War of the worlds (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | war of the Worlds |
| Original title | War of the Worlds |
 | |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2005 |
| length | approx. 112 minutes |
| Age rating |
FSK 12 JMK 14 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Steven Spielberg |
| script |
Josh Friedman , David Koepp |
| production |
Kathleen Kennedy , Colin Wilson |
| music | John Williams |
| camera | Janusz Kamiński |
| cut | Michael Kahn |
| occupation | |
| |
War of the Worlds is an American movie , loosely based on the novel of the same name by H. G. Wells . The actors Tom Cruise , Dakota Fanning and Tim Robbins are directed by Steven Spielberg . In Germany, the film saw more than 2.7 million cinema viewers. The film opened in German cinemas on June 14, 2005.
Based on the book from 1898, a radio play by Orson Welles was broadcast as early as 1938 , in which people's panic and emotions were conveyed very authentically. Steven Spielberg was able to purchase the original script from the author ( Howard Koch ) of the radio play. As early as 1953, a film was directed by Byron Haskin under the title Battle of the Worlds , from which Spielberg took over central passages and motifs, so that War of the Worlds can be described as a remake of Battle of the Worlds in addition to the literature adaptation .
action
Humanity has long been watched by an alien life form that is far superior to it technologically. The motive: the meticulous planning of an invasion of the earth.
Meanwhile, the everyday life of the unsuspecting people on earth goes on as usual. The story revolves around the separated Ferrier family. Ray Ferrier, a crane operator in the New Jersey container port , father of a teenage son (Robbie) and a ten-year-old daughter (Rachel), struggles with long hours and the separation from his wife, who has a new partner.
On a weekend that Ray had the children for, after a series of strange lightning strikes, giant three-legged fighting machines emerge from the ground and begin to pulverize people with ray cannons and reduce the surrounding area to rubble and ashes. Ray escapes from town with his children; first to the house of his wife and her new partner, where he suspects them. When he does not find her, he decides to wait in the cellar for the night.
The next day, Ray learns from a team of journalists who have moved in that the aggressors are aliens who have started destroying cities all over the world, paralyzing almost all electronic devices. The fighting machines buried in the earth a long time ago are activated and operated by the aliens who drove into the earth with the lightning strikes.
As they continue their journey, many people in a small town ask Ray, Robbie and Rachel to take them with them. Since the van does not have that many seats, Ray tries to drive on, whereupon they are attacked. Finally, some people manage to hijack the car. Ray then has to continue on foot with the children. In a small town on the Hudson River , they want to take a ferry across. In the crowd there is a reunion with an acquaintance of Ray and his daughter. Suddenly, several fighting machines suddenly appear that make people panic. Many of them want to take refuge on the ferries; But since these are not designed for such quantities and the dangerous machines are getting closer and closer, one of the captains instructs the soldiers not to let any more people on the ship. Unexpectedly, he starts the engines, whereupon some people try to jump on the ferry. During the crossing, a combat machine suddenly emerges from the water and capsizes the ferry. Ray and his children jump into the water, but are pulled into the depths by a falling car. However, the three manage to reappear. Once at the top, they see two fighting machines pulling people out of the water. Ray tells his children to swim in order not to get caught in the suction of the propeller or to be picked up by the fighting machines. They manage to swim ashore and continue on their way. They see how several machines have launched an invasion.
The army moves in to fight the fighting machines. However, the attacks with heavy weapons have no effect, as the machines have a kind of protective shield. Ray's son Robbie decides to support the soldiers after an argument with his father. However, the alien fighting machines set the entire operational area of the army on fire, which is why Ray has to leave his son behind. He and his daughter find shelter in the basement of a destroyed house with the ambulance driver Ogilvy, who has holed up there and is increasingly losing his mind. From the cellar, the two men watch how the invaders gradually “fertilize” the fields with the blood of the captured people, so that a red plant overgrows everything. After an extraterrestrial probing camera has unsuccessfully searched for inmates in the basement on a long hose, this is then inspected by a group of extraterrestrials, but they do not discover the people. Shortly thereafter, Ray finds himself forced to kill Ogilvy because he can no longer hold back his panicked screams and would be able to bring the aliens back on their trail.
A little later, Ray's daughter, increasingly traumatized by the experiences, is discovered and captured by the aliens. Ray can then also be caught in order to save his daughter. He ends up in a cage with her, from which the people who have been picked up are taken one by one to “juice”. He succeeds in detonating two hand grenades inside the tripod and escaping from the destroyed machine with his daughter and the other people.
As originally planned, the two go to Boston and experience how the fighting machines there tumble and collapse. Ray discovers in a fighting machine that birds can sit on it and that there is no longer a protective shield. He informs the soldiers around who can attack the machine and destroy it. It turns out that the aliens and their plants got sick because they did not have a sufficient immune system against the microorganisms of the earth. Shortly afterwards there is a reunion between Ray and his daughter with her mother at the grandparents' house. Ray's son, who survived the war, is already waiting there.
backgrounds
The film was completed in an exceptionally short time, with only seven months between the start of shooting and release. Therefore the complex action scenes were filmed first in order to be able to finish the computer effects for these scenes in time.
The destroyed Boeing 747 that Ray discovered after the alien attack was real: The studio was able to purchase the old, decommissioned aircraft at a reasonable price. It is a 747-100SR that had its maiden flight on August 15, 1980 and was operated by All Nippon Airways with registration number JA8147 until it was scrapped in Victorville in May 2004 . In Victorville, the machine was dismantled into several parts, the wings dismantled and prepared so that the remains come close to a realistic crash. Today the wreck lies on the premises of Universal Studios , where the studio tour passes. ( 34 ° 8 ′ 9 ″ N , 118 ° 20 ′ 50 ″ W )
According to his own statements, Spielberg was strongly influenced by the 9/11 trauma in staging and visualizing War of the Worlds .
Gene Barry and Ann Robinson , who starred in the 1953 film Battle of the Worlds , played the roles of grandparents.
All film critics and journalists who took part in the press screenings had to undertake beforehand not to publish any reviews before the official start date, which was a unique process in the industry. This is particularly noteworthy because a positive media response usually helps a successful film to attract more visitors and thus become a commercial success.
On a budget of $ 132 million, the film grossed $ 591.7 million. It was one of the most successful films of 2005.
Differences from the book
- In the book, the action takes place in Victorian England at the end of the 19th century . In the film, however, the action was set more than a hundred years later. In addition, the film is not set in England, but in the USA .
- In the book, the aliens land with their spaceships for the first time on earth shortly before their attack and then build their tripods. In the film, however, the tripods were hidden in the ground long before the arrival of the aliens and waited fully developed for their use.
- The book's author, HG Wells, didn't want the main character in the book to be a hero: he was just supposed to be an "observer" of the invasion.
- In the book, the invaders come from Mars , which many scientists and researchers at the time believed to be habitable. In the film, however, their planet of origin is not mentioned (although a scene at the beginning of the film, in which a small red planet is faded to a red traffic light, still suggests Mars). Steven Spielberg found it unrealistic that extraterrestrial invaders would come from an already explored planet on which no life had yet been found. This can also be described as a "necessary" change compared to the book.
- In the scene in which the ferry is about to cross the Hudson, a warship appears in the book, the “Thunderchild”, which manages to destroy several tripods. An underwater object appears in the film, but it turns out to be another tripod.
- The aliens were changed both in character and outwardly: In the book, the alien invaders are described as malignant, octopus-like beings with long tongues. In the film, however, they are much more human-like: they move on legs, have a human-like skull and have hands. Their characters are also very different in the book and in the film: In the book, the aliens show a great interest in people or animals, which they research in detail, whereas the aliens in the film show no interest at all towards animals and they do not seem to be concerned with humans either .
- In the book, the tripods can be badly damaged by cannon fire and sometimes even completely destroyed. In the film, however, even the most powerful, most modern weapons can do little to no damage to the tripods equipped with energy shields.
- In the book, the aliens end up in capsules that were shot down by cannons. In the film, however, they “travel” to their tripods in a flash.
German voice actors
- Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise): Patrick Winczewski
- Rachel Ferrier (Dakota Fanning): Laura Elßel
- Robbie Ferrier (Justin Chatwin): Konrad Bösherz
- Mary-Ann Ferrier (Miranda Otto): Alexandra Wilcke
- Harlan Ogilvy (Tim Robbins): Tobias Meister
- Voiceover: Frank Glaubrecht (OV: Morgan Freeman )
Awards (selection)
Dakota Fanning won the Saturn Award for Best Young Actor for her performance . There were nominations in six other categories.
The film was nominated for the 2006 Academy Awards in the categories of Best Visual Effects , Best Sound, and Best Sound Editing .
The German Film and Media Assessment FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating particularly valuable.
Reviews
The film received mostly positive reviews. The film review portal Rotten Tomatoes gives 75% positive reviews for the film and it has a Metascore of 73 out of 100 on Metacritic .
“There will be viewers who find at least the second half of War of the Worlds repetitive and dramaturgically weak, but Spielberg's staging of the end of the world is for the most part powerful and uncompromising, far more than a common Hollywood disaster film. In a shocking way he makes the dimension of the apocalypse tangible, exposes the fears of humanity and bundles them in adequate images. War of the Worlds is bloodcurdling and brutal like no mainstream film has been in a long time. "
“The images of flight, displacement, destruction and chaos are among the most terrifying things that have been seen recently; the reality of flight and displacement shines through, which in our world is not created by extraterrestrials. [...] But Spielberg is incapable of delving deeper into his own nightmare, his own diagnosis of his country. He can't help it, he has to stage what is saving, and he stages it as if he had been afraid of himself, which makes it absurdly authentic. In his kitschy salvation fantasy you can still feel the small child, Steven Spielberg in the suburbs, who heard the parents arguing. In War of the Worlds , Steven Spielberg not only summarizes his cinematic work again, but also his great dilemma. "
“There are moments and sequences in this film that are hauntingly beautiful, they are a crash course in the original - sometimes more delicate, sometimes more cruel - cinema experience that you shouldn't talk about. You close your eyes, so to speak, and when you open them again, the world has changed. "
“The film, which is very dark for a long time, shares the culturally pessimistic attitude of the novel, but like this one takes a positive turn. There is no longer any trace of the tolerance towards strangers that shaped Spielberg's earlier films. A disparate disaster spectacle in which impressive images and captivating moments alternate with clear lengths. "
More reviews
- Frank Arnold: War of the Worlds. Will we survive? Steven Spielberg's alien invasion epic . In: epd-film , 7/2005, pp. 32–33 - also at filmz.de - links
- Christiane Peitz: surviving is everything. Science fiction and family crisis: Steven Spielberg's ultimate panic attack "War of the Worlds" . In: Der Tagesspiegel , June 28, 2005.
literature
- HG Wells : War of the Worlds. Roman (OT: The War of the Worlds ). German by Gottlieb August Crüwell and Claudia Schmölders . Diogenes, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-257-23537-2 , 337 pp.
- John Gosling: Waging The war of the worlds: a history of the 1938 radio broadcast and resulting panic, including the original script . McFarland, Jefferson NC / London 2009, ISBN 978-0-7864-4105-1 .
Web links
- War of the Worlds in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- War of the Worlds atRotten Tomatoes(English)
- Press review on filmz.de
- Exceptional, doom and redemption scenarios in recent films: 'The Siege', 'War of the Worlds' and 'Children of Men'
Individual evidence
- ^ Certificate of Approval for War of the Worlds . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , September 2005 (PDF; test number: 102 732 DVD).
- ↑ Age rating for War of the Worlds . Youth Media Commission .
- ↑ Data on the 747 (English) - page at Airfleets.net (accessed on: March 16, 2014)
- ↑ Pictures of the Film-747 (English) - page at Airliners.net (accessed on: March 16, 2014)
- ↑ War of the Worlds at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
- ↑ War of the Worlds at Metacritic (English)
- ^ Editing of Filmspiegel: Flemming Schock, Wolfgang Rupprecht, Thomas Schlömer, Rudolf Inderst, Reinhard Prosch: Filmspiegel - Critique of "War of the Worlds" . Filmspiegel.de. Retrieved July 26, 2010.
- ↑ War of the Worlds. Panic, escape, disaster. In: Filmzentrale.com. June 29, 2005, archived from the original on July 15, 2010 ; accessed on July 8, 2018 .
- ↑ War of the Worlds . Filmzentrale.com. June 29, 2005. Archived from the original on July 15, 2010. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved July 26, 2010.
- ↑ War of the Worlds. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
