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War of the Worlds: Goliath
10-02-2009, 02:21 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-13-2017, 12:26 PM by Bob Schroeck.)
WHOA!!! Just... HOLY CRAP!! I WANT TO SEE THIS MOVIE!!!!
Quote: Have you ever wondered what if the Martians in H.G. Wells' seminal science fiction novel The War of the Worlds hadn't been huge pussies and
were immune to colds and other Earth diseases? (No? C'mon, asshole, work with me here.) Well, Joe Pearson did, and he's directed this independent,
full-length animated feature set 15 years after the original story, as humans have gotten organized and begun to fight back using captured Martian tech.
It's called War of the Worlds: Goliath, and it features bi-planes and blimps and steampunk and some odd-looking 2-D animated but some
awesome-looking CG. Although most independently produced animated films are terrible, doomed, or terrible and doomed, I'm digging both the premise of
Goliath and the quality work that clearly went into it. The movie is due in 2010; goodness only knows if it'll make it to theaters, but I'll
keep you posted. Thanks to D. Smith for the tip.
EDIT: Further link to the actual makers homepage here: War of the Worlds: GOLIATH
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10-02-2009, 03:56 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-13-2017, 12:26 PM by Bob Schroeck.)
Looks very sharp. I'd be interested in this myself.
However, I just want to note that I've always been of the opinion that the Tripods books by John Christopher showed a world after a successful version of the WOTW Martian invasion. (Although a 1988 prequel apparently josses that idea thoroughly.)
-- Bob
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...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Heck, The City of Gold and Lead josses it just by showing what the Masters look like. Which is not octopoid in the least.
--Sam
"Surf's up, space ponies -- I'M MAKIN' GRAVY WITHOUT THE LUMPS!!!!!"
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Well, I was willing to accept that as part of the obvious AU. But the prequel pretty much blows away any chance that it's a post-WOTW world.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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I remember those books. They were some of my favorites back then -- I picked up The City of Gold and Lead first, then went back to read the rest.
They were marketed as children's books, too, which always struck me as... slightly odd, I suppose. I wouldn't consider them such.
Granted, I don't think kids should be restricted from reading most things (including this), but I wouldn't have marketed it that way, is all.
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
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What's annoying me about this movie is that it has exactly the same premise as a story I was thinking of writing, possibly even for publication.
Except instead of Goliath, the mech (and the story) would have been called Thunder
Child. 
--Sam
"Then he threw a chimney at us!"
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HO.
LY.
SHIT.
Well, I just got another reason to want to go on living.
Edit: although the description states that the Martians did keel over and die ... but -- as Wells actually suggested -- the ones back
on Mars figured out what'd gone wrong and took corrective measures. It appears, by the way, that they did us one favor: we seem
to be looking at a united Earth effort here. Note the use of the hourglass insignia rather than any national emblem.
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... Wait. Bi-planes. Which means it's set in the correct era for War of the Worlds. Which means that, unlike remakes, we're not looking at 'immune
to nukes' tripods, but aliens that CAN be hurt, like with the HMS Thunder Child. Which would have actually HAPPENED here.
*Sees the trailer* They reverse engineered the Tripods. I have GOT to see this.
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It's not just that they're bi-planes. Manfred von "Red Baron" Richthofen is piloting one of those suckers. Also,
Teddy Roosevelt is one of the people in charge of the project -- and if you know to look for him, he's recognizable in the trailer.
I so want to see this.
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Richthofen? Roosevelt?
Try NIKOLA FREAKING TESLA.
--Sam
"If I could just reach those peanuts...!"
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Well, who do you think reverse-engineered the tripods, after all? I'm just surprised he didn't reproduce the heat rays -- it looks like
the human tripods are armed with gatling guns.
-- Bob
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...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Bob Schroeck Wrote:Well, who do you think reverse-engineered the tripods, after all? I'm just surprised he didn't reproduce the heat rays -- it looks like the human tripods are armed with gatling guns.
Bob, the human walkers are armed with heat rays, they're just not the primary weapon. That's left to normal projectile weapons. However going by some of the additional art work, I would not be at all surprised if Tesla worked on the man-portable heat rays.
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Rod H beat me to it: there're specifications as part of the art gallery on their homepage that state that they do have heat rays,
including one type that can be used by a single (large and strong) man. Oddly, the 1500ft Dreadnought class battle zeppelin has only
one heat ray (but several other guns, planes, tripods, etc.).
Edit: There's a bit of a timeline discrepancy: if the first Martian attack came "early in the twentieth century," Roosevelt is rather
young-looking 15 years later, when he'd be in his late fifties at the youngest. Not to mention that he's listed as being Secretary of War --
after being President (1901-1909)? And they can't move the year of the invasion back enough to justify Teddy looking that
youthful unless they want to make the Red Baron a really young hero (mental image of 14-year-old von Richthofen in a plug suit
asking, "What are you, stupid?"), since he was only 25 or 26 when he died in 1918.
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I didn't see the gallery, I just watched the clip. Oh well.
-- Bob
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Quote:(mental image of 14-year-old von Richthofen in a plug suit asking, "What are you, stupid?")
Yoink.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
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Seconded.
-- Bob
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I was checking and discovered a new trailer out for this -- it seems they decided to redo it with more CGI. One thing that particularly caught my eye, though, at 01:58, is that the Statue of Liberty has been remodeled: she's not lifting her lamp "beside the golden door" anymore ... she's holding up a sword.
And I note that part of my earliest comment on this movie was wrong. Not even the possibility of renewed Martian invasion was enough to fully unite humanity. "The fools in Europe would rather prepare to fight each other than the Martians." Which is, I suppose, more true-to-life.
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from the Heavy Metal Magazine website.
Quote:Pre-release Information - Synopsis by Joe Pearson; "It's an R rated, retro-history, steam punk epic set in [the year] 1914, fourteen years after the first failed Martian invasion. Mankind has rebuilt her cities and military adapting a lot of the abandoned Martian technology. They've created an international defense force, A.R.E.S., based on the lower end of Manhattan and under the command of Theaodore Roosevelt. They've built a formidable force centered around giant, steam powered battle tripods. Think of "Band of Brothers" meets "Star Wars", meets World WO. It will be cool-steam powered battle tripods, doomed Cossack cavalry charges, victorian decco, steam punk Manhattan, 1500 foot long armored battle zeppelins, Teddy Roosevelt, souped up Tri-planes, blood on steaming metal, sex in the cockpit. The usual." This 3D movie has a budget of over $5 million, and is being produced by Tripod Entertainment Sdn Bhd (joint venture between Elemental Ventures Sdn Bhd and Epoch Ink Corp). This story is not directly based on Heavy Metal, but it is a sequel to the classic The War Of The Worlds novel by H.G. Wells. There were many War Of The Worlds: Goliath short stories in the magazine in 2011. The movie was originally intended on being part of a series of Heavy Metal Videos, but those plans changed, and it became an independent project.
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Ahhhh, that explains quite a bit. The folks at Heavy Metal have always had a certain something when it comes to animation.
One of the trailers suggests this film starts with the same events that kicked off world war one... so the martians strike as Europe goes to war I think?
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Notice that somebody with an Irish accent is talking about an uprising when "Europe is about to explode, and take England with it." Fine and dandy, as long as they don't try to divert for their uprising some of the weapons the U.S. built to fight Martians -- and it sounds as if the speaker intends just such a misappropriation.
A snatch of the script I ran across included von Richthofen boasting about how after Germany got done kicking the butts of its European enemies, it might come and have a shot at conquering the U.S.
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