I picked up the Pendragon version for $8.96 at Sam's yesterday. I'd heard a little about it; it was supposed to be very faithful to the original story.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425638/
Well, if you collect crappy movies here's a good one for your collection. A few of my thoughts:
1. It's three hours long. THREE HOURS. 180 MINUTES.
2. The film to DVD transfer is jerky, so every once in a while they skip a little.
3. Worst use of a green screen I've ever seen.
4. Special effects were better than a typical Dr. Who episode. But not much better. The Martians looked like squids/ticks with a bunch of tentacles. Their machines were pretty unbelievable as well. It looked like they used miniatures for the machines, and not very well either.
5. Sometimes film-makers use colored filters to imply nighttime or what-not. This film uses sepia tone as the default and randomly uses red, orange, yellow, green and blue filters to imply... I don't know. Maybe confusion or embarrassment?
6. Acting. Good lord. I feel sorry for them guys. They must be so embarrassed.
7. They totally screwed up the Thunderchild sequence. What should have been the coolest scene in the past five years was confusing and uncomprehensible. (In the book, the ironclad Thunderchild takes on three war machines to give a ferry boat time to escape).
8. Walking. Walking. And more walking.
9. Bad sound effects. A falling war machine sounded like they dumped out the silverware drawer; a crying baby sounded like they downloaded an audio clip off the internet with 4k sampling. Guh.
There were a few things I did like:
1. Ogilvy the Astronomer shakes his finger at the local boys playing around where the first cylinder landed and says "You boys get away from there!" Funnier if you see it.
2. A woman gets stomped by a war machine. Kinda like stepping on a grape.
3. The Writer punches out a panicky preacher, then the Martians grabbed him and pulled him through a small basement window. He deserved it.
I guess that's about it. There were a lot of other stupid things, like people's skeletons writhing around on the ground after their flesh had been burned off, but whatever. I mainly thought I'd warn ya'll against picking this up (unless you like doing the MST3K thing like me and the kids).
Pick up the George Pal 1953 version if you can find it. It had better special effects than this piece of junk.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425638/
Well, if you collect crappy movies here's a good one for your collection. A few of my thoughts:
1. It's three hours long. THREE HOURS. 180 MINUTES.
2. The film to DVD transfer is jerky, so every once in a while they skip a little.
3. Worst use of a green screen I've ever seen.
4. Special effects were better than a typical Dr. Who episode. But not much better. The Martians looked like squids/ticks with a bunch of tentacles. Their machines were pretty unbelievable as well. It looked like they used miniatures for the machines, and not very well either.
5. Sometimes film-makers use colored filters to imply nighttime or what-not. This film uses sepia tone as the default and randomly uses red, orange, yellow, green and blue filters to imply... I don't know. Maybe confusion or embarrassment?
6. Acting. Good lord. I feel sorry for them guys. They must be so embarrassed.
7. They totally screwed up the Thunderchild sequence. What should have been the coolest scene in the past five years was confusing and uncomprehensible. (In the book, the ironclad Thunderchild takes on three war machines to give a ferry boat time to escape).
8. Walking. Walking. And more walking.
9. Bad sound effects. A falling war machine sounded like they dumped out the silverware drawer; a crying baby sounded like they downloaded an audio clip off the internet with 4k sampling. Guh.
There were a few things I did like:
1. Ogilvy the Astronomer shakes his finger at the local boys playing around where the first cylinder landed and says "You boys get away from there!" Funnier if you see it.
2. A woman gets stomped by a war machine. Kinda like stepping on a grape.
3. The Writer punches out a panicky preacher, then the Martians grabbed him and pulled him through a small basement window. He deserved it.
I guess that's about it. There were a lot of other stupid things, like people's skeletons writhing around on the ground after their flesh had been burned off, but whatever. I mainly thought I'd warn ya'll against picking this up (unless you like doing the MST3K thing like me and the kids).
Pick up the George Pal 1953 version if you can find it. It had better special effects than this piece of junk.