SSC Film Studies

War of the Worlds

In the first war of the worlds the story has been seen as when each time our societies feels a sense of paranoia and fear of others. The original novel reflects a time when society was facing an uncertain future and the fear that they will one day be annihilated. In the novel we see that it reflects the fear that something will one day attack the most important power, which when the novel was released in 1889 was the British Empire.  Because of this H.G Wells use this in the writing of the book to show that even the greatest power can be over turn.

In the second adaptation of war of the world that is a radio drama in 1938 was played on the radio. Because everybody trusted the news they believed that this was real news broadcast and that they were under attack. Many people believed this because of the rise of the Nazi party in Germany they believed that the radio broadcast was the Nazi Party attacking. The reason why people acted this way toward the broadcast was because everybody knew that war was coming but they didn’t know when. There was also a rise in nuclear technology and if they used this new technology they new that it would result in the star of the destruction of the world. The radio broadcast still had the same themes that the novel such as paranoia and the fear of the world ending but the radio show had different reasons such as the rise of the Nazi party and fear of foreign Nations.

The third adaptation of war of the world was the 1953 film of War of the Worlds. In this adaptation we see that this film sparked the fear that this would be the start of world war III. In the 1950s we see the rise of nuclear technology, this made people have fear of being nuclear annihilated. The film also used aliens as to what were attacking the world alien is also another world, which is a official term to describe a immigrants in the US.

In the fourth adaptation of War of the Worlds was the 2005 film. In this adaptation was set in New York in a world were the events of 9/11 had taken place. It’s a world were everybody is fearful of terror attacks. This is conveyed through out the movie as we see the Aliens as a reference to   terror attacks. We also see in this adaptation of the movie we see how humanity can turn on each other when their lives are being threatened.