The War of the Worlds

Who decided to take THE greatest science fiction story ever written and make this slow, senseless, passion less, pointless, plodding mess? Why? Why?? You took everything that made this story great and exciting and terrifying and clever and thought provoking and chucked it away!! I'm off to crayon over the Mona Lisa and then record a rap version of Nessun Dorma, cause, you know, that will make them more relevant to modern society and because, well, I'm smarter than their creator's.

This should have been made by people who actually read the ###### book . I feel cheated.

The acting is bad, the script is bad,the directing is abysmal, the love story is pointless and unnecessary, the male lead seems in a permanent state of stupification, the future time shifts stop the story dead and serve no purpose, the slow motion panning shots are so out of place I actually thought my pc was buffering, and the few scenes actually taken from the original source (of which there are five) are so poorly rewritten and changed that they lose all of the excitement and horror that the book evoked...... And..um...the music was *&#T!!

When will these Movie/TV writers/producers realise that this book is still relevant and being read - 120 Years - after it was written for a reason and Stop trying to make it fit their current/ views/agendas!!! For the love of God please just give us our book on the big screen! (sob!).

Kudos for setting it in (roughly!) the correct time and correct location, 1 star for each.

P. S for those close friends of Mr Wells who have chosen to defend this travesty by stating that 'he' would have been happy to have his book completely overhauled to better fit with current perceived social injustices, thank you for taking the time to channel his spirit and share his views with the rest of us poor lowly mortals.

Maybe next time someone decides to butcher this book on film, they could possibly call it something else.

I've been waiting most of my life for a faithful adaptation of the great novel. Sadly, the wait goes on. This is more like a cheap Dr Who episode crossed with Edwardian Eastenders. Absolutely crushed with disappointment. Ah well...

Boring yawn-fest with CBBC effects and a totally unnecessary and very 21st Century sub-plot.

What this story needs is the kind of love and detail that only a Director with passion for the novel (and a big budget!) can deliver.

What Peter Jackson did for Tolkien we need someone similar to do for War of the Worlds.

The impression I had was this production team were not passionate about War of the Worlds, H.G.Wells or maybe even scifi generally. Instead it seemed to me they were dumped with this project and so glossed over the alien invasion part and instead hijacked it as a vehicle for a modern agenda and made that the story instead.

Please god will I still be alive before someone actually produces a period accurate, book accurate, Thunderchild scene including, non budget limiting, visual representation of the original book ?

A message for all scriptwriters -

1. When involved in the representation of a classic masterpiece be accurate to the period it was set in, do not try to re write history with inserted modern sensibilities that simply did not exist at that time.

2. Do not be so arrogant as to think that your tinkering can improve on a literary classic, that you are somehow more skilled than the original author and can improve on their tale.

3. Do not do projects that you know require a very significant budget when you only have a limited budget. Bad effects are worse than no effects at all - some pictures can get away with near zero effects and are all the better for it (eg. the excellent Let the Right One In) but some like War of the Worlds you simply cannot do with out effects, so if you don't have the budget to do it justice then just don't do it. The money (UK TV License Payers money!) would be better spent on alternative projects.

It's quite clear the BBC can do amazing things War and Peace (2016), Peaky Blinders and even do big budget collaborations well as shown in His Dark Materials - How this got through the review board within the BBC amazes me, no wonder they were keeping it back for over a year and released it with so little fanfare they knew it was a **** up, what a waste.

Total tosh.

I have some advise for the BBC, next time you want to dramatise a classic novel get some people to actually read it.

As other reviewers have said the first episode wasn't really terrible although the flash forward scenes were annoying and confusing. However the second episode after the "miraculous" meeting between the "heroes" is a total disaster. In this episode the whole alien invasion thing becomes irrelevant and we're stuck with a little bit of a horror movie (where the aliens play the part of the serial killer) and a little bit of post invasion red planet survival simulation. In the end i didn't even care if the heroes survived in the past or in the present. The only people who might like this mess are fans of the lead actress Eleanor Tomlinson.