ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Oh . . . my . . . God. Scot, do you know what this means?

We sent viruses to kill off the Martians, but some of them survived.

Then they created Covid-19 and sent it to US! The coronavirus should be called The Red Planet's Revenge!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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Bill Malone used this as his Facebook cover picture a a few years ago.

Nice, eh?



It immediately reminded me of this great painting.



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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[tmlindsey]

[tmlindsey]

I didn't know about this until about 10 years ago, but if you haven't watched the Pal-proposed TV series sequel to TWOTW, here it is in all its terribleness:

_____ The War Of The Worlds- Unfinished TV Pilot


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"Have you never wondered what it would be like to walk between the ticks and tocks of Time?"

[Bud Brewster]

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Right. Obviously George was perfectly happy to make the WOTW TV series a new Star Trek and take it right out of the solar system.

The promo attempts to generate excitement for the series, but I just don't care much for the concept.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[tmlindsey]

Yeah, the whole concept just begs the question, Why? Why call it War of the Worlds if it's going to be so completely different?

I hated the sequel series they did in the 80s, too.
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"Have you never wondered what it would be like to walk between the ticks and tocks of Time?"

[Bud Brewster]

[Maurice]

[Pow]

Harryhausen: The Lost Movies by John Walsh.
Unused Idea.

Ray was an avid reader of science fiction. "I was a great admirer of H. G. Wells. I wanted to make War of the Worlds, and I made a lot of drawings and an outline for the story structure. I also wrote to Orson Welles, but I never got an answer."

"I made [test footage] on 16mm film of the Martian emerging from a crashed rocket ship, as vividly described by Wells."

"The film would have been faithful to the original novel, with the Martian invaders bestriding the landscape in their gleaming chrome tripods. This would have ideally suited the stop-motion animation process."

Ray's design for the alien invaders was as close to Wells' description as possible. The creatures had large heads, bulbous eyes and gill-like jowls. This is a design Ray realized for both the Ymir in 20 Million Miles to Earth and the Kraken in Clash of the Titans. The six tentacles were topped off with small two-digit hands. Ray himself later described them as impractical and not scary enough.

Ray did move away from the Victorian setting of H.G. Wells' original novel, instead setting the action in present-day America, where the destruction of iconic landmarks would prove to be the centerpiece of the film.

"I really regret not making War of the Worlds, if only because I had worked so hard at producing a storyboard and key drawings. Even now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, I believe the story still has great power and so much to offer a modern audience. My friend George Pal made an excellent adaptation of the story in 1953, but it surprises me that no enterprising producer has taken the original story, in its original Victorian setting, and made a modern interpretation of the conflict between two worlds."

BBC Television did just that and, in 2018, produced an adaption faithful to Wells' original novel with a Victorian-era setting and screened it as a mini-series on UK television.

Sidebar: Pal's 1953 film is a marvelous classic to behold and has dated well over the decades.

I did view Ray's test footage on Youtube. His Martians are clearly a creepy & frightening lot. Stop-motion Martian War Machines would have been awesome to see.

Many people, including Ray himself, felt that the unique movement of his stop-motion work was best suited for the fantasy genre rather than the science fiction genre. He felt folks were more accepting of his distinctive animation with fantasy as opposed to reality.

I'd offer that a War of the Worlds film would have actually suited his animation technique. Here we are dealing with truly other worldly alien beings and their strange technology. This allows us to willingly suspend our belief at just how such beings would move, as well as their war machines. In fact, it becomes disappointing if it was too relatable to human beings.

Had Ray been able to get the proper backing for his version, I'd have preferred he would have set it in the appropriate Victorian era instead of modern day. It would have been too similar to Pal's version on that score.

Having the Martian War Machines crash into well know landmarks would have been similar to the rousing conclusion of his Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. I'd only suggest that this time he would designate different famous structures.

[Krel]

[Maurice]

[Pow]

I was fortunate enough to run across the Youtube documentary video about George Pal's plans for a War of the Worlds TV series a few years back.

I'm fascinated by the Magicam system that places actors onto miniature sets. This documentary explains the process nicely and shows examples of how it can work.

Harlan Ellison's 1973~1974 SF TV show The Starlost planned to employ Magicam for its depictions of the interior of the colossal Earth Ship Ark. However, there were issues with the technology at that time, so the series resorted to utilizing chroma key. In a video promoting the show, lead actor for the show Keir Dullea explains how Magicam was to be employed for the series as a revolutionary new visual effect and overseen by legendary visual effects designer Douglas Trumbull.

A fine example of how well the process could work was on the marvelous Carl Sagan science miniseries for PBS, Cosmos first aired in 1980. Youtube shows Carl walking through the Great Library of Alexandria as it might have looked at its peak. It is a beautifully done segment and the visual still holds up well today.

I am a fan of The Greatest American Hero. I watched all the episodes of the series on Youtube a few years ago, but I was not at all impressed with the Magicam effects for the series at all.

Nowadays I assume that Magicam is a relic of how visual effects were once done in the past and it is now replaced by CGI, and more recently, The Mandolarions huge breakthrough effect of the LED Wall.

[Maurice]

[orzel-w]

My hangup over chromakeyed TV productions was that the actors were always clothed in costumes of reds, oranges, and black to make sure they separated cleanly from the chromakey backdrop. Then in the George Pal test footage everything in the miniature sets is shades of orange as well! I suspect the Greatest American Hero actor was cast because of his blond hair.

The first Christopher Reeve Superman movie used bluescreen, but they managed to keep his costume separate, although in some shots it came out slightly greenish.
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...or not...

WayneO
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[Maurice]