NCh: *sigh* You know, sometimes I feel like I don't give Independence Day its due. I mean....
(clips of Independence Day and War of the Worlds)
NCh (VO): It's dumb as all hell but I still love watching it.
Casse: Alright, you alien assholes!
NCh (VO): Certainly more than I love watching War of the Worlds, which is kind of a drag.
NCh: Hmmmm. Let me state, from the outset, that this part 2 part is mostly gonna be about War of the Worlds 05, with Independence Day as a reference point for where War of the Worlds failed. But to really get into it, first we gotta figure out some context for this story. Uh, let's see.... First the adaptation thing.... No, no, wait, first we gotta do the, um.... Spielberg's dad thing.
(Clip of Ray singing a lullaby)
NCh (VO): Daddy issues, they are strong with this one.
NCh: God, where to start.... Well, you know what, we'll just start with the most obvious in common point of complaint and go from there.
Title card: Number something: Tom Cruise.
(clips of Mission Impossible series, Top Gun, Independence Day and War of the Worlds)
NCh (VO): Tom Cruise. Look at that Tom Cruise, he sure is a....movie star with....hair and a....face. Still unlike Roland's trademark cast of thousands, War of the Worlds features a cast of four.
Ray: You remember the union regulations, Sal!
NCh (VO): So while Tom Cruise probably wasn't the best choice to play blue-collar Joisey guy....
NCh: You- You can still understand it. 2005 was the twilight of the era of the bankable star and even Spielberg probably couldn't have got the budget he wanted without a name like Tom Cruise in the lead. Independence Day, conversely, didn't have to worry about stars so much. It wasn't selling celebrity, it was selling premise.
(first destruction scene in ID4)
NCh (VO): And the premise was BOOOOOOOOM.
NCh: But now it's 2005, the premise of BOOM is no longer so appealing, so....
(clips of War of the Worlds)
NCh (VO): We need a giant star in the lead with a giant famous director and that is how we will sell it. That said, Cruise is a hard sell as "car fixin' union guy". Like, look at that delicate flower petal skin hand. You wanna tell me this guy has ever done a day of hard labor in his life? But as "deadbeat dad who is in way over his head" which is most of the movie...
Ray: Alright?! It's "Dad!"
Rachel: (over Ray): No fighting!
Ray: Or "Sir", or, if you want, "Mr Ferrier".
NCh (VO): I can buy that. Cruise always had this sort of "not quite an adult" affect to him and as the worthless manchild with no interest in his kids or anyone that isn't him...
(Ray flings an unwanted sandwich at the window)
NCh: Sold!
(Clips of War of the Worlds, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind)
NCh (VO): But this, really, you definitely could have done better. A young Richard Dreyfuss, perhaps.
NCh: But you also could have done a lot worse. And the truth is most people don't take an issue with Cruise's performance so much, per se, as the weird Tom Cruise periphery. This sort of thing....
(clips of that time Tom Cruise acted like an absolute maniac on Oprah)
Tom Cruise: I KNOW YOU ARE! YES!
NCh: But it doesn't really have anything to do with this movie, so.... You know, ehhhh.
(more footage of Cruise being really weird)
NCh (VO): But the periphery is super important in a movie like this. Not only is it a star driven vehicle....
NCh: But it is a remake of a very famous..... (studies War of the Worlds book cover for a moment) ....phrase.
Title card: 1. War of the Worlds has a really hard story to adapt (because there hardly is one to begin with).
(Clips of George Pal's The War of the Worlds)
NCh (VO): So everyone knows elements of War of the Worlds. The Martians, the war machines, the Heat Ray....
NCh: But the story isn't really iconic because there's not much of one. Well, I mean, there is but, you know, it's different each time
(Clips of multiple versions of Les Miserables)
NCh (VO): This isn't like Les Miserables where it's the same characters and basically the same story each time with some variations here and there.
NCh: War of the Worlds, the book, we don't even find out the narrator's name.
(Clip of War of the Worlds 53)
NCh (VO): It is a premise, and the characters are totally different in each iteration.
Dr Clayton Forrester: What do people do around here on a saturday?
Sylvia Van Buren: (chuckling) They don't do much of anything!
Pastor Dr Matthew Collins: There's a square dance at the social hall this evening!
NCh: Spielberg said that adaptations of The War of the Worlds tend to come about in times of cultural stress. For the purpose of argument, let's assume he's referring to the two most well-known adaptations, Orson Welles' radio adaptation from 1938 and the film adaptation from 1953. But before that, let's go back, WAY back to the original War of the Worlds by HG Wells. What did the Martians represent in the original book?
(artwork of Britannia while Rule Britannia! plays)
Subtitle: (Or "The War of the Worlds" is popularly read as an allegory for imperialism.)
NCh: Wells was super into, you know, the most up-to-date scientific theories and social science of that time, so given that Britain, which in 1897 was at the height of its empire, Wells basically took this imperialist idea in social Darwinism and flipped it on its head like "hey, if you think it's all well and good that we stomp on less technologically advanced people and wipe them into extinction and that's fine because, you know, survival of the fittest, how would you like that if it happened to you, Britain?"
(Clips of War of the Worlds '53 and '05)
NCh (VO): So, trying to tie that back into War of the Worlds '05, THAT ending.
Narrator: From the moment the invaders arrived, breathed our air, ate, and drank, they were doomed.