Posted on 07/22/2005 8:26:01 AM PDT by WillMalven
Writer says attacks in his film represent slaughter of Iraqis
A screenwriter for the blockbuster film "War of the Worlds" says the malevolent Martian attackers represent the American military randomly slaughtering Iraqi civilians.
Dave Koepp voiced his controversial explanation of the movie script to an obscure Canadian horror magazine titled Rue Morgue, "apparently thinking no one would notice," writes U.S. News columnist John Leo.
Meanwhile, the screenwriter gave the same jarring analysis to USA Weekend, noting that "the Martians in our movie represent American military forces invading the Iraqis, and the futility of the occupation of a faraway land is again the subtext."
Leo, for his part, said he thinks the Martians "symbolize normal Americans, while those being attacked are the numbskulls who run Hollywood."
The film, directed by Steven Spielberg, is an adaptation of H.G. Wells' 1898 novel.
The columnist noted that Hollywood has grown so "eye-poppingly angry with the rest of the country, mostly over Bush and Iraq" that even "mild-mannered nonpropagandists" like George Lucas of Star Wars fame "have come under pressure to display their lefty credentials with silly political touches."
His final Star Wars epic, "Revenge of the Sith," has at least two anti-Bush lines: "Only a Sith [a dark lord] thinks in absolutes" and "If you're not with me, you are my enemy."
Lucas insisted the "enemy" sentence had been written before Bush's similar words after 9-11.
"Maybe so," Leo says, "but Lucas had three years or so to figure out the political impact of the line but left it in anyway."
Last May, at the Cannes Film Festival in France, Lucas characterized his recent film, featuring the rise of the sinister empire, as a wake-up call to Americans about the erosion of freedoms under President Bush.
In Ridley Scott's recent release about the Crusades, "Kingdom of Heaven," a Crusader is shown beheading a hostage, "thus establishing moral equivalence with the monstrous terrorist tactics of today," Leo said.
Come to think of it, I do feel a bit of a cold coming on...
I was really disappointed in the ending of this remake.
Are there any good anti-American movies? Maybe "Platoon" was the last good one. I mean "War of the Worlds" was God awful, and "Kingdom of Heaven" was no winner either. If you're going to do it, at least make it watchable.
apparently WorldNUTDaily didn't....
I can't wait for the Farah column screaming about how he always thought Hollywood was on our side....
Spielberg should be grateful for the War on Terror. The War on Terror basically boils down to the moslems trying to force us to quit backing Israel. If the mullahs took over, how long does he think they would put up with Jews?
BlackHawk Down was really good.
Mark Steyn's review of WOTW:
WAR OF THE WORLDS
Hollywood is in the middle of its worst box-office slump in decades. Well, they hope it’s the middle, if not halfway through the seventh reel. And no one can quite figure out why this should be. The non-blockbusters are no better or worse than their equivalents of a few years’ back. What’s gone wrong?
Here’s one thought. The other day, before the new Bewitched (don’t ask), I sat through a trailer for Stealth. This is a high-tech action thriller about USAF pilots zapping about the skies in which the bad guy is the plane. That’s right: an unmanned computerised plane goes rogue and starts attacking things. The money shot is — stop me if this rings a vague bell — a big downtown skyscraper with a jet heading toward it. Only there are no terrorists aboard the jet. The jet itself is the terrorist.
This is the pitiful state Hollywood’s been reduced to. The Tom Clancy novel The Sum of All Fears was about Islamic terrorists, so naturally the film version made them neo-Nazis. The Nicole Kidman snoozer The Interpreter was about Islamic terrorists attacking New York, so naturally they were rewritten into terrorists from the little-known African republic of Matobo. But doubtless some studio exec panicked that, what with all this Live8 business, it might look a bit Afrophobic to have any more Matoban terrorists. Safer not to have any bad guys. Let’s make the plane the bad guy. In the Eighties and Nineties, upscale Brits like Jeremy Irons and Gary Oldman made a nice living playing the exotic foreign evildoer in Hollywood, but, unless Jeremy’s been practising going brm-brm and taxi-ing down the garden path with outstretched arms, I don’t think he’s going to be getting many roles as the psycho aeroplane. That’s my theory on why the box-office is down: in ‘interesting times’, Hollywood is making films about nothing.
That’s also why War of the Worlds is such a damp squib. Unlike H.G. Wells, who wrote his novel at the height of Mars fever when various observers were reporting ‘canals’ and strange lights on the Red Planet, Steven Spielberg seems to be using Mars as a refuge from anything topical or ‘relevant’. Wells realised the power of the story lay in its sudden devastating demolition of normality: hence, his decision to set it in the epitome of stable, placid, tamed English civilisation, the Home Counties. ‘What I Saw of the Destruction of Weybridge and Shepperton’ is one of the all-time great chapter titles — because of that juxtaposition of ‘destruction’ and ‘Weybridge’. Orson Welles certainly understood. His famous 1938 radio adaptation found an aural equivalent in its dramatic, supposedly ‘real’ opening, with its urgent announcer cutting in: ‘We interrupt this programme of dance music...’
I don’t know whether you can create that same sense of disruption in a visual medium, but nevertheless Spielberg and his journeyman screenwriters make two decisions that doom them from the start: first, they begin the movie in New York; and, secondly, they cast Tom Cruise. We’ve seen New York getting walloped by monsters a gazillion times, and the minute you stick Tom Cruise in the lead you’re telling everyone relax, it’s just a piece of Hollywood product. Spielberg works hard at making Cruise a regular working stiff, a bluecollar schlub, a hard-hat unloading cargo at the docks: the director brings on the bluecollar stiff’s ex-wife’s wealthy yuppified exquisitely tailored second husband mainly to underline just what a regular Joe the $25 million leading man is. But it doesn’t help. Without verisimilitude in the earthlings, you don’t buy the aliens.
Spielberg’s adaptation manages to be very literally faithful — he recreates H.G. Wells’s original giant tripods, for example — while missing completely the point of the story. You can’t see the overall forest but there are very many pleasant computer-generated trees — Cruise emerging from a suburban basement into a blasted wasteland, a driverless train roaring down the track with every carriage ablaze, a mob suddenly swarming his lone vehicle. But they’re generic moments unrooted to any real narrative.
Worst of all is the director’s angle on the material. Cruise plays a dad disconnected from his teen son and younger daughter — until, happily, the aliens start slaughtering millions of people and provide our absentee pop with the perfect growth experience. For much of the film, it seems the obliteration of mankind is just a swell excuse for parental bonding. As Cruise traipses up the Hudson River and swings east to Boston, bickering with his alienated son and whiney daughter, Spielberg seems to be reversing the priorities of Casablanca: this crazy world doesn’t amount to a hill of beans next to the problems of three little people. Cruise’s character doesn’t have a lot to do, except run while holding his daughter (and even then he gives off the vague air of a somewhat disengaged child-minder), and he only belatedly turns into any kind of an action hero after being holed up in a cellar for a couple of nights with loopy survivalist Tim Robbins, which admittedly would drive anyone bananas. Otherwise, Spielberg’s entire take on the story is suffused in a fey passivity.
Every effective War of the Worlds is of its time: the Orson Welles dance-music interruption anticipated very precisely how most Americans would hear of Pearl Harbor three years later. But this War of the Worlds has nothing to do with our world at all. Recently I had cause to immerse myself in the politics of Hollywood leftists of the Thirties and Forties: they were wrong about everything, but even so they were engaged with ideas in a way that seems beyond the numbingly homogeneous limousine liberals of today. Spielberg’s War of the Worlds is a lavish nullity: the industry’s slump is set to continue.
The Spectator, July 9th 2005
Why cant hollywood not not see that the american people are getting sick of their drivel... That is why we need to put our money where our mouths are..And stop going to the shiiiate... We need more Mel gibson typse in hollywood...Independant companies that will put out better movies..
Anyone who can actually get away with using the term "suffused in a fey passivity" is aces in my book.
Isn't that kind of an absolute statement?
LOL
That damn Internet! We ALWAYS find out.
Too bad. With the exception of some glaring plot holes, it was a pretty good movie. It's the first time I've seen an alien invasion movie that has only a very personal point of view.
It did also glorify soldiers in a way that is opposite the writer's intent.
[NOT MUCH OF A SPOILER, BUT READ AT YOUR OWN RISK]
At one point the soldiers were fighting an enemy they knew they were going to lose to, likely no chance of survival, yet the officer in charge was saying they have to hold until the refugees have a chance to escape. That's brave. And that's exactly the opposite of the Iraqi insurgents, who were killing refugees.
Go see Fantastic Four, which is not nearly as bad as reviewers said. As an added bonus, pay close attention to Ben Grimm/The Thing's speech pattern: it is remarkably like my very own!! ;-)
Platoon... good movie. Say, aren't most of the Hollywood movies written and shot months to even years before they release it? Was the war on when this thing was being filmed? If the war wasn't going on then, how can the aliens be equated to the military in Iraq. I mean, our men and women in the military weren't really in the forefront of the American people before the war, right?
Reminds me of the leftist professor trying to push relativism on his class by stating "You can never be absolutely certain of ANYTHING" to which a witty pupil raised his hand and asked "Are you sure of that?" Then the teacher's brain shorted out.
Supposed to have really happened somewhere.
If he had written the original story, he could make claims as to what or who the martians represent, if they represent anything.
Since he didn't write the story, only stole it for his own greedy profit, we'll have to consult H.G. Wells for what the martians represent.
Lavish nullity... what a great description of this piece of drivel.
You conservatives are always trying to stereotype people... ;-?
I have finally finished my screenplay. It involves a sci-fi screenwriter named "Douchebag" in need of an enema.
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