying pods zap him with their own brand of the light.
At one point the despairing thought is offered that the Martians would probably only need another 6 days to destroy the Earth. Sylvia is struck by this and says, "as long as it took to create it." This, even now, might sound profound but outside of the fact of her being the Pastor's niece and so steeped in it, really just ends up sounding hollow and antique.
Wells's conclusion praises the forces of nature and evolution for the presence of the germs that eventually kill the Martians through infection. This film closes with an absurd narration about god in his wisdom placing the germs there to save us. Really? He couldn't have just reached down and swatted them like flies?
This is a '50s movie and to be fair on it we have little cause to damn it for expressing a religiosity that its writers and cast probably felt sincerely. But it's still a travesty that such old mythology should rear its head over the work of a writer who had dispensed with it generations before.
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