I just watched the 1953 version of "War of the Worlds". I hadn't watched the movie in some time.

When it got to the end where it started with the "We prayed for a miracle" and "God in his infinite wisdom" I wanted to hurl.

God had the power to stop the aliens, but god waits until the human race is blown back to the Stone Age, the major cities of the world are destroyed, millions if not billions a are killed or injured?

Then everyone is gushing with thanks that God did not stop the invasion at the start, preventing all the suffering, but waited until the human race was on the verge of annihilation before stepping in?

Yeah, I guess one could say that at least god didn't let humans get totally annihilated and we should be grateful, but this time it just came across as bad faith promoting propaganda.

The sad thing is, having the religion angle didn't really add anything to the movie (other than faith promoting propaganda). You could remove all the religious stuff and it would still hold together as a good movie for the time. Just edit out the religious stuff and it is the same story, it just does not credit god. It's like god was added as an afterthought.

Leaving the religious part our would let people credit their own beliefs. The religious could credit the which ever god it is they believe in, the non religious could credit evolution...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/20/2015 11:21PM by MJ.

If you go watch "Angels in the Outfield" you'll be all better.

I feel so poned at this moment.

That kind of ending was already old in ancient Greece. When a play was poorly written, and there seemed to be no way to a good resolution, a god would be lowered onto the stage in a large bucket to save the hero. It was called Deus Ex Machina. The god from the machine. Unfortunately, Steven King ended his otherwise brilliant novel, "The Stand," with just that cheesy device. It should offend your sensibilities as it did the Greeks. And those guys knew drama.


P.S. I liked the Tom Cruise version a lot better. And I am no fan of Tom Cruise.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/20/2015 11:32PM by donbagley.

The thing is, they didn't need to throw in such a cheap gimmick.

The idea that the aliens were killed by lack of immunity to an earth virus worked great without trying to claim that God in his infinite wisdom placed the virus there. That was my point in saying that you could cut out the god part and it would still be a good movie, a better movie in my opinion.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/20/2015 11:36PM by MJ.

H.G. Wells wrote "The War Of The Worlds" as an allegory. The death of the Martian invaders was meant to echo the deaths of white Europeans who were killed by tropical diseases as they invaded the Tropics.

The 1953 version is better than the Steven Spielberg version with Tom Cruise. The destruction of the LA City Hall is one of the top ten scenes of classic science fiction cinematic history.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/20/2015 11:42PM by anybody.

Yes, the H.G. Wells story was about adaptive evolution. I think the remake got that.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/20/2015 11:43PM by donbagley.

Too bad H.G. Wells didn't show that the whites destroyed 90% of the Native Americans in the East, not by war but by the diseases they brought.

So he could of written the book as an Andromeda Strain version, where the Martians kill off most of the humans with their diseases of which we have no immunity.

I didn't read the book by H.G. Wells.
Was that part about god actually in the book ?


And as much as I cannot stand Tom Cruise, I thought his movie was better than the Gene Barry 1953 version.

I think the storm scene by the bridge kind of pushes the fear. I like that.

When I was going through the Uris & Wouk "Israel finally gets a new bicycle" books, I had to wade through a lot of detailed Holocaust imagery. Ghawd was totally absent and death was constant, capricious and abundant.

With these two authors, one had to slog through a lot bitterness, despair and defeat. The high points were often someone dying spectacularly for some slightly noble purpose, rather than just ... dying.

And then we'd get to where the story would start building to something good happening to/for the Good Guys! And then there'd be the climax, again with a good deal of death and misery, but, YAY!, Israel was born, (Exodus), they took Jerusalem (The Hope and the Glory), they won the six day war (I forget which one...), Brian found his son who'd survived a concentration camp (The Winds of War)...

It's my recollection of these stories that the Jews gave ghawd little, if any, credit. Hard to be 'grateful' to a ghawd who let 6 million of your tribe be assembly line murdered.

Yeah, I don't get heaping praises on ghawd for helping you find your car keys if you're not going to curse him when your battery dies.

Here's the perfect movie for you if you don't like happy endings:

"Invasion Of The Body Snatchers" Remake Ending
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUXHB5U-Vl4

It's basically the "War of the Worlds" template. The protagonist (Gibson) is the cliched "minister who lost his faith" told via cheeses flashbacks. The aliens are here to conquer (natch!), and it turns out that WATER -- yes, simple water -- is deadly to them.

Just think: this hostile species, intelligent enough to travel through space, chooses to conquer and colonize a planet that is 75% H-2-0!

And somehow Gibson's character regains his faith. I like faith-affirming movies, but give me something that calls for Jacob-like character conflict with God. This? Yech.

That's just because Shyamalan is a horrible writer.

Yup, M. Night is a one-trick pony with his "surprise" endings. He could have done the BoM.

I've noticed that the past few years, I've been uncomfortable when movies or books drag out a faith in God to explain things. Ya, it's human nature to always want an explanation for stuff - things need to make sense. But it's like, whenever we hit a snaffoo in our thinking, the only explanation we can think of is "Insert God Here". There. That'll fix it.