The unworthy offspring - War of the Worlds: Goliath

We are getting back to the War of the Worlds franchise a bit. I have to make up for an old debt of mine. I try to focus  on relatively fresh alternate history/historical fiction material and reviews more and more on these pages, and the War of the Worlds: Goliath of 2012 borderline qualifies that criterion. This is an anime made by Americans, actually. Admittedly, I made only brief trips into the anime world yet. According to my limited cinematic experience, the message and the story of Japanese animes with a Japanese topic are a little hard to grasp onto. It doesn’t work for me either when they try to touch Western history. This happened to me when I was watching the Steamboy anime.

War of the Worlds. Yes, we have been here before. Tripods surrounded with clouds of poison gas, vaporizing death ray, bloodsucking aliens from Mars, red weed, and the glorious Earth bacteria, you name it. The War of the Worlds: Goliath is an interesting anime adaptation of the original H.G. Wells novel. A historical fiction work with steampunk elements, or more like a pseudo-sequel of the original. 

The plot takes place fifteen years later after the original Martian invasion of 1899 and tells a story about a second attack. The anime refers back to the first invasion with beautiful pictures in the intro. Not a single word is told, but none is needed, they are telltale and plastic, completely functional from a dramaturgical point of view. I’m afraid we have just touched the most valuable parts of the movie already.

Fifteen years ago, faceless invaders from the hell of deep space commited genocide against humanity. Now it's time for a rematch.

World War One has been just postponed

It’s not like the story writers didn’t have some good ideas. Placing an international elite military squad into the age of ultra-nationalism was a daring and promising attempt to get my attention. The respective national consciousnesses of the age were absolute and look incredibly competitive nowadays. I mean, grade school children were taught to verse warmonger poems about exterminating each other, not to mention the racial theories. The Martian invasion changed the Earth of this alternate universe forever, of course. Still, a multi-racial strike force against the aliens promised a lot of interesting interaction between the team members. 

The Goliaths of the human battleline. A lot of effort went into the promotion of the anime.

Somebody said explosions…?

There are some, but I wasn’t satisfied. The main reason for this that the storywriters had settled for a Michael Bay-ish visual orgy with pasteboard characters and action movie cliches. I consider Bay as the apostle of the cinematic equivalent of sleep-denying torture.  He doesn’t use the story to keep your attention but every tricks of visual compulsion. Release me- you are screaming internally. I broke halfway on Transformers 2 and wept.

It's not like the Martians didn't make some improvements.

The War of the Worlds: Goliath is not that bad, but it’s not far off either. Japanese stories are maybe a bit hard to digest, or I’m just lacking the required sensitivity and cultural background to grasp them. Maybe it’s just the different strokes, but the real trainwreck is when Western creators utilize a fashionable template (in this case, the anime-style) to produce a cliched animated action movie. I’m afraid that the War of the Worlds: Goliath is not really more than that. 

Again, much effort into the design and visuals of Goliath. No argument there.

Don’t get me wrong, our nine year old kids will be charmed. But for me, The Great Martian War 1913-1917 had more entertainment value, despite it’s nowhere close to the visuals of the Goliath with its cheap manipulated historical footage and fake interviews. Too much effort into the visuals, too less into the story, that’s why I consider War of the Worlds: Goliath as a failure. H.G. Wells deserves more.

Tripods on No Man’s Land – The Great Martian War 1913-1917

Are you familiar with The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells? If not, that is something you have missed. This novel from 1897 is one of the first modern science fiction works and the Holy Grail of the alien invasion genera. H.G Wells, the author, was the Michael Crichton of his day, a real visionary, who fused the invasion literature with the alien element and introduced the total war, a too familiar characteristic of the 20th century conflicts. In time, this forever classic had inspired many followers, and the War of the Worlds became a franchise of popular culture. New adaptations, homages, incarnations continue to appear in our days. In this post, we will take a look at one of the latest examples: The Great Martian War 1913-1917 documentary.

War and remembrance

The Great Martian War 1913-1917 is a 90 minutes long, made-for-television pseudo-documentary, a historical fiction which recalls the events of an alternate First World War like it did happen in our own reality hundred years earlier. To create this pseudo-reality, The Great Martian War uses manipulated and mashed-up historical footage, fake retrospections of surviving witnesses, and so on. 

A deadly and dreaded weapon once, now a museum piece

This time, the scriptwriters did not really more than they transposed the story from the Victorian era and adapted it in a World War One environment. The arrival of the aliens is a shocking event, and the European nations must set aside their growing differences to avoid complete extermination in this struggle. The trenches in North-West Europe are filled with millions of dreading men. These people desperately try to check the alien war machine with their rifles, horse drawn artillery and early biplanes. 

Going over the top

Numerous historical events like the Christmas of 1914, the Somme offensive, chemical warfare, America’s isolatism, the tank attack at Cambrai, the Spanish flu, etc., were reused in the plot. As a matter of fact, we can just replace the alien term with the Germans from World War One. The script doesn’t really help to understand how the conventional armies of humanity manage to hold the line against the seemingly unstoppable, faceless conquerors with heat-rays and energy shields for three years, and we won’t know anything about the fate of Austro-Hungary and Imperial Russia – another major military powers of that age.

What the writers did really catch a hold of is how the contemporary people percept the aliens, for example, how they struggle with the concept of artificial intelligence. Other big bonus point for this work are the visuals. The alien machines roaming on No Man’s Land on day and night are a creepy sight, and their attack drones doing disturbing things with the soldiers with their tentacle-like manipulators raise our innermost fears. 

At the beginning of the understanding

The plot contains several really good ideas, and some turn of events staggered even a seen-a-lot on screen guy like me. The endgame and the development of the conflict hold thought-provoking surprises, and instead of a catharsis, we will face another horizon of war and conflict, and we won’t even know who the real enemy is.

These were the positive points for the story. But I can’t get over the feeling that the war story part could have been a lot better if the scriptwriters had just worked on it a bit longer. The already mentioned West-centered storyline is another heartache of mine. The Great Martian War 1913-1917 is a faithful adaptation of The War of the Worlds, but it’s good for one view only, not more and not less.

Ersatz Firefly - Defiance

More then ten years passed since the unrivalled Firefly had started its march into the Valhalla of science-fiction classics. The cancellation of the show left a big hole in the life of the fans or the browncoats as they call themselves. The marriage of the post-Civil War America and the space was a stroke of genius. The stars became the new prairies. The message of the struggling nobodies doesn’t feel less relevant in our times: Deny the authority of the central power, get out of its reach, be on your own way, go always forward, make a home and keep your family together. If that means you have to live under the rules of the jungle where life is cheap, then so be it. This review is about the science-fiction TV-show and franchise Defiance.

You cannot take the Arch from me

After a decade of withdrawal, a new star is knocking the same doors. The spots are shifted this time (minor SPOILERS). Defiance is a real science-fiction show if I may use this oxymoron. Although it’s unusual for one; the plot is confined to Earth. There is no space travel, at least not anymore. First contact with aliens had been made, but the results were disastrous on every level, and cataclysmic events reshaped the face of our home planet in a very short time. What we have here is a junk-civilisation based on human and extraterrestrial technology alike, and the long healing process  has just started after this apocalypse. 

Valleys are symbols of fresh starts and asylums. The small town of Defiance.

The viewers are dropped into this fresh start; the independent town of Defiance, where humans and several sentient alien species try to overcome not only the hate and ignorance of the past but to avoid the grasps of the reemerging central power, which strives to control and plays the power play on the old corrupt ways. 

Another valley where a man's fate took a turn; the Battle of Serenity Valley.

Where do sins end and where does forgiveness start?

If Firefly was about being your own master and taking care of those who matters for you, then Defiance is about second chances. In my opinion, this show was made for a mature audience with honed sensitivity and learned openness. The main protagonists are past of their biological prime. They have plenty of regrets, dark secrets those are judged easily by people with a stricter moral code. Still, they live, they strife, they hope that something different than before awaits them.

Second chances are metaphors for Defiance in many ways. For example: the first look at it doesn’t tell the tale. After I had seen the pilot, I was sitting on it for two weeks, and I didn’t feel much incentive to go on with. For one thing, I didn’t like the reheated concept of the make-up aliens. But I gave the show a second chance, and now I’m hooked. As the episodes run you get to like Defiance. Like in real life, some people don’t look much at first. But the more you know about them the more intrigued and forgiving you are, the more you care. The characters defy fast understanding, another trait of Firefly. The most important thing is that the fictional world of the show feels living.

The new America in Defiance. The frontier is back.

Now, before the browncoats stone me

Defiance is not Firefly but the closest thing to it  I met on TV in the past ten years. Defiance is not the most original, but it’s cleverly put together, and you can feel the enthusiasm behind it. Even the make-up aliens are starting to be interesting. The episodes can stand as their own, and as they flow they show some pretty decent special effects. Maybe the makers counted on the aforementioned sci-fi nostalgia because you can hear familiar tunes from Firefly and the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica (no wonder, it's the same composer) time and again.

The male protagonist Nolan with his adopted alien daughter (left) and the major of Defiance; Amanda (right)

To sum it up, the first season of Defiance (twelve episodes with the pilot) is promising, and the show holds great potential. I didn’t feel like rewatching the episodes since Firefly and Rome. It has an impressive background story and timeline to present the show on these very pages. The alien races are colourful (literally) and plenty. One of them feels like a medieval Shakespearean society from the old continent, another reminds me of North American indians, a third looks like they just arrived from Star Trek: Deep Space 9, and so on. Grant Bowler plays his seen-a-lot character with boyish charm, Julie Benz is gorgeous and charismatic in dignity as ever. Defiance-fans, you are not alone! I totally ship Joshua Nolan and Amanda Rosewater (Nolanda?)! Let’s hope for the best and wait for the second season of Defiance starting in Juny.

Attila

The super brother always watches – Superman: Red Son

Today, we enter deeper into Nerdistan and explore a different kind of historical fiction. I don’t know if the dear reader is into comics or not. Regardless, I can show you a story with a historical, what more, with political-philosophical depth. The alternate history novels of the DC Comic Book Universe are the so called Elseworld novels, where crucial timeline events could turn out fairly differently, and we can meet otherwise well-established fictional characters in the mainstream continuity in a different light. In this case, what if the freshly orphan Kal-L’s tiny ship had arrived twelve hours later from the exploded Krypton and the later Superman would have found and grown up in the stalinist Soviet Union instead of Smallville, Kansas? Thank God for Mark Millar.

The answer for many prayers

Zor-L loved mankind so much that he gave his only son to redeem us from our sins and lead us into a new dawn… Well, yeah, despite years of comic books reading it didn’t strike me until I watched Man of Steel how much the origin creators had borrowed from christian mythology. The character of Superman has a lot of common with Jesus, Son of God. They were sent into this savage world by an enlightened force to give guidance and protection. Both lived simple lives to a point, both had an encounter with their nemesis before choosing paths to fulfill their destinies, and so on. But could twelve hours of difference corrupt the iconic character of truth and justice, the American way so much that we will percept the saviour as a crab of humanity’s own idealistic improvement?

 

Somewhere in an Ukrainian kolkhoz

The road to hell and those good intentions

Enemies in a prolonged struggle start to remind of each other in time, war and conflict do this to people. I read once that preferring one political philosophy over another depends on how we see our own race (or how old we are). A leftist down deep believes in the innocence of the noble wildman, who was dragged out from his happy and social being before the times of writing. He may look savage and chaotic in nature now, but if we establish the perfect political-economical system for him, he will have the chance to sing kumbaya instead of the selfish struggle of necessity for survival. So, people are good in heart. But a rightist doesn’t see this original sinlessness but the savage creature that cannot control himself. For this different reason he wants to maintain the order and set the rules through a class in charge. In a nutshell, you are free to do what you are allowed to because we above know it better.

We can do it without the alien! Luthor on his campaign.

Now, they don’t look much different on the second reading, do they? How can we classify living socialism or modern democracy? Is the former leftist because it establishes a new ruling class, which keeps telling what is the best for us? Or do representative democracies really belong to the right spectrum? Utopias or transitional orders have the nasty habit to re-establish obsolate ruling patterns because it’s all about control and better knowing than the mass in the end. Power can blind and corrupt even the saviour, and human made political-economical orders strived so much to prove themselves independent from the „celestial” influence can turn into an utopia like Yin and Yang turn into each other.

Superman, a force that can bring the light?

A childhood friend of mine once told me, Communism would be the perfect order for mankind, but everybody must be a saint for it. Well, what we have now here is an almighty alien, a demigod even, who can literally move mountains, change the weather, even keep you safe on roads day by day. His own self-sacrifice can make the system work. Resistance is futile because he can hear every word like no totalitarian state did before. And how does the other self-proclaimed beacon of light answer his challenge in providing for humanity? This is where Superman: Red Son fascinates me because it grabs the history of the 20th century by its very core. How do the opposing systems and ideologies look like in each other’s mirror? How despite all the antagonisms are they still connected? 

A new page is the metahuman arms-race in this Cold War

Why does it worth it?

Yes, a comic book can provide this thought-provoking, and it entertains the reader immensely. Superman: Red Son revives Cold War like a historical footage and breathes life into it. Things are upside-down here. Forget the stupid-looking pants worn on the outside, the hero cliches, everything and everyone are well-placed. What did I miss in Red Son is a little more from the classic pantheon of Superman villains, but hey, it’s only three volumes. The end is no less than shocking, or what does „L” really mean in Superman’s kryptonian name?

Attila

Jar Jar Binks comes to conquer Earth - Harry Turtledove’s World War Series

What if Orson Welles’s infamous War of the Worlds radio drama had become a reality, and alien species would have visited our planet with an imperialistic agenda? How could humanity stand up against a technologically much more advanced foe, and what changes did the opposing sides inflict on each other in an all out war? How would known and less known historical characters have acted in such an unprecedented situation? These are the major themes Harry Turtledove comes around in his World War saga.

 

 Alien invasion meets Vietnam war

In this alternate universe a completely unexpected event changes the course of known history. Global conflict escalates into interstellar when our alien conquerors, The Race arrived at the peak of World War Two, and they couldn’t have picked the wrongest day.

1. Plot quality

I think I don’t spoil the fun of the new readers much if I tell that factions of humanity at each other’s throat behave like hooligans when someone else tries to force a new authority upon them. Uneasy truces and staggering alliances come into being overnight, strange bedfellows try to stall the alien juggernaut all around the world with an eye on each other. Harry Turtledove tells his story through four quite long books, and the master did pretty good job at emplacing known and lesser know historical characters in this fictitious situation.

Maybe the biggest achievement of the author is that he emphasizes greatly what wartime and occupation means for the average Joe, when daily meals, electricity, fuel comes at premium. The sheer cumulative length of the books and Turtledove’s expressive descriptions can make the reader feel almost war-weary at the end.

2. Entertaining factor

The author takes his time. If someone is used to and expects a plot with stunning and abundant turn of events like in modern TV-series can be for a disappointment. These books do not want to stun us in every chapter and they require a longer attention-span. Overall, the plot is predictable in the long run, and my biggest problem with real life history interpretations is exactly this that their message is often the couldn’t have happened any other way. If we can set this aside,  HarryTurtledove can still entertain us for a long time, hilarious moments sparks through the flow of events occasionally.

The human and alien characters of World War Series are loveable or despisable, they feel human, and that is the point. The writer has the guts to kill some of them. It’s a war drama after all, if somebody dies it stays dead. No soap opera comebacks.

3. Homework

This is Turtledove excels. He really shows us this alternate history as a global conflict and chooses his characters accordingly. He does the picturing of  different cultures so well that I felt some of them more alien than The Race itself. Various people, depending on the weight of the oppressing boots on their necks do everything to survive, and accordingly to their own historical and cultural heritage they percept the alien invasion.

By the way, the aliens. Turtledove put a lot of effort in creating a different (with capital d) foe for humanity, with a dissimilar mindset and without our everyday urge for sex and domination. Yet, he provided them with enough human traits for us to sympathize with them sometimes.

I think it’s time for an explanation how a Star Wars character appeared in my title. The Race or the Lizards as humans call them strikes me visually as the slipping reptiloid from The Phantom Menace. Before somebody jumps to the conclusion that the invaders are more funny than menacing, I have to tell, they really give us a beating before it gets somehow better.

Another important thing that the World War Series are less of a science fiction when it comes to technology. Despite space travel, the Race war machine is not much different from today’s high-tech armies and military methods.

4. Endwords

I do not have regrets about reading through the four books, but sometimes I had to collect some strength for days to pick up the line again. Don’t worry in that case, we won’t forget anything important because Harry Turtledove is repetitive enough to keep us up to date about who is who and how he/she/ got there at the first place.


The four book saga does not end here, but will I go through the sequels (because there are) as well? Sooner or later, the Worldwar Series are reliable but not necessarily a stunning entertainment. The real question, is this good enough for you?


And who (else) can be that maniac human wall who trots out in his SS-uniform in the Kremlin? I just wish a cable channel picked the story up and made in into TV-series. Any road, the World War Series could be a proper present to a history buff for Christmas. It certainly helps to kill odd hours.

"Meet the author". This is the good man himself. Turtledove's alternate history works can fill a small library, so I'm pretty sure that we will meet him again on these pages.

Attila