War of the Worlds Series

 This is a 2019 three-part series butcherization and corruption of H.G. Wells' masterpiece of science fiction.  There have been several versions made over the years: a 2019 version set in contemporary France; a 2005 movie "loosely based" on the novel; and the 1953 George Pal production, which, sadly, is the best that I have seen, set in 1950s Cold War Panic America.

I had high hopes at first for this.  Instead of being set in very late Victorian England, it is set in 1904 as the Russian Baltic Fleet began its insane trip to the Russo-Japanese War.  Still, the costuming, and culture is about right.  As the introduction to the novel makes clear, this is really about how the indigenous peoples see the technological superior Western imperialist powers invading their lands, killing all who stand in their way.  There are some odd changes visible in that first episode.  Instead of his fiancé Carrie, Eileen Tomlinson plays the journalist's free-thinking (and out-of-wedlock pregnant girlfriend).  The journalist is quite obviously very Wells-like: a socialist and a free-thinker.

It degrades rapidly.  The opening of the first craft is far less intriguing than the novel.  There are a series of flashbacks from at least six years later, when the Martians have been defeated, but the damage that they have done to our biosphere seem well-nigh irreversible.  The hopeful but with a hint of future menace ending of the novel is gone.

There are two powerful sequences in the novel: Carrie escapes by ship from England just ahead of the Martians (and the journalist), while the ironclad Thunderchild sacrifices itself to protect the departing steamship.  Utterly FUBARed.

The other is great writing where the journalist describes the fleeing people of London:  

And this was no disciplined march; it was a stampede--a stampede gigantic and terrible--without order and without a goal, six million people, unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong.  It was the beginning of the rout of civilization, of the massacre of mankind.

It is still tragically the case that the finest, most true to the novel adaptation is Jeff Wayne's musical War of the Worlds.  Once you start listening, you will be utterly entranced.