Independence Day 2005?
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Before Steven: Versions of The War of the Worlds
by William S. Kowinski
An earlier essay described the text and subtexts of H.G. Wells' '>novel, The War of the Worlds. After a few additional tidbits on the novel, a brief rundown of previous versions on film and on radio follows.
First, the novel...
"The War of the Worlds," first published in 1898, transformed two popular topics that had been building interest throughout the decade: Mars and invasions.
Observations of Mars with new telescopes led to sensational speculations, including the fabled canals that American astronomer Percival Lowell was sure would prove the existence of Martian civilization. In 1894, the astronomer M. Javelle of Nice reported "strange lights" on the Martian surface which might be signals. This prompted eminent inventors, including Marconi and Edison, to try to devise a way to signal back. Mars seized the popular imagination--- more than 50 novels concerning Mars and Martians were published during the 1890s.
At the same time, the ominous build-up of armies and the leaden threat of new forms of mechanized warfare inspired another series of popular novels, depicting one European nation invading another, beginning with Germany invading England in "'>The Battle of Dorking." Few of the Mars novels or the invasion novels have lasted, but Wells saw the potential of putting the ideas together, and creating something greater than the sum of its parts.
text continues after illustrations
by William S. Kowinski
An earlier essay described the text and subtexts of H.G. Wells' '>novel, The War of the Worlds. After a few additional tidbits on the novel, a brief rundown of previous versions on film and on radio follows.
First, the novel...
"The War of the Worlds," first published in 1898, transformed two popular topics that had been building interest throughout the decade: Mars and invasions.
Observations of Mars with new telescopes led to sensational speculations, including the fabled canals that American astronomer Percival Lowell was sure would prove the existence of Martian civilization. In 1894, the astronomer M. Javelle of Nice reported "strange lights" on the Martian surface which might be signals. This prompted eminent inventors, including Marconi and Edison, to try to devise a way to signal back. Mars seized the popular imagination--- more than 50 novels concerning Mars and Martians were published during the 1890s.
At the same time, the ominous build-up of armies and the leaden threat of new forms of mechanized warfare inspired another series of popular novels, depicting one European nation invading another, beginning with Germany invading England in "'>The Battle of Dorking." Few of the Mars novels or the invasion novels have lasted, but Wells saw the potential of putting the ideas together, and creating something greater than the sum of its parts.
text continues after illustrations
Martians Invade American Homes! The Radio Version 1938
The novel (serialized in magazines, printed in inexpensive books) was the most popular storytelling medium of the 1890s, as it had been for more than a century. Everyone from those in the upper classes, the educated middle class, to shop clerks in the increasingly literate lower middle class, read novels. Novelists like Charles Dickens were the 19th century equivalent of rock stars.
But by the 1930s, especially in America, radio was fast supplanting print as the most popular storytelling medium.
Radio stories were somewhat like stories in print, because the listener, like the reader, had to imagine the faces and the sights of the action. However, they heard the voices, and some of the sounds.
Radio stories had another special quality: millions of people heard them, all at the same time.
Radio was also becoming an important medium of news, especially breaking news. Elaborate conventions helped identify entertainment, often taken from the theatre (if not a live audience, then the sound of crowds applauding, for instance), and also borrowed from the movies (music in the background of the dialogue and action). Certain sounds and tones of voice identified the news.
The dramatic possibilities inherent in adopting the conventions of news reporting to tell a fictional story may have occurred to others before Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre on the Air, but nobody had done it quite so effectively as they did on '>Halloween night of 1938.
People tuned into their favorite program, which might be Mercury Theatre on the Air, or they turned the dial until they found something they liked (music, for instance, which was interspersed with the fake news in the first part of the Welles broadcast.)
Those who caught the first minute of the Mercury broadcast were told they were going to be listening to a dramatization. Those who listened carefully to Orson Welles intoning the introduction, replete with phrases from HG's novel, may also have noted that he referred to the story beginning on October 30, 1939 (not what it was, 1938), and also described this fictional reality: " Business was better. The war scare was over..."
Business wasn't particularly better in 1938; though FDR's New Deal had engendered hope and was establishing a social safety net, it was still the ninth year of the Great Depression. And "the war scare" was not over. Hitler had appointed himself War Minister, and marched German armies into Austria. Japan invaded and occupied areas of China. The appeasement policy of Chamberlain in England led to a government crisis. By the end of the year, the U.S. and Germany had cut off diplomatic relations.
And a year and a half earlier, the Germans in support of Franco in Spain bombed and devastated the Spanish city of Guernica, the first such bombing of civilian populations in Europe, quickly made famous worldwide by Pablo Picasso's mural painting, exhibited at the Paris World Exhibition.
The war scare was definitely not over.
The novel (serialized in magazines, printed in inexpensive books) was the most popular storytelling medium of the 1890s, as it had been for more than a century. Everyone from those in the upper classes, the educated middle class, to shop clerks in the increasingly literate lower middle class, read novels. Novelists like Charles Dickens were the 19th century equivalent of rock stars.
But by the 1930s, especially in America, radio was fast supplanting print as the most popular storytelling medium.
Radio stories were somewhat like stories in print, because the listener, like the reader, had to imagine the faces and the sights of the action. However, they heard the voices, and some of the sounds.
Radio stories had another special quality: millions of people heard them, all at the same time.
Radio was also becoming an important medium of news, especially breaking news. Elaborate conventions helped identify entertainment, often taken from the theatre (if not a live audience, then the sound of crowds applauding, for instance), and also borrowed from the movies (music in the background of the dialogue and action). Certain sounds and tones of voice identified the news.
The dramatic possibilities inherent in adopting the conventions of news reporting to tell a fictional story may have occurred to others before Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre on the Air, but nobody had done it quite so effectively as they did on '>Halloween night of 1938.
People tuned into their favorite program, which might be Mercury Theatre on the Air, or they turned the dial until they found something they liked (music, for instance, which was interspersed with the fake news in the first part of the Welles broadcast.)
Those who caught the first minute of the Mercury broadcast were told they were going to be listening to a dramatization. Those who listened carefully to Orson Welles intoning the introduction, replete with phrases from HG's novel, may also have noted that he referred to the story beginning on October 30, 1939 (not what it was, 1938), and also described this fictional reality: " Business was better. The war scare was over..."
Business wasn't particularly better in 1938; though FDR's New Deal had engendered hope and was establishing a social safety net, it was still the ninth year of the Great Depression. And "the war scare" was not over. Hitler had appointed himself War Minister, and marched German armies into Austria. Japan invaded and occupied areas of China. The appeasement policy of Chamberlain in England led to a government crisis. By the end of the year, the U.S. and Germany had cut off diplomatic relations.
And a year and a half earlier, the Germans in support of Franco in Spain bombed and devastated the Spanish city of Guernica, the first such bombing of civilian populations in Europe, quickly made famous worldwide by Pablo Picasso's mural painting, exhibited at the Paris World Exhibition.
The war scare was definitely not over.
However, Orson's introduction may have been more accurate when he said that "thirty-two million people were listening in on '>radios."
The '>radio play, written by Mercury member Howard Koch (who later went on to a screenwriting career that included Casablanca) moved the scene of the invasion to New Jersey. The first Martian capsule landed on a farm at Grover's Mills, a conveniently remote location, also conveniently located near Princeton (not yet home of Albert Einstein, but of other scientists including the fictional Professor Pierson, who also sounded a lot like Orson Welles.)
Koch later wrote a book about the whole affair ('>The Panic Broadcast), which includes the script (and some inaccuracies in the introduction---the play was announced on the air as a presentation of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, not Howard Koch's play.) He claims early on that HG's story supplied him with the basic invasion plot, and what the fighting machines looked like, and little else. That's not exactly accurate either. Koch borrowed a lot more, including characters, situations and entire chunks of dialogue.
But, following Orson's instructions, Koch wrote it as a series of news bulletins. And since network news reporters don't interview many ordinary people (except to make fun of them, as a reporter does of a farmer early in this play), the story is told through various authority figures: first the scientist, then police and military authorities. HG's "everyman" (who was more of a unassuming, suburban, well-educated essayist with a scientific bent) disappeared from the story.
Koch's book reproduces some news stories and columns commenting on the "panic" the broadcast caused when listeners believed, or acted as if they believed, that an invasion was underway---by Martians, Germans or the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Some columnists deplored the Orson Welles tactics of presentation, others thought it was good practice for a real war emergency.
But later historians dispute the actual numbers of panicked people involved, their estimates varying from hundreds to tens of thousands. That some people believed they were listening to news broadcasts of an actual ongoing invasion is indisputable. '>Steve Allen, the late comedian and writer, vividly remembered being a child in the care of a relative who really did panic, and tried to take him to safety.
It did become a case study in the insidious persuasiveness of mass electronic media. Even after it was exposed as a "hoax," tourists visited the supposed site of the Martian invasion in Grover's Mill. (Of course, fans of '>The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai know that the invasion was real after all, but not by Martians---by Lectoids from the Eighth Dimension.)
I can personally testify to the effectiveness of Welles’ fake newscast technique. I was in junior high when I first heard of the Orson Welles panic broadcast, and I immediately wrote a script describing a Martian invasion, also told in news bulletins, but using the names of prominent television anchors and reporters of the time, like Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. I got some friends to act it out for my father’s clunky reel-to-reel tape recorder, complete with homemade sound effects. I later played it for my junior high class, and after a smattering of laughter as they recognized voices---of course we sounded nothing like the reporters we were saying we were---they listened in something like stunned silence. I was amazed at the effect---despite everything, they were on the edge of their seats.
One person who had no doubt as to the effect of the Mercury broadcast is said to be FDR. Five years later, when some people refused to believe the reports of Pearl Harbor, he called Orson and blamed their skepticism on him and his phony invasion.
Another person who was initially upset was H.G. Wells himself. He was angry about his story apparently being misused as a Halloween prank simply to scare people in times that were scary enough.
But his anger at Orson Welles, like a lot of his enmities, didn't last long. On his last trip to America in 1940, HG Wells and Orson Welles met for the first time, and were interviewed together---on the radio. HG gave Orson the opportunity to plug the movie he was working on, called '>Citizen Kane. After that movie came out, Wells cabled Welles to express his admiration of that film.
The '>radio play, written by Mercury member Howard Koch (who later went on to a screenwriting career that included Casablanca) moved the scene of the invasion to New Jersey. The first Martian capsule landed on a farm at Grover's Mills, a conveniently remote location, also conveniently located near Princeton (not yet home of Albert Einstein, but of other scientists including the fictional Professor Pierson, who also sounded a lot like Orson Welles.)
Koch later wrote a book about the whole affair ('>The Panic Broadcast), which includes the script (and some inaccuracies in the introduction---the play was announced on the air as a presentation of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, not Howard Koch's play.) He claims early on that HG's story supplied him with the basic invasion plot, and what the fighting machines looked like, and little else. That's not exactly accurate either. Koch borrowed a lot more, including characters, situations and entire chunks of dialogue.
But, following Orson's instructions, Koch wrote it as a series of news bulletins. And since network news reporters don't interview many ordinary people (except to make fun of them, as a reporter does of a farmer early in this play), the story is told through various authority figures: first the scientist, then police and military authorities. HG's "everyman" (who was more of a unassuming, suburban, well-educated essayist with a scientific bent) disappeared from the story.
Koch's book reproduces some news stories and columns commenting on the "panic" the broadcast caused when listeners believed, or acted as if they believed, that an invasion was underway---by Martians, Germans or the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Some columnists deplored the Orson Welles tactics of presentation, others thought it was good practice for a real war emergency.
But later historians dispute the actual numbers of panicked people involved, their estimates varying from hundreds to tens of thousands. That some people believed they were listening to news broadcasts of an actual ongoing invasion is indisputable. '>Steve Allen, the late comedian and writer, vividly remembered being a child in the care of a relative who really did panic, and tried to take him to safety.
It did become a case study in the insidious persuasiveness of mass electronic media. Even after it was exposed as a "hoax," tourists visited the supposed site of the Martian invasion in Grover's Mill. (Of course, fans of '>The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai know that the invasion was real after all, but not by Martians---by Lectoids from the Eighth Dimension.)
I can personally testify to the effectiveness of Welles’ fake newscast technique. I was in junior high when I first heard of the Orson Welles panic broadcast, and I immediately wrote a script describing a Martian invasion, also told in news bulletins, but using the names of prominent television anchors and reporters of the time, like Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. I got some friends to act it out for my father’s clunky reel-to-reel tape recorder, complete with homemade sound effects. I later played it for my junior high class, and after a smattering of laughter as they recognized voices---of course we sounded nothing like the reporters we were saying we were---they listened in something like stunned silence. I was amazed at the effect---despite everything, they were on the edge of their seats.
One person who had no doubt as to the effect of the Mercury broadcast is said to be FDR. Five years later, when some people refused to believe the reports of Pearl Harbor, he called Orson and blamed their skepticism on him and his phony invasion.
Another person who was initially upset was H.G. Wells himself. He was angry about his story apparently being misused as a Halloween prank simply to scare people in times that were scary enough.
But his anger at Orson Welles, like a lot of his enmities, didn't last long. On his last trip to America in 1940, HG Wells and Orson Welles met for the first time, and were interviewed together---on the radio. HG gave Orson the opportunity to plug the movie he was working on, called '>Citizen Kane. After that movie came out, Wells cabled Welles to express his admiration of that film.
The Strange Story of "Star Begotten"
In a sense, this is also a version of The War of the Worlds, though relatively few people know about it, and it came about in an odd way.
By 1938, HG had finished his only two film projects, one of which was the futuristic "'>Things to Come." By then he must have realized that his early "scientific romances"---now called science fiction--- were enjoying a second wave of popularity, and might well be his most lasting works. He'd written a preface for a '>collection of seven of them, explaining his method, which was first published by Knopf in 1934.
Around this time he also met Olaf Stapledon, his most ardent admirer and the author of the stunning science fiction epic, '>Last and First Men. So it happened that for the first time in decades, HG wrote another science fiction novel, and it would be his last.
'>Star Begotten, published in 1937, is described by critic Frank McConnell as "The War of the Worlds rewritten from the vantage point of forty years later and with a startingly different conclusion."
It tells the story of a popular historian, author of books extolling the deeds of heroes, who suddenly realizes that earth is being invaded by aliens---not in spaceships or fighting machines, but by means of cosmic rays that subtly alter the characteristics of babies in the womb, so they are born different. He believes that his wife is one of those affected, as is his son.
The novel details his growing conviction---and that of others he confides in---that this invasion is taking place, and that it is the perfect way to invade a planet. Aliens don't have to conquer the planet, but simply become the inhabitants. Wells builds up the creepiness that subsequent generations would get from films like '>Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
But then the historian confronts his wife, who misunderstands him and believes he is claiming that he is one of the invaded people, the "star-begotten." And suddenly he realizes that he is. He realizes as well that it is a beneficent invasion, and the only way that humanity will go forward to its proper destiny. It is in a sense a natural mutation to a better being. So "Body Snatchers" suddenly becomes more like "'>Childhood's End" with more than a flavor of Olaf Stapledon. The new species they are becoming, as McConnell writes, "is not really a new species at all, but the human race, in process of becoming, exactly, human."
This book was Wells' last science fiction novel, and probably his least known. Yet it may have been his last word in and on the genre, in more ways than one.
In a sense, this is also a version of The War of the Worlds, though relatively few people know about it, and it came about in an odd way.
By 1938, HG had finished his only two film projects, one of which was the futuristic "'>Things to Come." By then he must have realized that his early "scientific romances"---now called science fiction--- were enjoying a second wave of popularity, and might well be his most lasting works. He'd written a preface for a '>collection of seven of them, explaining his method, which was first published by Knopf in 1934.
Around this time he also met Olaf Stapledon, his most ardent admirer and the author of the stunning science fiction epic, '>Last and First Men. So it happened that for the first time in decades, HG wrote another science fiction novel, and it would be his last.
'>Star Begotten, published in 1937, is described by critic Frank McConnell as "The War of the Worlds rewritten from the vantage point of forty years later and with a startingly different conclusion."
It tells the story of a popular historian, author of books extolling the deeds of heroes, who suddenly realizes that earth is being invaded by aliens---not in spaceships or fighting machines, but by means of cosmic rays that subtly alter the characteristics of babies in the womb, so they are born different. He believes that his wife is one of those affected, as is his son.
The novel details his growing conviction---and that of others he confides in---that this invasion is taking place, and that it is the perfect way to invade a planet. Aliens don't have to conquer the planet, but simply become the inhabitants. Wells builds up the creepiness that subsequent generations would get from films like '>Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
But then the historian confronts his wife, who misunderstands him and believes he is claiming that he is one of the invaded people, the "star-begotten." And suddenly he realizes that he is. He realizes as well that it is a beneficent invasion, and the only way that humanity will go forward to its proper destiny. It is in a sense a natural mutation to a better being. So "Body Snatchers" suddenly becomes more like "'>Childhood's End" with more than a flavor of Olaf Stapledon. The new species they are becoming, as McConnell writes, "is not really a new species at all, but the human race, in process of becoming, exactly, human."
This book was Wells' last science fiction novel, and probably his least known. Yet it may have been his last word in and on the genre, in more ways than one.
The 1953 Movie of The War of the Worlds
Until this year, there was only one film adaptation of "The War of the Worlds," in 1953. A version from England made recently, and released direct to DVD, retains the period and location of Wells' story. But I haven't yet seen it. This '>"H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds" is available on DVD, as are a couple of documentaries, '>this one and '>this one, on Wells, the novel and other versions, and I haven't seen them either.
'>The 1953 movie, produced by George Pal and directed by Byron Haskin, took a few additional aspects of the Wells' novel, but basically it updated and remade the Howard Koch/ Orson Welles radio version. It had HG's details of military tactics, but like the radio version it concentrated on scientists and authority figures. It even had a radio reporter narrating the first appearance of the Martians' machines, and at the last attempt to stop them by means of the atomic bomb.
Though the story follows a young scientist and his budding romance with a preacher's daughter as the Martians in their flying machines wreak havoc on the California countryside, the mood of this version is heavily influenced by the atomic age and the Cold War.
The Bomb is present in odd details: the scientist comfortably fitting in at a country square dance, much as the Manhattan Project scientists did at Los Alamos; the invasion heralded by a sudden, distant flash of light, as accompanied the Bomb test in New Mexico just eight years earlier. In fact, one of the cover stories the military used to keep the test secret was that a meteorite had crashed into the New Mexico desert, which is how the Martians arrive in all the War of the Worlds versions until Spielberg’s.
But mostly it is the Bomb's nature as the ultimate weapon, capable of wiping out human civilization---destroying everything and everyone, wherever and whoever they are. Ordinary people are as helpless against the impersonal Bomb as they would be against alien invaders.
Of course, the Russians were rapidly being cast in the part of alien invaders. The Godlessness of Communism was often emphasized, and that's a theme here: the man of the cloth, greeting the invader with a crucifix held high, is mercilessly vaporized. As the machines destroy the cities, those who haven't fled gather in churches, where they are still helpless, although the defeat of the Martians is linked with answered prayers, and the microbes that "God in his wisdom" created.
As someone of almost exactly Steven Spielberg's age, I can testify that on an emotional level, this movie accurately reflects the early Cold War mixture of fear, bewilderment and something like helpless resignation.
The movie's effect was heightened by the almost hallucinatory brilliance of the Technicolor. From a kid's perspective, the Martian machines were convincing and neat-looking, even if they did resemble reassembled parts of new cars, and the sound they made was especially chilling. That's a first impression that's lasted.
The film starts slowly by today's standards, with a strange sort of lecture about the relative merits of the planets in the solar system as places hospitable for life. All the planets are mentioned except Venus, and no reason is given for the omission, but it might have something to do with Wells' novel, in which he speculates that having been repulsed from earth, the Martians happily settled on their second choice, Venus. Apparently HG wasn't interested in sequels.
By locating this version in 1950s California, and showing rather than telling or describing, this movie was very effective at portraying with modern weapons the possibility of a civilization-ending war. Though American soldiers had seen European and Japanese cities reduced to rubble, Americans at home had not yet seen this simulated in their own country. Though it wasn’t elaborate,it had the same sobering and frightening effect as Wells' novel did in its time.
The climax of the film wasn't actually the Martian's defeat but the use of the atomic bomb against them---and its uselessness in stopping them. This was the ultimate admission of human frailty in this age. Everyone was afraid of the Bomb, but the Bomb might not be enough to head off destruction.
Some science fiction buffs don't much like this movie. They complain about seeing the wires holding up the Martian's machines. I'm afraid I still see it with the same eyes as I first did. This isn't true of all scifi movies I first saw as a child---even Pal's '>When Worlds Collide, which I loved, no longer convinces. (That awful painting at the end that had amazed me as the landscape of a new world!) But I'm still a sucker for this film. The scary parts are scary. The Girl is a bit hysterical for my tastes but I still want to protect her, and I still identify with the scientist played by Gene Barry.
The sudden appearance of the Martian still startles me, and I recall another moment that scared me in a cautionary way---it was the rioting crowd in the city, that overturns the scientists' truck and injures several of them, preventing them from finding the solution that would defeat the Martians. That was a cautionary moment for me: it said that ignorance and fear (specifically in the person of loudmouthed idiots) could defeat us as effectively than any unearthly enemy.
INDEPENDENCE DAY 1996
Lots of people steal liberally from one version or another of The War of the Worlds. George Lucas derived his Imperial Walkers from the Martian machines in the novel, and Steven Spielberg virtually stole the scene of the separated lovers fighting through the crowd to find each other in the church in the George Pal version for a similar scene in which Richard Dreyfus finds Melinda Dillon in '>Close Encounters.
But nobody has adapted or adopted or stolen as much as the makers of Independence Day (which, by the way, they freely admit---as they do about the other dozen scifi films they "paid homage" to). So when I heard that Steven Spielberg was planning a remake of The War of the Worlds I could only laugh---isn't that exactly what '>Independence Day did?
According to the DVD commentary, the filmmakers (Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin) were attempting to graft the 1970s disaster film conventions (many characters, all drawn inexorably to the same scene of disaster) onto the 1950s alien invasion movie. In the process they gleefully appropriate ideas and images from science fiction films of the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. They point out some references themselves on the commentary track: an opening shot reminiscent of Star Wars, a SETI scene out of "Contact," and a television playing "The Day The Earth Stood Still"-all in just the few couple of minutes. There are obvious visual and verbal references to "Close Encounters," "Star Wars," E.T.," "Planet of the Apes," and "Star Trek." Other more subtle motifs suggest "Superman" and the old Flash Gordon serials.
All of this supports the unique mood of this movie: somehow it gets away with not taking itself entirely seriously, and yet getting viewers involved in characters and the basic story. Even the casting adds to this with references, by featuring actors we identify with other science fiction movies and TV, where they'd played characters who displayed some humor: Will Smith would do a couple of "Men in Black" flicks, Bill Pullman had already done "'>Spaceballs;" Jeff Goldblum had played a similar off-kilter scientist in "Jurassic Park," a scary off-kilter scientist in "The Fly," and played a cowboy surgeon in the comedy science fiction adventure," Buckaroo Banzai." And of course the casting coup was Brent Spiner, Star Trek's '>Data, as a wide-eyed, wild-haired, too-much LDS--in-the-60s scientist.
Lots of people steal liberally from one version or another of The War of the Worlds. George Lucas derived his Imperial Walkers from the Martian machines in the novel, and Steven Spielberg virtually stole the scene of the separated lovers fighting through the crowd to find each other in the church in the George Pal version for a similar scene in which Richard Dreyfus finds Melinda Dillon in '>Close Encounters.
But nobody has adapted or adopted or stolen as much as the makers of Independence Day (which, by the way, they freely admit---as they do about the other dozen scifi films they "paid homage" to). So when I heard that Steven Spielberg was planning a remake of The War of the Worlds I could only laugh---isn't that exactly what '>Independence Day did?
According to the DVD commentary, the filmmakers (Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin) were attempting to graft the 1970s disaster film conventions (many characters, all drawn inexorably to the same scene of disaster) onto the 1950s alien invasion movie. In the process they gleefully appropriate ideas and images from science fiction films of the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. They point out some references themselves on the commentary track: an opening shot reminiscent of Star Wars, a SETI scene out of "Contact," and a television playing "The Day The Earth Stood Still"-all in just the few couple of minutes. There are obvious visual and verbal references to "Close Encounters," "Star Wars," E.T.," "Planet of the Apes," and "Star Trek." Other more subtle motifs suggest "Superman" and the old Flash Gordon serials.
All of this supports the unique mood of this movie: somehow it gets away with not taking itself entirely seriously, and yet getting viewers involved in characters and the basic story. Even the casting adds to this with references, by featuring actors we identify with other science fiction movies and TV, where they'd played characters who displayed some humor: Will Smith would do a couple of "Men in Black" flicks, Bill Pullman had already done "'>Spaceballs;" Jeff Goldblum had played a similar off-kilter scientist in "Jurassic Park," a scary off-kilter scientist in "The Fly," and played a cowboy surgeon in the comedy science fiction adventure," Buckaroo Banzai." And of course the casting coup was Brent Spiner, Star Trek's '>Data, as a wide-eyed, wild-haired, too-much LDS--in-the-60s scientist.
The invaders weren't from Mars this time---how could they be? After 360 degree photos from the Martian surface, invaders from Mars could only be a joke---as in Mars Attacks! It's even more ridiculous in 2005, when we have rovers sending back photos of meteors that landed on Mars.
But the basic story was the same: the alien invaders, resisting communication, wanting nothing but the death of humanity. It was as if several decades of Star Trek hadn't existed! Aliens were back to being mindless things, monsters that travel light years to rage and destroy.
And they were big. Really big. As big as multinational corporations, and with all their warm human feeling. But just as in Wells, they could be defeated by a virus. A computer virus this time, but still...
There's one scene that is so directly ripped off from the Pal movie that the art director had to leave a secret signal that he knew it was. Just as in the Pal movie, the last ditch effort is dropping nuclear bombs on the aliens. It doesn't work, which is revealed in a scene that's lifted from Pal, as the dust clears and a forward observer in a tank sees the alien machines rising out of the Bomb's destruction. If you look closely, you'll see in the background some twisted lampposts that look exactly like the bent necks of the Martian machines in Pal's War of the Worlds.
But while Wells' novel was consciously making a political point, and the Orson Welles and George Pal versions made theirs unconsciously, this one---the only one in which the president is a lead character-seems to have no particular point at all. Sure, the president in the fighter-pilot getup may remind us today of a certain 'you're with us or you're a dirty alien' guy, but that's life imitating art.
Independence Day seems instead a fairly daring attempt to orchestrate grand, obvious and at times absurd movie themes to create real human emotion. It's as if Shakespeare had grown up on Hollywood movies. There's movie romance, movie adventure, movie spectacle and movie comedy. And there's classic structure, almost mythic themes, heroes, villains and clowns. There is one couple ended by death, and two couples brought together in peril, with a perfectly Shakespearian double wedding, just before the President King goes out and make his Henry V speech.
When this movie overcomes the predictability of its character moves and the cringe-worthy aspects of the story, it's usually because of the good rhythm and the blessing of good and well-matched actors (some of the best lines were apparently improvised.) All the pairs that needed chemistry (including Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum, and Goldblum and Judd Hirsch as his father) had it.
It is worth pointing out as well that a point made in the Pal movie of "War of the Worlds" and made more concretely in this film is that when facing a common threat, humanity sees its common identity and works together. It's interesting in that regard that this is the first science fiction adventure movie I can think of with a black hero; moreover, that he is black is never mentioned. Of course, some boundaries remain: the two couples are racially unmixed.
I'm not sure what we are to make of the idea, though, that after defeating the alien invader, the fourth of July becomes humanity's Independence Day. Shouldn't it be interdependence day? Or do we always need aliens to define us? And do they always have to be hostile? Must they always represent pure evil so we don't have to face our own complex mix of good and bad within us? Just what are we independent of? We will determine our own destiny when we face up to what and who we really are.
But I guess we all know what America will be doing this Independence Day.
But the basic story was the same: the alien invaders, resisting communication, wanting nothing but the death of humanity. It was as if several decades of Star Trek hadn't existed! Aliens were back to being mindless things, monsters that travel light years to rage and destroy.
And they were big. Really big. As big as multinational corporations, and with all their warm human feeling. But just as in Wells, they could be defeated by a virus. A computer virus this time, but still...
There's one scene that is so directly ripped off from the Pal movie that the art director had to leave a secret signal that he knew it was. Just as in the Pal movie, the last ditch effort is dropping nuclear bombs on the aliens. It doesn't work, which is revealed in a scene that's lifted from Pal, as the dust clears and a forward observer in a tank sees the alien machines rising out of the Bomb's destruction. If you look closely, you'll see in the background some twisted lampposts that look exactly like the bent necks of the Martian machines in Pal's War of the Worlds.
But while Wells' novel was consciously making a political point, and the Orson Welles and George Pal versions made theirs unconsciously, this one---the only one in which the president is a lead character-seems to have no particular point at all. Sure, the president in the fighter-pilot getup may remind us today of a certain 'you're with us or you're a dirty alien' guy, but that's life imitating art.
Independence Day seems instead a fairly daring attempt to orchestrate grand, obvious and at times absurd movie themes to create real human emotion. It's as if Shakespeare had grown up on Hollywood movies. There's movie romance, movie adventure, movie spectacle and movie comedy. And there's classic structure, almost mythic themes, heroes, villains and clowns. There is one couple ended by death, and two couples brought together in peril, with a perfectly Shakespearian double wedding, just before the President King goes out and make his Henry V speech.
When this movie overcomes the predictability of its character moves and the cringe-worthy aspects of the story, it's usually because of the good rhythm and the blessing of good and well-matched actors (some of the best lines were apparently improvised.) All the pairs that needed chemistry (including Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum, and Goldblum and Judd Hirsch as his father) had it.
It is worth pointing out as well that a point made in the Pal movie of "War of the Worlds" and made more concretely in this film is that when facing a common threat, humanity sees its common identity and works together. It's interesting in that regard that this is the first science fiction adventure movie I can think of with a black hero; moreover, that he is black is never mentioned. Of course, some boundaries remain: the two couples are racially unmixed.
I'm not sure what we are to make of the idea, though, that after defeating the alien invader, the fourth of July becomes humanity's Independence Day. Shouldn't it be interdependence day? Or do we always need aliens to define us? And do they always have to be hostile? Must they always represent pure evil so we don't have to face our own complex mix of good and bad within us? Just what are we independent of? We will determine our own destiny when we face up to what and who we really are.
But I guess we all know what America will be doing this Independence Day.
Monday, June 27, 2005
Star Trek's roots are deep in H.G. Wells. As we enter War of the Worlds Week, the following post covers Wells' novels and the films made from them. Later in the week: earlier versions ("Before Steven") of The War of the Worlds, and a post on the Spielberg film.
My preview piece on War of the Worlds can be found here. Some resemblances between Wells and Gene Roddenberry here. And the essay on Cold War Cinema is here.
My preview piece on War of the Worlds can be found here. Some resemblances between Wells and Gene Roddenberry here. And the essay on Cold War Cinema is here.
H.G. Wells Goes to the Movies
by William S. Kowinski
When George Melies made what is regarded as the first real movie in 1902, a black and white silent short called "Trip to the Moon," he was in a way also making the first film version of a story by H.G. Wells. About the only element from Wells' novel, '>The First Men in the Moon, that he included were the Selenites, the moon creatures. Wells' hadn't written anything about Folies-Bergere acrobats or Theatre du Chatelet ballerinas, the stars of Melies movie.
But that became pretty much of a pattern for the translation of Wells' writings to the silver screen. Several of his stories, including "'>Empire of the Ants" (a kind of Joseph Conrad meets Mark Twain tale of evolved ants about to conquer humanity, which is likely to accumulate resonance for us as global climate change produces better conditions for insects and arachnids than humans in places where people have ruled) and "'>Food of the Gods" (an evocative Jonathan Swiftian novella of superfood creating a race of subsequently persecuted giants) had their titles stolen and tacked onto terrible movies that had no other resemblance to Wells' originals.
Even the better films made from his novels generally stripped his stories of everything but the more sensational elements--- that first level of story that probably makes them so enduring: the premise that captures the imagination, and the excitement and terror in the plot's unfolding that (like Swift's tales of Gulliver) appeals to children while it remains fascinating to adults.
Inevitably, filmmakers fill in these plots with their own concerns, and consciously or unconsciously match the story's emotions to the fears and aspirations, the hopes and dreads of their own time.
In some ways, that's the nature of film adaptation, as Wells himself learned when he adapted for film his long "future history" novel, '>The Shape of Things to Come." The resulting movie, now considered a classic of science fiction cinema, was the 1936 release of "'>Things to Come," produced by Alexander Korda and directed by William Cameron Menzies.
by William S. Kowinski
When George Melies made what is regarded as the first real movie in 1902, a black and white silent short called "Trip to the Moon," he was in a way also making the first film version of a story by H.G. Wells. About the only element from Wells' novel, '>The First Men in the Moon, that he included were the Selenites, the moon creatures. Wells' hadn't written anything about Folies-Bergere acrobats or Theatre du Chatelet ballerinas, the stars of Melies movie.
But that became pretty much of a pattern for the translation of Wells' writings to the silver screen. Several of his stories, including "'>Empire of the Ants" (a kind of Joseph Conrad meets Mark Twain tale of evolved ants about to conquer humanity, which is likely to accumulate resonance for us as global climate change produces better conditions for insects and arachnids than humans in places where people have ruled) and "'>Food of the Gods" (an evocative Jonathan Swiftian novella of superfood creating a race of subsequently persecuted giants) had their titles stolen and tacked onto terrible movies that had no other resemblance to Wells' originals.
Even the better films made from his novels generally stripped his stories of everything but the more sensational elements--- that first level of story that probably makes them so enduring: the premise that captures the imagination, and the excitement and terror in the plot's unfolding that (like Swift's tales of Gulliver) appeals to children while it remains fascinating to adults.
Inevitably, filmmakers fill in these plots with their own concerns, and consciously or unconsciously match the story's emotions to the fears and aspirations, the hopes and dreads of their own time.
In some ways, that's the nature of film adaptation, as Wells himself learned when he adapted for film his long "future history" novel, '>The Shape of Things to Come." The resulting movie, now considered a classic of science fiction cinema, was the 1936 release of "'>Things to Come," produced by Alexander Korda and directed by William Cameron Menzies.
Wells seemed to have appreciated differences in the film medium, perhaps with some help from his son, Frank, who was beginning a career in film. HG personally selected the composer for the film's music, and insisted (over the producer's objections) that the music be written first, so the film's final sequence was edited to the musical score. Wells wanted to make sure the film had the emotional power that the medium could deliver.
HG was often on the set of "'>Things to Come" and may have participated in further changes that were made during filming. At first the experience made him enthusiastic about the film medium, and he rashly announced he would write only movie scenarios from then on. But later he regretted how the film oversimplified elements of the novel, and even gave the wrong impression by making the artists into the villains of the future. He was so disillusioned that he participated in just one more film venture, and returned to writing books and articles.
"Things to Come" tried to tell an immense story spanning many decades. But it's three parts should be familiar to Star Trek fans: the first section depicts the final world war, the second section the post-apocalyptic horror, and the third, the "utopian" society that arises, and sends humans to explore the stars.
The first section remains mesmerizing. Made years before any European city had been bombed from the air, its depiction of the bombing of London is such a visually accurate prediction that to post World War II audiences, some of it might seem like newsreel footage of the London Blitz.
But this war in Wells' story, which begins in 1940 (almost exactly when World War II actually did reach England) lasts well into the 1950s. The second section depicts a kind of criminal war lord, called "Boss," who suggests characters we've seen in subsequent post-apocalyptic movies, such as the '>Mad Max trilogy and '>The Postman. But he is less a caricature than many, mostly because of the wonderful performance of Ralph Richardson, in his first movie.
The second section ends when a heroic pilot arrives to announce the revolution of scientists and "airmen" who have stopped the war, using a "peace gas" which makes people see the light and become cooperative. The third section is in the far future of the 22nd century, in which a descendant of this heroic pilot (played in both cases by Raymond Massey) presides over a new society that has brought prosperity and progress for all.
But there is trouble in paradise, as conservatives rally against the "rocket gun" that is about to send the first explorers into space. The décor of this section is striking, as a kind of art deco vision of the future it was influential on the look of later futuristic films. But the conflict between those who oppose the space shot and those who argue that it is essential to human progress is simplistic and unconvincing. This part of the film demonstrates the danger of losing meaningful ambiguities to the either/or tendency of depending so much on the visual in filmmaking, and oversimplifying the story to sharpen the conflict.
There is no time in this film for the elaborate and often subtle explanations of how society gets to this point in Wells' novel (with even more of this cut from his scenario during filming), or the more valid arguments of the artists. There is something of a Star Trek-like vision in statements like, "Our revolution didn't abolish danger or death, it simply made danger and death worthwhile!" But the oversimplified arguments in favor of a technocratic society, which often could support fascism as well as a democracy, always make me uncomfortable.
So even when Wells wrote the scenario and showed up on the set, his story didn't make it to the screen with complete integrity. So it shouldn't be too surprising that film versions of his novels made without his participation, many after his death, vary considerably from their sources.
Here's a brief rundown of Wells' major science fiction novels and some of the movies made from them.
HG was often on the set of "'>Things to Come" and may have participated in further changes that were made during filming. At first the experience made him enthusiastic about the film medium, and he rashly announced he would write only movie scenarios from then on. But later he regretted how the film oversimplified elements of the novel, and even gave the wrong impression by making the artists into the villains of the future. He was so disillusioned that he participated in just one more film venture, and returned to writing books and articles.
"Things to Come" tried to tell an immense story spanning many decades. But it's three parts should be familiar to Star Trek fans: the first section depicts the final world war, the second section the post-apocalyptic horror, and the third, the "utopian" society that arises, and sends humans to explore the stars.
The first section remains mesmerizing. Made years before any European city had been bombed from the air, its depiction of the bombing of London is such a visually accurate prediction that to post World War II audiences, some of it might seem like newsreel footage of the London Blitz.
But this war in Wells' story, which begins in 1940 (almost exactly when World War II actually did reach England) lasts well into the 1950s. The second section depicts a kind of criminal war lord, called "Boss," who suggests characters we've seen in subsequent post-apocalyptic movies, such as the '>Mad Max trilogy and '>The Postman. But he is less a caricature than many, mostly because of the wonderful performance of Ralph Richardson, in his first movie.
The second section ends when a heroic pilot arrives to announce the revolution of scientists and "airmen" who have stopped the war, using a "peace gas" which makes people see the light and become cooperative. The third section is in the far future of the 22nd century, in which a descendant of this heroic pilot (played in both cases by Raymond Massey) presides over a new society that has brought prosperity and progress for all.
But there is trouble in paradise, as conservatives rally against the "rocket gun" that is about to send the first explorers into space. The décor of this section is striking, as a kind of art deco vision of the future it was influential on the look of later futuristic films. But the conflict between those who oppose the space shot and those who argue that it is essential to human progress is simplistic and unconvincing. This part of the film demonstrates the danger of losing meaningful ambiguities to the either/or tendency of depending so much on the visual in filmmaking, and oversimplifying the story to sharpen the conflict.
There is no time in this film for the elaborate and often subtle explanations of how society gets to this point in Wells' novel (with even more of this cut from his scenario during filming), or the more valid arguments of the artists. There is something of a Star Trek-like vision in statements like, "Our revolution didn't abolish danger or death, it simply made danger and death worthwhile!" But the oversimplified arguments in favor of a technocratic society, which often could support fascism as well as a democracy, always make me uncomfortable.
So even when Wells wrote the scenario and showed up on the set, his story didn't make it to the screen with complete integrity. So it shouldn't be too surprising that film versions of his novels made without his participation, many after his death, vary considerably from their sources.
Here's a brief rundown of Wells' major science fiction novels and some of the movies made from them.
THE TIME MACHINE
The English novel arose in the 18th century as variations on other sorts of books that people were used to reading: collections of letters or sermons, and diaries or journals or narrative accounts of explorations. The first novelists used these forms and made up the content.
One effect was similar to Star Trek's use of the "Captain's Log": to put the adventure in the past, make it seem real, and provide the reader with the voice of the protagonist (or sometimes, a less major character) to narrate the action. So from the beginning, narrator and story were intertwined and mutually dependent. Experiencing the story as the narrator experiences it and drives it forward with his thoughts and observations, is one of the chief advantages of print that film is seldom able to duplicate. (So in Star Trek, the Captain's Log is useful mostly to recapitulate story elements, add exposition and sometimes to drive the story forward by voicing the Captain's questions about what happens next.)
H.G. Wells was one of the first novelists to tell a story from the point of view of a scientist, and '>The Time Machine is probably the first novel in which the scientist-narrator is the hero. But Wells also adapts the first-person narrative technique to structure his story by means of the scientific method.
The basic scientific method is simple: observation, forming a hypothesis or theory, testing the theory with experiment and further observation. It bears certain resemblances to the three-act structure of drama.
HG's scientist-hero in The Time Machine, known only as the time traveller, makes a series of hypotheses about the Eloi and the Morlocks and the situation he finds in the far future. Each is the result of information he narrates to that point, so we see the justification for his conclusion. But there are still unanswered questions. As he learns more (and as we do) he sees his theory is mistaken or incomplete, and he forms a new theory. This is the basic movement that organizes the events in the novel. It appears in later Wells' novels as well.
This novel also seems to be the first to be consciously based on a scientific theory: Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, proposed decades before but close enough to Wells' time that he learned it from a Darwin contemporary, Thomas H. Huxley. Only in the 19th century, thanks to geology and the study of fossils as well as evolution, could anyone conceive of the vast stretches of the past. But contemplating this, they could begin to imagine vast stretches of the future. If humanity had changed over time, how would it change over time in the future---especially when everything was changing so much faster in the present?
Wells uses other science of his time to drive his story (though some of it was soon disproved), but aside from the fictional territory opened up by the idea of evolution, this book began modern science fiction by sending the hero through time in a machine. Time travel had appeared in stories before, but accomplished by magic, divine intervention, or simply without explanation. New technologies were appearing every day in the late 1800s, and so Wells most exciting and attractive idea was to suggest that a machine could carry a person through time as well as space.
Wells' spent more time on the writing of this relatively short novel than any of his other fictions; even after initial publication, he revised it again for its 1899 American edition, which is the version we know now. So within the structure of this story is a deceptively simple narrative that uses the medium of words for many complex effects.
The first level of the story---the folk tale, or scary story level---is the Traveller's unraveling of the mystery of the Morlocks and Eloi, and the physical threat he must end, as he struggles to return to his own time. This of course is the easiest level to film and the most attractive to filmmakers, along with the fascination with depicting the mechanics of time travel itself.
But humanity divided into two lesser species is also a political allegory, though it is not so simple as usually summarized. Wells was clearly warning against the effects of the "two nations" Disraeli identified, the blithe rich and the suppressed workers. (Considering the "two Americas" vice-presidential candidate John Edwards talked about in the last campaign, we seem to be repeating this situation in a different way.)
The English novel arose in the 18th century as variations on other sorts of books that people were used to reading: collections of letters or sermons, and diaries or journals or narrative accounts of explorations. The first novelists used these forms and made up the content.
One effect was similar to Star Trek's use of the "Captain's Log": to put the adventure in the past, make it seem real, and provide the reader with the voice of the protagonist (or sometimes, a less major character) to narrate the action. So from the beginning, narrator and story were intertwined and mutually dependent. Experiencing the story as the narrator experiences it and drives it forward with his thoughts and observations, is one of the chief advantages of print that film is seldom able to duplicate. (So in Star Trek, the Captain's Log is useful mostly to recapitulate story elements, add exposition and sometimes to drive the story forward by voicing the Captain's questions about what happens next.)
H.G. Wells was one of the first novelists to tell a story from the point of view of a scientist, and '>The Time Machine is probably the first novel in which the scientist-narrator is the hero. But Wells also adapts the first-person narrative technique to structure his story by means of the scientific method.
The basic scientific method is simple: observation, forming a hypothesis or theory, testing the theory with experiment and further observation. It bears certain resemblances to the three-act structure of drama.
HG's scientist-hero in The Time Machine, known only as the time traveller, makes a series of hypotheses about the Eloi and the Morlocks and the situation he finds in the far future. Each is the result of information he narrates to that point, so we see the justification for his conclusion. But there are still unanswered questions. As he learns more (and as we do) he sees his theory is mistaken or incomplete, and he forms a new theory. This is the basic movement that organizes the events in the novel. It appears in later Wells' novels as well.
This novel also seems to be the first to be consciously based on a scientific theory: Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, proposed decades before but close enough to Wells' time that he learned it from a Darwin contemporary, Thomas H. Huxley. Only in the 19th century, thanks to geology and the study of fossils as well as evolution, could anyone conceive of the vast stretches of the past. But contemplating this, they could begin to imagine vast stretches of the future. If humanity had changed over time, how would it change over time in the future---especially when everything was changing so much faster in the present?
Wells uses other science of his time to drive his story (though some of it was soon disproved), but aside from the fictional territory opened up by the idea of evolution, this book began modern science fiction by sending the hero through time in a machine. Time travel had appeared in stories before, but accomplished by magic, divine intervention, or simply without explanation. New technologies were appearing every day in the late 1800s, and so Wells most exciting and attractive idea was to suggest that a machine could carry a person through time as well as space.
Wells' spent more time on the writing of this relatively short novel than any of his other fictions; even after initial publication, he revised it again for its 1899 American edition, which is the version we know now. So within the structure of this story is a deceptively simple narrative that uses the medium of words for many complex effects.
The first level of the story---the folk tale, or scary story level---is the Traveller's unraveling of the mystery of the Morlocks and Eloi, and the physical threat he must end, as he struggles to return to his own time. This of course is the easiest level to film and the most attractive to filmmakers, along with the fascination with depicting the mechanics of time travel itself.
But humanity divided into two lesser species is also a political allegory, though it is not so simple as usually summarized. Wells was clearly warning against the effects of the "two nations" Disraeli identified, the blithe rich and the suppressed workers. (Considering the "two Americas" vice-presidential candidate John Edwards talked about in the last campaign, we seem to be repeating this situation in a different way.)
But Wells was writing about more than effects of class warfare: he was warning of the consequences of division. Wells told an interviewer that The Time Machine was about "the responsibility of men to mankind. Unless humanity hangs together, unless all strive for the species as a whole, we shall end in disaster."
Though the Eloi and Morlocks may be acting out of instinct at the time the Traveller visits them, they are the descendants of conscious humans who must have chosen to separate, and in a sense collaborated to divide. The winners and losers of their common world divided into different environments which they each reinforced with their own creations, and then they each adapted to the environments they created and accepted.
Each species is separate, and both are incomplete. This is the key to Wells' portrayal of them, as simplified and unattractive opposites. Locked in the eternal dark and clanging of machine hell, the morbid, moronic Morlocks are the sketch of death. The Eloi, the cloying elite, are parodies of life and light. The Morlocks are pure evil, the Eloi pure innocence, but neither has the power of demons or angels, or gods of the future. They are satires of parts of humanity and segments of society. And in a sense those parts are interchangeable.
If the Morlocks are satired satans and the Eloi are travesties of angels, the two species define each other. Symbolically as well as symbiotically, without each other they don't exist. And this may be the most savage point Wells makes-the Eloi and Morlock devolved as separate species because humanity divided. On what basis they divided is a secondary point-it might be class, or race, religion or gender. It is all based finally on the dualism of the superior and inferior, of Us and Them.
In Wells' time, social Darwinists seized on evolution as an excuse for cruelty, assuming that in "survival of the fittest," the fittest were the most heartless and brutal. The future that Wells' portrays takes that theory to its ultimate conclusion, by making the Eloi the literal lunchmeat of the Morlocks.
But while Wells (and his mentor Huxley) agreed that natural selection was heartless (which is no longer considered by all evolutionists as true), they both believed that what distinguished human beings was what we call their humanity. Human feeling and ethics repudiate what Huxley called "the gladiatorial theory of existence."
Wells' illustrates this when the Traveller is attacked by Morlocks, and feels great pleasure in killing them. Wells even uses the word "succulent" to describe the sensation of the Morlocks' destruction. But then when the Traveller realizes the Morlocks are helpless, he says "I struck no more of them." And again, when he is mourning the death of Weena (the young Eloi woman who was his companion) and considers revenge ("a massacre of the helpless abominations") he "contains" himself.
Literary critic John Huntington cites these as key examples of how the Traveller's humanity is different from these species: he can exert self-control. "It is his ability-a distinctly human ability-to bridge distinctions, to recognize an area of identity within a difference, that sets him apart...The Time Traveller is able to assert an ethical view in the face of the evolutionary competition that rules the future."
The first of Wells' famous novels, this was the last to be filmed. '>The Time Machine first reached the screen in 1960, produced and directed by George Pal, starring Rod Taylor and Yvette Mimieux. The film story is true to the place and period of Wells' novel: late Victorian England. (The time traveler acquires a name---George---which is the G in HG, as well as Pal's first name.) The film won an Oscar for special effects, and the time travel sequence remains entertaining. The Morlocks are no longer very convincing, but fortunately they aren't around much. Rod Taylor has the looks and bearing to represent the civilized scientist with human values, but he's too American to give the role the very English nuances of Wells' protagonist.
There's also not much left of the social implications. There is the sense of humankind screwing up the future (including nuclear war in the time travel sequence) and Pal's focus on the wonder of time travel, and the disbelief of George's contemporaries, adds at least a little resonance to a kind of living comic book version of the story.
Perhaps ironically, Wells' suggestion of a future in which the workers live as well as work underground, separated from an effete elite who live above, was dramatized very effectively not in this or any version of The Time Machine but in Fritz Lang's masterpiece, "'>Metropolis," which fortunately has been restored and remastered so viewers of the DVD can see the movie that Lang actually made. But even in the older, incomplete versions, the horror of the workers, trudging on and off the elevators, is more effective in the exaggerated Expressionism of Lang's style, than anything in the more realistic treatment of The Time Machine.
Though the Eloi and Morlocks may be acting out of instinct at the time the Traveller visits them, they are the descendants of conscious humans who must have chosen to separate, and in a sense collaborated to divide. The winners and losers of their common world divided into different environments which they each reinforced with their own creations, and then they each adapted to the environments they created and accepted.
Each species is separate, and both are incomplete. This is the key to Wells' portrayal of them, as simplified and unattractive opposites. Locked in the eternal dark and clanging of machine hell, the morbid, moronic Morlocks are the sketch of death. The Eloi, the cloying elite, are parodies of life and light. The Morlocks are pure evil, the Eloi pure innocence, but neither has the power of demons or angels, or gods of the future. They are satires of parts of humanity and segments of society. And in a sense those parts are interchangeable.
If the Morlocks are satired satans and the Eloi are travesties of angels, the two species define each other. Symbolically as well as symbiotically, without each other they don't exist. And this may be the most savage point Wells makes-the Eloi and Morlock devolved as separate species because humanity divided. On what basis they divided is a secondary point-it might be class, or race, religion or gender. It is all based finally on the dualism of the superior and inferior, of Us and Them.
In Wells' time, social Darwinists seized on evolution as an excuse for cruelty, assuming that in "survival of the fittest," the fittest were the most heartless and brutal. The future that Wells' portrays takes that theory to its ultimate conclusion, by making the Eloi the literal lunchmeat of the Morlocks.
But while Wells (and his mentor Huxley) agreed that natural selection was heartless (which is no longer considered by all evolutionists as true), they both believed that what distinguished human beings was what we call their humanity. Human feeling and ethics repudiate what Huxley called "the gladiatorial theory of existence."
Wells' illustrates this when the Traveller is attacked by Morlocks, and feels great pleasure in killing them. Wells even uses the word "succulent" to describe the sensation of the Morlocks' destruction. But then when the Traveller realizes the Morlocks are helpless, he says "I struck no more of them." And again, when he is mourning the death of Weena (the young Eloi woman who was his companion) and considers revenge ("a massacre of the helpless abominations") he "contains" himself.
Literary critic John Huntington cites these as key examples of how the Traveller's humanity is different from these species: he can exert self-control. "It is his ability-a distinctly human ability-to bridge distinctions, to recognize an area of identity within a difference, that sets him apart...The Time Traveller is able to assert an ethical view in the face of the evolutionary competition that rules the future."
The first of Wells' famous novels, this was the last to be filmed. '>The Time Machine first reached the screen in 1960, produced and directed by George Pal, starring Rod Taylor and Yvette Mimieux. The film story is true to the place and period of Wells' novel: late Victorian England. (The time traveler acquires a name---George---which is the G in HG, as well as Pal's first name.) The film won an Oscar for special effects, and the time travel sequence remains entertaining. The Morlocks are no longer very convincing, but fortunately they aren't around much. Rod Taylor has the looks and bearing to represent the civilized scientist with human values, but he's too American to give the role the very English nuances of Wells' protagonist.
There's also not much left of the social implications. There is the sense of humankind screwing up the future (including nuclear war in the time travel sequence) and Pal's focus on the wonder of time travel, and the disbelief of George's contemporaries, adds at least a little resonance to a kind of living comic book version of the story.
Perhaps ironically, Wells' suggestion of a future in which the workers live as well as work underground, separated from an effete elite who live above, was dramatized very effectively not in this or any version of The Time Machine but in Fritz Lang's masterpiece, "'>Metropolis," which fortunately has been restored and remastered so viewers of the DVD can see the movie that Lang actually made. But even in the older, incomplete versions, the horror of the workers, trudging on and off the elevators, is more effective in the exaggerated Expressionism of Lang's style, than anything in the more realistic treatment of The Time Machine.
A new version of '>The Time Machine was released in 2002, directed by Simon Wells (great grandson of HG) with John Logan (who wrote Star Trek: Nemesis) given writing credit for a rewrite. (Perhaps he was responsible for the Star Trek references, like the hologram giving the Vulcan salute.)
This version has even less resemblance to the novel, though it makes several references to the George Pal film. But it is a well-constructed and taut hour and a half, with a little subtle social criticism (in a future we would consider primitive, our age is "the age of the stones," or the Stone Age.) The special effects and make-up (which won an Oscar) are excellent, and the acting is good. In his small part, an almost unrecognizable Jeremy Irons is excellent, and frightening.
This character doesn't appear in either the Wells book or the previous movie, though it does bear some resemblance to the Grand Lunar, the ruler of the Selenites in Wells' First Men in the Moon (see below.) The Morlock hierarchy of specializations the Irons character describes also seems like the Selenite society.
In this version, the Eloi are not helpless and mindless, but a tribal society of cliff-dwellers, with a functioning civilization. (Their appearance is accompanied by gorgeous music with an African theme.) The idea of the future being a return to a more primal society with a relationship to nature more akin to indigenous peoples is a powerful concept, but unfortunately little is made of it here.
Nor is there really much of a suggestion that these Morlocks were once of the same human species. They're mostly just the requisite CG badguys. There is a theme of genetics: a bad joke from the teacher in the near future who threatens to re-sequence the DNA of an unruly student; the helix-like memorials of the Eloi, and the genetic manipulation of the Morlocks into castes. But this seems more like John Logan thinking about Nemesis than illuminating commentary.
This version does deal in time paradoxes, as the Irons character tells the time traveler (an American in New York, though the time period is a decade or so after the Wells' novel) why he can't go back in time to prevent the death of his beloved: because he built the time machine so he could do that, and if she hadn't been killed he couldn't have gone back to try to stop it. Curiously, this jibes with a very recent theory by a team of physicists who interpret quantum mechanics to allow for time travel but not for the alteration of significant events in the past that the traveler is sure happened.
On the other hand, the brainy Morlock Irons plays tell Hartegen (the time traveler) that the Morlocks were the "inescapable result" of his time traveling. After several viewings, I still can't figure out what he meant.
While the movie is impressive and fun on its own terms, in the end I'm not sure what it adds, besides the less than original idea that the human heart is more important than machines (is that the heart plus genetics to make Hartegen?).
This version has even less resemblance to the novel, though it makes several references to the George Pal film. But it is a well-constructed and taut hour and a half, with a little subtle social criticism (in a future we would consider primitive, our age is "the age of the stones," or the Stone Age.) The special effects and make-up (which won an Oscar) are excellent, and the acting is good. In his small part, an almost unrecognizable Jeremy Irons is excellent, and frightening.
This character doesn't appear in either the Wells book or the previous movie, though it does bear some resemblance to the Grand Lunar, the ruler of the Selenites in Wells' First Men in the Moon (see below.) The Morlock hierarchy of specializations the Irons character describes also seems like the Selenite society.
In this version, the Eloi are not helpless and mindless, but a tribal society of cliff-dwellers, with a functioning civilization. (Their appearance is accompanied by gorgeous music with an African theme.) The idea of the future being a return to a more primal society with a relationship to nature more akin to indigenous peoples is a powerful concept, but unfortunately little is made of it here.
Nor is there really much of a suggestion that these Morlocks were once of the same human species. They're mostly just the requisite CG badguys. There is a theme of genetics: a bad joke from the teacher in the near future who threatens to re-sequence the DNA of an unruly student; the helix-like memorials of the Eloi, and the genetic manipulation of the Morlocks into castes. But this seems more like John Logan thinking about Nemesis than illuminating commentary.
This version does deal in time paradoxes, as the Irons character tells the time traveler (an American in New York, though the time period is a decade or so after the Wells' novel) why he can't go back in time to prevent the death of his beloved: because he built the time machine so he could do that, and if she hadn't been killed he couldn't have gone back to try to stop it. Curiously, this jibes with a very recent theory by a team of physicists who interpret quantum mechanics to allow for time travel but not for the alteration of significant events in the past that the traveler is sure happened.
On the other hand, the brainy Morlock Irons plays tell Hartegen (the time traveler) that the Morlocks were the "inescapable result" of his time traveling. After several viewings, I still can't figure out what he meant.
While the movie is impressive and fun on its own terms, in the end I'm not sure what it adds, besides the less than original idea that the human heart is more important than machines (is that the heart plus genetics to make Hartegen?).
THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU
After the success of The Time Machine, Wells hurried to make a name for himself while he was still in the public eye. He wrote and published frantically, producing at least a book a year, and usually two or three.
Ideas came to him, he said, as in a dream: he would think of a subject, and images would float before his eyes. "I would discover I was peering into remote and mysterious worlds ruled by an order logical indeed but other than our common sanity."
So his next novel, "'>The Island of Doctor Moreau" was inspired by a single image---a man drifting in a boat, lost in the Pacific Ocean---and energized by Wells' admiration for the work of his friend, Joseph Conrad. It was also full of images suggesting his childhood nightmares prompted by the brilliantly illustrated pictures of jungle animals in books his father brought him when he was ill, and the screams of animals he never saw, the cattle, sheep and pigs penned up at the butcher's shop next door, awaiting their slaughter.
He plunged into horror on The Island of Dr. Moreau, releasing the demons in science that we have witnessed everywhere from routine massive needless testing of pain-inflicting chemicals on animals, and experiments on humans without their knowledge carried out in several countries, to mutations from nuclear radiation and the control of genes by faceless, relentless corporations.
There are advance echoes in Dr. Moreau of the insane pain the world experienced in the twentieth century's bombing wars, its many regimes of torture and terror, and murderous solutions. "I must confess I lost faith in the sanity of the world," says Well's witness to Moreau's experiments, "when I saw it suffering the painful disorder of this island."
After his experiences with the Beast People that resulted from Moreau's insane science on his isolated island ("perhaps the first really totalitarian regime imagined by Western man," Frank McConnell writes) he found that walking London streets he could not quite "persuade myself that the men and women I met were not also another, still passably human, Beast People, animals half-wrought into the outward image of human souls, and that they would presently begin to revert to show first this bestial mark and then that."
There is an evolutionary aspect to human meddling which Wells also anticipated. Wells' Dr. Moreau was the mything link between Frankenstein and biotechnology. The gene as we think we understand it today was yet in the future, but the idea of mutation was Darwinian. Dr. Moreau's grisly experiments to make animals more human was another way to monkey around with evolution, and for Wells to ask more questions about humanity. Biotechnology has a different agenda, but could have the same unintended effects as nuclear radiation: polluting the gene pool in unforeseen ways. In Wells' tale, the animal proved stronger.
The Island of Doctor Moreau was first filmed as "'>Island of Lost Souls" in 1933 with Charles Laughton and Bella Lugosi, with script by Philip Wylie, author of Generation of Vipers and When Worlds Collide. This is generally considered the best version and the one closest to Wells' novel.
It was remade under Wells' title in 1977 (again, it is the previous film rather than the novel that is adapted in the second version) with Burt Lancaster, Barbara Carrera and Richard Basehart, and again in '>1996 with Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer. In each succeeding version, the creatures makeup and effects got better and the films got worse.
After the success of The Time Machine, Wells hurried to make a name for himself while he was still in the public eye. He wrote and published frantically, producing at least a book a year, and usually two or three.
Ideas came to him, he said, as in a dream: he would think of a subject, and images would float before his eyes. "I would discover I was peering into remote and mysterious worlds ruled by an order logical indeed but other than our common sanity."
So his next novel, "'>The Island of Doctor Moreau" was inspired by a single image---a man drifting in a boat, lost in the Pacific Ocean---and energized by Wells' admiration for the work of his friend, Joseph Conrad. It was also full of images suggesting his childhood nightmares prompted by the brilliantly illustrated pictures of jungle animals in books his father brought him when he was ill, and the screams of animals he never saw, the cattle, sheep and pigs penned up at the butcher's shop next door, awaiting their slaughter.
He plunged into horror on The Island of Dr. Moreau, releasing the demons in science that we have witnessed everywhere from routine massive needless testing of pain-inflicting chemicals on animals, and experiments on humans without their knowledge carried out in several countries, to mutations from nuclear radiation and the control of genes by faceless, relentless corporations.
There are advance echoes in Dr. Moreau of the insane pain the world experienced in the twentieth century's bombing wars, its many regimes of torture and terror, and murderous solutions. "I must confess I lost faith in the sanity of the world," says Well's witness to Moreau's experiments, "when I saw it suffering the painful disorder of this island."
After his experiences with the Beast People that resulted from Moreau's insane science on his isolated island ("perhaps the first really totalitarian regime imagined by Western man," Frank McConnell writes) he found that walking London streets he could not quite "persuade myself that the men and women I met were not also another, still passably human, Beast People, animals half-wrought into the outward image of human souls, and that they would presently begin to revert to show first this bestial mark and then that."
There is an evolutionary aspect to human meddling which Wells also anticipated. Wells' Dr. Moreau was the mything link between Frankenstein and biotechnology. The gene as we think we understand it today was yet in the future, but the idea of mutation was Darwinian. Dr. Moreau's grisly experiments to make animals more human was another way to monkey around with evolution, and for Wells to ask more questions about humanity. Biotechnology has a different agenda, but could have the same unintended effects as nuclear radiation: polluting the gene pool in unforeseen ways. In Wells' tale, the animal proved stronger.
The Island of Doctor Moreau was first filmed as "'>Island of Lost Souls" in 1933 with Charles Laughton and Bella Lugosi, with script by Philip Wylie, author of Generation of Vipers and When Worlds Collide. This is generally considered the best version and the one closest to Wells' novel.
It was remade under Wells' title in 1977 (again, it is the previous film rather than the novel that is adapted in the second version) with Burt Lancaster, Barbara Carrera and Richard Basehart, and again in '>1996 with Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer. In each succeeding version, the creatures makeup and effects got better and the films got worse.
THE INVISIBLE MAN
Influenced more by the movie versions than the novel, generations have seen Well's '>The Invisible Man as an entertaining acting out of a cherished fantasy. But some readers and critics see the novel as a dark fable akin to Stevenson's '>Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Oscar Wilde's '>The Picture of Dorian Gray---the story of a scientist who sells his soul for the power to act without responsibility, and a portrait of a kind of terrorism.
Wells was writing with vivid images, but also with literary and social consciousness. There is as much in this novel that is pertinent to class systems and struggles as in The Time Machine, and even more specific to terrorism than in The War of the Worlds. This scientist is a violent revolutionary who sets off on a self-described reign of terror. There are cautionary echoes here not only of violent revolutionaries but of the arrogance of scientists too sure of their rightness. Though they might be right about the middle class mediocrity, they are not as insightful when analyzing themselves, and their motives and breadth of understanding.
There's even an air of absurdism in this novel, especially since the Invisible Man turns out to be pretty hapless at fomenting revolution, or doing much of anything right. Most of the other characters don't fare much better.
But once again, these subtleties get lost pretty easily in translation. The additional problem is that invisibility is so inviting. The protagonist of Wells' novel is not supposed to be any more admirable than Dr. Frankenstein, but that's not as much fun: audiences want to identify with the invisible man. They want to be Harry Potter with the invisibility cloak, getting even, having fun and solving the mystery.
There is menace in some of the more than 30 movie versions and variations---the translated titles of two Japanese films (Invisible Man-Dr. Eros, and Invisible Man-Rape!) suggest their nature. Comics from Abbott and Costello to Chevy Chase have exploited comic possibilities.
But the first and most famous version is the '>1933 black and white film with Claude Rains. To illustrate how deeply he is identified with this role, this true story: on a movie set I was visiting, technicians had finished setting up the lighting and getting everything else set for a shot. Everyone was standing around, focused on a couch, where this scene would be. Only the actor (Susan Sarandon, actually) was missing. It got quiet and for some reason everyone was thinking the same thing, until finally one of the crew members said, " We're ready for you, Mr. Rains."
But this film had a lot more going for it---principally the director, James Whale, who created the classics, "'>Frankenstein" and "Bride of Frankenstein." The plot is different, the subtext about the misuse of science is muffled, but at least the Invisible Man is not a hero. This may be the best screen version of a Wells novel, which Wells himself saw and apparently liked.
Influenced more by the movie versions than the novel, generations have seen Well's '>The Invisible Man as an entertaining acting out of a cherished fantasy. But some readers and critics see the novel as a dark fable akin to Stevenson's '>Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Oscar Wilde's '>The Picture of Dorian Gray---the story of a scientist who sells his soul for the power to act without responsibility, and a portrait of a kind of terrorism.
Wells was writing with vivid images, but also with literary and social consciousness. There is as much in this novel that is pertinent to class systems and struggles as in The Time Machine, and even more specific to terrorism than in The War of the Worlds. This scientist is a violent revolutionary who sets off on a self-described reign of terror. There are cautionary echoes here not only of violent revolutionaries but of the arrogance of scientists too sure of their rightness. Though they might be right about the middle class mediocrity, they are not as insightful when analyzing themselves, and their motives and breadth of understanding.
There's even an air of absurdism in this novel, especially since the Invisible Man turns out to be pretty hapless at fomenting revolution, or doing much of anything right. Most of the other characters don't fare much better.
But once again, these subtleties get lost pretty easily in translation. The additional problem is that invisibility is so inviting. The protagonist of Wells' novel is not supposed to be any more admirable than Dr. Frankenstein, but that's not as much fun: audiences want to identify with the invisible man. They want to be Harry Potter with the invisibility cloak, getting even, having fun and solving the mystery.
There is menace in some of the more than 30 movie versions and variations---the translated titles of two Japanese films (Invisible Man-Dr. Eros, and Invisible Man-Rape!) suggest their nature. Comics from Abbott and Costello to Chevy Chase have exploited comic possibilities.
But the first and most famous version is the '>1933 black and white film with Claude Rains. To illustrate how deeply he is identified with this role, this true story: on a movie set I was visiting, technicians had finished setting up the lighting and getting everything else set for a shot. Everyone was standing around, focused on a couch, where this scene would be. Only the actor (Susan Sarandon, actually) was missing. It got quiet and for some reason everyone was thinking the same thing, until finally one of the crew members said, " We're ready for you, Mr. Rains."
But this film had a lot more going for it---principally the director, James Whale, who created the classics, "'>Frankenstein" and "Bride of Frankenstein." The plot is different, the subtext about the misuse of science is muffled, but at least the Invisible Man is not a hero. This may be the best screen version of a Wells novel, which Wells himself saw and apparently liked.
FIRST MEN IN THE MOON
'>The First Men on the Moon was the last of Wells' most famous scifi novels, and perhaps their culmination. Though it is probably the least read today, Wells apparently thought it was the best of the group.
It combines the evocative descriptive writing of Dr. Moreau and War of the Worlds, with the pointed social analysis of The Time Machine and later dystopian novels. In its portrait of the Selenites (the moon dwellers) as biologically evolved as intelligent ants in an ant-hill society, it anticipates Brave New World, aspects of 1984 and even the Borg of Star Trek. And in some ways it reveals the dangers of world states, similar to what Wells himself advocated.
The story has two late nineteenth century Englishmen travel by spaceship to the moon, powered by an anti-gravity substance one of the men (Cavor). They are captured by the Selenites, though one escapes and returns to earth, and Cavor manages to send radio messages back until he is discovered. The book details the Selenite society, in which individuals have predetermined functions from birth, and are bred and trained for only that single purpose.
Eventually Cavor meets the Selenite leader, who is little more than a huge brain, known as the Grand Lunar. Cavor attempts to describe how earth works, and makes the mistake of describing human warfare, which alarms the Grand Lunar with its basic lunacy. He is also afraid that other humans will invade, and so prevents Cavor from passing on the secret of his anti-gravity Cavorite.
That Wells finds both the Selenites and earthlings to be scandalously deficient is not unusual in his work, or his life. H.G. Wells, who devoted his life to figuring out how to create world peace, was perpetually at war, with his society, with other writers (when he wasn't being a tremendous friend to them), and most of all, with himself. He had many harsh critics, but few made harsher judgments on his ideas and even his books than he did.
But war is an either/or event, and Wells knew the world is more complicated than that. He wrote famous dystopian stories and famous utopian stories. He got the reputation for being a champion of technology, and he was also its first and most specific critic. But what he always came back to was the middle way. The Selenites were so dependent on cold logic that they became machine-like, whereas emotion without self-knowledge and self-control leads humans to irrationally destructive, wasteful and cruel wars.
So this is another way in which Wells and Roddenberry are strikingly similar (and both, by the way, similar to the Swift of '>Gulliver's Travels.) In one Star Trek story after another, the middle way, the human way, is shown to be better than "higher" societies that are more rational, or without feelings or even bodies; and better than "lower" societies that are all physical.
But "better" isn't the right word either. In the original series episode, "'>Is There in Truth No Beauty?" the alien without a body who temporarily inhabits Spock, comments on the sharpness of human senses and the joy of physicality, but also on the terrible isolation of beings trapped in bodies, separate and alone.
Humans are what they are, and the combination of the physical and the spiritual, emotions and reason, individuality and feeling for each other and the world---all combine in the dynamic of the human soul. That combination, that dynamic, defines what it is to be human. That all humans are more or less at war with themselves is part of the deal.
There's been one film version of "'>First Men in the Moon" (except for the Melies short and a 1919 British silent feature that hasn't survived), made in 1964. It keeps the basic story (adding a female companion to the two men), keeps the Grand Lunar being scandalized by human wars, but loses the heart of the novel, the exploration of Selenite anthill society. It wraps it all in a clever modern flashback, then steals the ending of The War of the Worlds. Its chief virtue is the special effects of Ray Harryhausen.
There is also an audio interpretation available on '>CD of the novel featuring '>Leonard Nimoy and John de Lancie.
'>The First Men on the Moon was the last of Wells' most famous scifi novels, and perhaps their culmination. Though it is probably the least read today, Wells apparently thought it was the best of the group.
It combines the evocative descriptive writing of Dr. Moreau and War of the Worlds, with the pointed social analysis of The Time Machine and later dystopian novels. In its portrait of the Selenites (the moon dwellers) as biologically evolved as intelligent ants in an ant-hill society, it anticipates Brave New World, aspects of 1984 and even the Borg of Star Trek. And in some ways it reveals the dangers of world states, similar to what Wells himself advocated.
The story has two late nineteenth century Englishmen travel by spaceship to the moon, powered by an anti-gravity substance one of the men (Cavor). They are captured by the Selenites, though one escapes and returns to earth, and Cavor manages to send radio messages back until he is discovered. The book details the Selenite society, in which individuals have predetermined functions from birth, and are bred and trained for only that single purpose.
Eventually Cavor meets the Selenite leader, who is little more than a huge brain, known as the Grand Lunar. Cavor attempts to describe how earth works, and makes the mistake of describing human warfare, which alarms the Grand Lunar with its basic lunacy. He is also afraid that other humans will invade, and so prevents Cavor from passing on the secret of his anti-gravity Cavorite.
That Wells finds both the Selenites and earthlings to be scandalously deficient is not unusual in his work, or his life. H.G. Wells, who devoted his life to figuring out how to create world peace, was perpetually at war, with his society, with other writers (when he wasn't being a tremendous friend to them), and most of all, with himself. He had many harsh critics, but few made harsher judgments on his ideas and even his books than he did.
But war is an either/or event, and Wells knew the world is more complicated than that. He wrote famous dystopian stories and famous utopian stories. He got the reputation for being a champion of technology, and he was also its first and most specific critic. But what he always came back to was the middle way. The Selenites were so dependent on cold logic that they became machine-like, whereas emotion without self-knowledge and self-control leads humans to irrationally destructive, wasteful and cruel wars.
So this is another way in which Wells and Roddenberry are strikingly similar (and both, by the way, similar to the Swift of '>Gulliver's Travels.) In one Star Trek story after another, the middle way, the human way, is shown to be better than "higher" societies that are more rational, or without feelings or even bodies; and better than "lower" societies that are all physical.
But "better" isn't the right word either. In the original series episode, "'>Is There in Truth No Beauty?" the alien without a body who temporarily inhabits Spock, comments on the sharpness of human senses and the joy of physicality, but also on the terrible isolation of beings trapped in bodies, separate and alone.
Humans are what they are, and the combination of the physical and the spiritual, emotions and reason, individuality and feeling for each other and the world---all combine in the dynamic of the human soul. That combination, that dynamic, defines what it is to be human. That all humans are more or less at war with themselves is part of the deal.
There's been one film version of "'>First Men in the Moon" (except for the Melies short and a 1919 British silent feature that hasn't survived), made in 1964. It keeps the basic story (adding a female companion to the two men), keeps the Grand Lunar being scandalized by human wars, but loses the heart of the novel, the exploration of Selenite anthill society. It wraps it all in a clever modern flashback, then steals the ending of The War of the Worlds. Its chief virtue is the special effects of Ray Harryhausen.
There is also an audio interpretation available on '>CD of the novel featuring '>Leonard Nimoy and John de Lancie.
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