It is in many ways a better adaptation than most, although I find the American exceptionalism too nauseating to stomach - it ditches the point of the book which is essentially about humility and replaces it with
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Oh for sure! Thinking about it, the real problem with the original is the lack of human agency in the resolution. That's both narratively unfulfilling and also a bit of a cop out if it's fully intended as allegory. Colonised peoples should just... wait for the British to die?
aug 31, 2025, 11:13 am • 6 0 • view
In the original draft the aliens just took over the Colonial Office and nobody outside the UK noticed the difference 🫡
aug 31, 2025, 11:18 am • 3 0 • view
Now I think about it some more, it would work narratively if you balanced it against the main character’s actions in some way. So, it’s the Martians’ hubris that makes them vulnerable to tiny microbes where the main character realises their humility before nature can save them, or something
aug 31, 2025, 1:10 pm • 2 0 • view
These days you could make it an environmental theme. Protect the biome and it will protect us against the Martians (If I could be bothered I would make up a ‘he attac/he protec’ meme with a microbe)
aug 31, 2025, 1:13 pm • 3 0 • view
Idk I think it’s more about recognising that we are all bugs, not the masters of the universe ruling over bugs. But yeah, it’s problematic both moralistically and in terms of conventional narrative. On the latter, I don’t have a problem with it, though I am a story-structure sceptic/hater
aug 31, 2025, 11:17 am • 3 0 • view
I peg the triumphalist tinge to the fact outside of the ACW the US never experienced the horrors of transitioning from war to peace. If you read the Spielberg ending critically, this is not good: the infrastructure is shot, millions dead (among whom are the people who could fix it), food is scarce.
aug 31, 2025, 1:45 pm • 2 0 • view
Now *that* would have been an interesting thing to see on screen
aug 31, 2025, 3:00 pm • 1 0 • view
Humility and Summer VFX Action Blockbuster are kinda antithetical, to be fair.
aug 31, 2025, 11:08 am • 2 0 • view