Epix’s take on “War of the Worlds” is too slow.
I love science fiction movies and television when I can watch it. I love “The War of the Worlds”, that H.G. classic about alien invasion. I love every version of it. Until Epix did their take.
For science fiction, it moves slow. Too slow.
Their version of “War of the Worlds” moves so slow you can almost hear Carly Simon sing “Anticipation” in the background. Or see a picture-in-picture of a cone snail move in on its’ dinner. Or molasses ooze out the bottle. Granted, some science fiction moves slow, but it is usually by design and try to keep it as close to the source material as possible; in movies its’ usually by design. It doesn’t work that way in a medium that has x-amount of time which is the way it is. There are so many lessons that this watching-paint-dry show could take.
Let’s start with the 1989/1990 Canadian TV take on this story. In the first season, the aliens the world thought were dead were actually asleep sealed in oil drums and then they became awake and burst through the metal prisons. And they didn’t waste time in taking over bodies, killing humans, essentially picking up where they left off. It wasn’t until the second season dubbed “The Second Invasion” and started a few episodes with the timestamp “Almost Tomorrow”. This second group was more ruthless, killing off the original aliens, and doing heinous stuff for their spiritual being known as “The Eternal”. It was a good back-and-forth on both sides. The series finale “The Obelisk” showed the aliens came to Earth based on the lie of their general. With the truth revealed, the aliens decided to end the war and leave earth.
The fact is that this take moved fast, but not at the rate of “Blink and you’ll miss it.” Two of the instances happened in Season 1. The alien invasion moved to Sacramento, California going downhill on one of the widest streets not found in Sacramento at that time. Another featured show music composer Billy Thorpe being killed off by aliens while recording music. They used the show’s end theme to plant subliminal messages in the song. This version and every version before it and the Tom Cruise movie threw you in without doing any waiting. You got an idea of what life was like before they came, when they came, and the aftermath. The bold one was Orson Wells who put America in a panic with the iconic live broadcast.
The only other sci-fi series which moved slow was “The Event” but not for lack of story. NBC, in its infinite wisdom was doing what all networks did at the time: show a few weeks of the series, then give it a break for a few weeks and then resume where it left off. When networks did this practice, it killed their series. When “The Event” did resume, it was poorly thrown together like they had to rush to get to a resolution.
Another thing they need to do is that they need to make their subtitles bigger. Not everyone is looking through their laptops; some are looking through their cell phones and tablets. When the viewer has to read their subtitles are small and they flash up too fast. But it won’t matter to me because I won’t be watching this.
Unless you got too much time to kill.
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