War of the Worlds

War of the Worlds

With the release of H.G Wells’ science fiction novel, War of the Worlds, the world was introduced to an incredibly allegorical, imaginative tale of invasion, paranoia and fear of the unknown. Due to these identifiable themes, the story has been retold (directly many times and indirectly countless times), in order to fit with societies paranoia and fears at the time.

In our post 9/11 society, the story has resurfaced in the form of a blockbuster Steven Spielberg film starring Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning. Spielberg altered the setting and era of the story in order for it to be relatable for a modern day audience. This decision was made because in real life 9/11 was the disaster that shook the world and changed everybody’s perception of safety; danger to the every day and how you should with others was affected as it was in the film. This is shown with the quote from The Chronicle, ‘scenes of urban destruction – chaos in the streets, collapse in communications – intentionally call to mind everyone’s worst terrorism nightmares’.

When the novel was written, it was set in Victorian London and not 2005 New York. However, all the themes identified in the 2005 film are prevalent as being the same as when the story first surfaced. Of course, there was the denoted alien invasion and panic as the world begins to collapse, but there was also the connoted fear of ‘immigrants’ and cultural destruction.

At the time of writing, the British Empire was under threat of collapse to due an influx of foreign nationals into the political and economical capital. On top of this, people living at the fin de siècle period of the 19^th century were living with a very real fear of the ‘End of the World’ as the new millennium approached.

These themes are clear in the text and due to their allegorical nature have remained up to date and just as clear in the present day.

Between the release of the novel and the Steven Spielberg film, the story has been retold in two main forms, once as a radio drama by Orson Welles in 1938 and again as a film in 1953.

With the radio show, Orson Welles played on the paranoia seeping the nation due to the rise of the Nazi party in Europe and the inevitable threat of war constantly looming over people due to the constant breaking news releases over the radio that families would hear and try to learn to live with as time went on. In this form the aliens represent fascism and the ideological challenges brought about all across the world, as the big powers were mainly capitalist.

The 1953 film played upon the fear of nuclear annihilation from the USSR and communist ideologies. This was achieved by the aliens coming from the ‘red planet’ and the use of flying saucers dropping bombs and delivering threat from above.

Finally, with the 2005 adaptation of the well-known story, the world collectively feared invasion due to the rising threat of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.

Spielberg stated that he shot the scenes in the street when the aliens are introduced from the perspective of the people looking up and surrounded by the dark, grey dust in order to evoke the feelings and the home videos that the New York citizens felt and created during the destruction of the twin towers. Moreover, Spielberg used the shot of the missing persons posters in order to reflect that of ground zero following 9/11.

Through the use of recreating the story with – at the time- modern issues being the connoted focus, the tale is clearly seen as allegorical and relevant to all around the world due to the universal themes it touches upon.