When I was a child, the film that scared me most was Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. (Augustus Gloop up the pipe! shiver) The 1953 version of War of the Worlds was a close second. That film adapted H.G. Wells' early science fiction novel, which has a fantastic opening paragraph:

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter ... Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.

Why was War of the Worlds so scary?

• The Martian death ray, electrical and menacing.
• The eye-in-the-house scene. When a Martian sent its roving eye-on-a-tentacle searching for survivors, I was filled with delicious terror.
• The Martians themselves. They reminded me of the heat lamp in my grandmother's bathroom. After I first saw this film (at the age of six?), I was frightened by that heat lamp and its three bulbous eye-like protrusions.

Steven Spielberg's adaptation of War of the Worlds opened yesterday. We took Kris' parents to see it. The reviews for this film have been weakly positive, but I think a lot of the complaints miss the mark; they're actually complaints with the source material, not with this film.

Recently, I've been reading the H.G. Wells novel. It's tedious in much the same way that 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is tedious. There are fun adventure story aspects present, but they're heavily encumbered by stereotypical prosaic Victorian language. (Which, oddly enough, I don't find in Dickens or Thackeray, but do find in early sci-fi novels. What gives?)

The book is good enough, especially toward its climax, but its weaknesses are the very things for which the critics are deriding the new film. I'm impressed at how faithful Spielberg's film adaptation is. Sure, he's grafted a "family-in-crisis" subplot onto the story, and he's transposed it to the 21st century (in the process removing the cool "Martians fall to Earth" element), but much of everything else is the same.

Tripods wantonly destroying everything in their path? The same. Tripods attacking a ferry? The same. (Though in the book, the attack is thwarted by an ironclad.) Baskets of people-snacks hanging from the tripod's shoulders? The same. Even aspects of the film that the critics don't like are present in the book. Cooped up in a house for a long time? (In the book, it lasts for fifteen days!) Strange organic web on every surface of the earth? It's in the book. The aliens' seeming lack of motive? They don't have one in the book, either.

Spielberg's version adheres to the original in most respects, with changes made only to set the film in the present rather than a century ago. The film's script is marvelous. The opening shot of Tom Cruise unloading containers? A marvelous bit of parallelism. Dakota Fanning — who is outstanding — shouting "Is it the terrorists?" is a great line. There's a fun homage to the book when the aliens find a bicycle in a basement and spin its wheel. (Bicycles were new around the time of the book, and they figure almost too prominently as an example of humankind's technological achievement.) I also love the homages Spielberg pays to the 1953 film: the axe and roving eye, for example.)

The film is dark, timely, and frightening. This is the best version of the story yet, even better than the famous 1938 radio broadcast (script, mp3).

The new War of the Worlds is not a great film, but it is a very, very good one. As an adaptation of the book, it is nearly perfect. Go see it!

(The one major element from the book that the film lacks is Wells' constant comparison of the invaders' treatment of Man and his world to the way in which Man treats the beasts of the earth. He was, at least in part, making a statement. There's none of this in the film.)

On this day at foldedspace.org

2004 — Pocket Bikes   This afternoon's hotly debated topic here at Custom Box Service is the rising popularity of those miniature motorcycles, Pocket Rockets (or Pocket Bikes). Actually, debate isn't the right word. We all hate them.

2003 — Doctor Zhivago   One day at work, shortly before he died, my father and I had an awful row. I came home and, uncharacteristically, began to drink. I drank straight vodka shots. I watched Doctor Zhivago.

2002 — Brilliant Weekend   I had a brilliant weekend, a perfect mix of work and fun.