Steven Spielberg has made it quite clear that his upcoming sci-fi flick "War of the Worlds" cannot be compared to producer George Pal's 1953 film version, as the current script is inspired by the H.G. Wells book.
“There's not one message that assumes we'll be doing George Pal's boomerangs with the green lights on both wingtips. There's not been one mention that maybe there'll be flying saucers,” Spielberg said.
Echoing the same sentiment, film’s producer Kathleen Kennedy said: “In no way is this movie trying to be a remake of the '50s movie.”
However, Spielberg credited Pal for making a film that created a tremendous sense of “tension and dread.”
Spielberg's protagonist, played by Tom Cruise, also differs from the Pal hero, a scientist, and Wells' narrator, a cultured man of learning much like Wells himself. Instead, Cruise will play a blue-collar family man and dockworker.
Although Spielberg's version of the story is a contemporary adventure set in America instead of in Wells' England circa 1898, the director has attempted to stay true to the events and spirit of the novel.
“Almost the entire cellar sequence, for instance, is right out of H.G. Wells,” Kennedy revealed, referring to a scene in which the book's narrator has just attacked his comrade and is hiding out in the coal cellar when an alien reaches a long tentacle inside to investigate.
Kennedy confirmed that there would indeed be tentacles on the alien, although the being's design is a reinvention of Wells' creature. Spielberg's aliens are also a departure from the originals in that they do not hail from the Red Planet. Also, the black smoke, which is a precursor to biological warfare, might not be in the film.
“We have our own version of the ending that neither strays nor mimics the original book,” said Spielberg.
