Considered by critics, such as Cornils (2003), Crossley (2004) and Trushell (2002), as a tale of the dangers of the arrogance and greed that drove nineteenth century British imperialism, H. G. Wells’ novel, The War of the Worlds, written in 1898, has been adapted to reflect the contemporary social and political contexts in both Byron Haskin’s 1953 film version and Steven Spielberg’s ‘blockbuster’ film of 2005. A comparison of these two films, released half a century apart, reveals a dramatic change or, perhaps, realignment, in the fears and perceived threats that have pervaded the United States society from the Cold War of the mid to late twentieth century to the current ‘War on Terrorism’. As Michael Moore, in his documentary, Bowling for Columbine (2002), argues, the American economy, indeed the entire nation, appears to thrive on a culture of fear. Haskin’s and Spielberg’s texts support this notion.

Haskin’s version begins with newsreel footage of the tools of war developed in the first half of the twentieth century, culminating in the most lethal of all weapons of mass destruction, the nuclear missile. This opening sequence conveys, as Ruppersberg (cited in Trushell 2002) claims, “the fear that civilization has run amok and is about to destroy itself”. Though in this instance the source of the destructive forces is another planet, namely Mars, the film’s audience of the early 1950s may well, as Trushell (2002) argues, have believed such an attack could easily have come from the closer shores of Russia, China or North Korea. It may even have been aided by an enemy within, the ‘reds under the beds’, who, as O’Brien (2006, p. 3) points out, were so vehemently sought for and persecuted by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s House of Un-American Activities Committee. This fear of invasion from either external or internal forces was a common theme in that decade’s films of science fiction, including Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), The Thing (1951), Invaders from Mars (1953) and Them! (1954). It is Wells’ story, however, according to Cornils (2003), which has provided, via the use of invading aliens intent on evil, “one of the most enduring images of science fiction … [which] … fuelled our paranoia and spurred society to arm itself”.

Spielberg uses the same story to represent a new fear. With the Iron Curtain drawn and worldwide tensions seemingly at ease, the American society of the new millennium, reeling from the economic and social backlash of the extravagant eighties and nineties, needed, as Michael Moore argues in his more recent Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), the unifying stimulus which collective fear and paranoia might provide. That stimulus came in the form of four passenger planes hijacked by terrorists to be used as missiles. Spielberg draws on the fear of terrorism which has gripped that nation since that fateful day in September 2001. In his version of the Wells’ classic, though the invaders still come from Mars, their machines have been hidden underground like the so-called ‘sleepers’, the outwardly ordinary members of the community who suddenly become suicide bombers or hijackers. While Haskin’s film begins with images of weaponry, Spielberg’s begins with images of citizens going about their normal everyday activities, images of people commuting to work as they would have been when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. Later in the film, when Spielberg’s protagonist, Ray, and children, Robbie and Rachel, are hiding in the basement of Ray’s ex-wife’s house, a passenger plane crashes above them. A similar scene in Haskin’s version has his hero, Clayton Forrester, and companion, Sylvia van Buren, in a farm-house about to have a meal of fried eggs when a Martian spaceship lands into the side of the house. This difference reflects how, in the 1950s, the fear was predominantly of missiles from abroad, but the more recent fear is of planes falling from the sky.

Another interesting and socially reflective difference between the two texts is found in those leading characters for each film. The 1950s was not just a time when McCarthy was cleansing the homes of America of those ‘reds under the beds’; it was also a time when the beds of the white middle-class family were in the one house. The man of that house was the decision-maker, the one in charge, while the woman was responsible for the preparation and serving of food. Although Haskin’s leading characters are not husband and wife – yet – they certainly slip easily into those roles. Despite both being scientists, it is Clayton to whom the military go for advice, while Sylvia serves the coffee. It is Sylvia who cooks the eggs. In more modern times, it is not uncommon for families to split, invariably with the children residing with their mother. This new form of the family is displayed in Spielberg’s version. Indeed, Spielberg frowns on such a situation by depicting the father, Ray, as being reckless and unreliable, and undomesticated to the point he cannot even stock his own fridge, despite the fact he knows his children are arriving for the weekend.

One final comparison which emphasises the way in which each film reflects the context of its time is in the endings. In Haskin’s version, no amount of military firepower, including an atomic bomb, is able to stop the invaders. Though the Martians do, in the end, die, as Wells had written, by biological infection, that infection is a “deus ex biologia”, as Trushell (2002) calls it, brought about by “the desecration of the churches of Los Angeles”. A priest beseeches: “Oh Lord, we pray thee, grant us the miracle of thy divine intervention”. The Martians attack the church and in doing so, bring upon themselves a divine bacterial retribution, which, as Trushell (2002) argues, is a fitting “deliverance … [that] … corresponds with the contemporary mass revival of religion in America throughout the 1950s”.

Spielberg, on the other hand, allows his domestically-challenged hero to become the kind of ‘boy’s own’ super-male we have grown to expect since Indiana Jones performed his first crack of the whip in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Ray, perhaps with a slight degree of divine intervention, is able to ‘insert’ grenades into one of the Martian machines, bringing it down and saving human captives. Then, as the Martians begin to succumb to disease, it is Ray who realises they are loosing their protective shields and can now be brought down by military might. It is in this way, by firing the last shot, the United States can claim victory in this particular war against terror.

What, fifty years earlier, the United States might have looked to God for, today, in Spielberg’s mind at least, that nation must do for itself. Where Haskin’s soldiers failed, Spielberg’s stand tall. While the fifties may have been a decade of bluff and bravado, today the United States will exert and express its constitutional right to bear arms. But regardless of the response, regardless of the tactic, the stimulation is still the same. The stimulation is fear.

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