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War of the Worlds

Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning in Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds
  • Posted at 12:02pm
  • 25 July 2008
  • by AndrewCollins-RT
  • 1 comment

I was genuinely saddened by the news in June that parts of the Universal Studios tour in LA had been destroyed by fire. The King Kong ride was lost, and part of Courthouse Square, where, among others, Back to the Future was filmed.

But it was harder to get worked up about the damage to a set from Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds, mainly because it was that of a crashed airliner – the fire effectively made wreckage of wreckage.

What a long trip it's been for The War of the Worlds. Written by HG Wells in 1898, it was one of the first science-fiction novels to depict an alien invasion (immortalising, in the process, Woking, Weybridge and Shepperton in Surrey).

In 1938, Orson Welles convinced a jumpy American public that an actual invasion was taking place when he gave a spirited performance of the book on radio, the first half in the form of newsflashes.

The first film version, released at the peak of Cold War paranoia in 1953, was produced by George Pal, who also made Wells's The Time Machine. Its special effects won an Oscar.

When I was at school, Jeff Wayne's fantastic rock concept album of The War of the Worlds had everybody talking. I was enraptured by the narration of a mordant Richard Burton (and the album also featured Thin Lizzy's Phil Lynott for extra "cool" points).

It spent 290 weeks in the UK chart, and subsequently became a videogame and a live tour.

As well as Spielberg's blockbuster, two lower-budget film adaptations also came out in 2005, although both went straight to DVD. One of them, starring C Thomas Howell and renamed Invasion in the UK, spawned a sequel, released earlier this year.

We have also seen a graphic novel and a novel update, New Millennium – so this particular war just never seems to end.

It's perhaps no surprise that a story over a hundred years old, which set the template for alien invasion fiction and preys on the fear of foreigners turning up uninvited, maintains its appeal. After all, Tom Cruise's battle with marauding invaders in the 2005 update of the tale must have struck a chord with post-9/11 American audiences.

I don't know about you, though, but I miss Richard Burton.

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  • Posted on 01 August 2008
  • at 4:19pm
  • by Mark O

Are you sure the fire damaged the 747 crash scene? The fire was up the North end of the lot by Courthouse Square, and the 747 crash site is down by the Psycho house. There is Universal's 747 interior standing set used in the Airport movies in one of the buildings on the edge of the fire affected area (next to the video vault).

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