*Spoilers* My review of the film and book, and a compare/contrast between the two.
I'm reading the book now and I am kind of pissed. First of all, the book isn't as freaky as the movie in ways. Maybe it was back then, but the "heat ray" just catches things on fire instead of sending people straight to ash. And it is invisible. And the aliens came down in falling stars that turned out to be capsules. And they built the machines over several days, instead of just taking one up out of the ground. Not sure if the materials to build the machines were in the capsules or in the ground.
I read an abridged version before but that was years ago.
I do kind of prefer the idea in the movie that the machines were buried there whole millions of years ago.... it made the plan seem less spontaneous and more elaborate.
So far, some similiarities and differences:
Similiarities:
*The Machines have tops whose motions and gyrations resemble those of the human head
*The main character spends the story trekking to a woman of close relation who was presented in the beginning of the story and who has since relocated to another area
*The alien beings come down in capsules
Differences:
Movie:
1The aliens are three-legged cuties with big disk eyes (I like the three legged part... correlates to why they would make the machines tripods - creating in their own image)
2 The Machines move relatively slowly, in fluid motions
3 The main character has a family and an ex wife (?)
4 The alien beings ride down a (assumably) self-generated lightning storm
5 We don't know where the aliens are from
6 The story takes place in America
7 There is no mention of a poisonous gas
8 The aliens use the blood of their victims to fertilize the red weeds
Book:
1The aliens are formless, tentacled blobs that move slowly because of the gravitational differences between Mars and Earth
2The machines are much more stilt-like, move very rapidly, and their gait is explain as a "waddle".
3 The main character has a wife and no children
4The alien beings come down in capsules that are originally assumed to be falling stars, shot out of a gunlike structure from Mars
5 The aliens are from Mars
6 The Story takes place in England
7 The aliens use a toxic gaslike substance as a precaution to wipe out areas of possible hidden regiments
8 The aliens need the blood of the victims in order to replace their own, as they lack developed digestive systems (seen as an improvement, because of all the energy wasted in humans in the digestive process)
AfterThoughts
Okay, I'm done reading it now.
I love how the book states that there was no evidence that the martians were eceptionally cruel, and that everything they did was out of neccessity - how the author couldn't morally judge them since they were not guilty of that which even the young and innocent humans do : enjoyment of unneccessary torturing of those beneath us... such as a child impaling an insect. How it only seemed horrific to us because the tables were turned, although it wasn't as bad for us as we make it for other creatures.
I also like how in the book they sprayed the land with a gaseous poison, like how we spray bugs to exterminate them.
I also loved how in the beginning of the book it is expanded on how the martians envied our earth because they were slowly fading to extinction on the much older and dying Mars. I think the story is kind of convicting, since what seems such a horror to us was merely done logistically and out of purpose.... how what seems such an injustice was not an injustice at all, but rather, two species competing against eachother, as always occurs.
I almost felt sad reading about the last martian dying in his big machine thing, calling out in desperation it seems.
