The War of the Worlds (2019) User Reviews (608)

Desperately disappointed

[Steve-war · 4/10 · 18 November 2019]

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...

A Threat Worse Than Aliens!

[robert_c_weiss_jr · 5/10 · 18 November 2019]

This is more about Amy fighting against the repression of the male dominated hierarchy and traditional western values than it is about earth fighting aliens.

I'm sort of cheering for the martians.

Report to Mr Wells' office immediately

[tomsview · 5/10 · 12 November 2019]

I thought it was going OK. I didn't even mind that the main focus had shifted from a male narrator to a female narrator, Amy (Elinor Thomlinson). I liked the Victorian/Edwardian setting of the novel, but then we had an extra marital affair, much exposition seemingly aimed at today's establishment, and then there was the confusing fast-forward. However when they played old H.G.'s trump card (the germs) about half way through, I knew they had lost the plot - literally.

The Martians succumbing to bacteria, to which we have long since become immune, was the finale in the book and it worked well in George Pal's 1953 version - I love the Martian arm with the suction cap fingers crawling out of the war machine as Gene Barry looks on. Even Spielberg didn't mess with it in his movie, and even paid a little homage to Pal's version.

But the writers here tried to go one-up on Wells by grafting a post apocalyptic scenario onto the end of the story, and the whole thing comes crashing down like one of George Pal's Martian war machines after its fishing line was cut.

To be fair, the Martians look good in this version whether in their machines or prowling around on the ground, even if they owe a little something to "Starship Troopers".

All film versions of "War of the Worlds" are re-imaginings, but this one limps to a close after it sets off all its fireworks too early. The whole thing is also very gabby, and when Amy starts working on bacterial cultures à la Fleming and Florey, I slumped in my chair knowing that H.G.'s story was getting an update it didn't need.

Interestingly the speech Rubert Graves' character delivers about Britain deserving the Martian invasion, which sounded suspiciously like modern revisionist thinking, is actually based on an early passage in Wells' novel. There he cites the impact of European colonists on the Tasmanian Aborigines, "... Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?"

With that said though, I can't help thinking this mini-series would have Mr Wells furiously scribbling notes in the margins of the script, before emphatically marking it with an F.

Executive interference?...

[pagangod · 20 November 2019]

One has to ask the question that although this mini-series was completed almost 2 years ago, and post-production (VFX/Editing, etc) would have taken some additional time, yet it was teased, to British audiences at least, for a possible Summer 2019 release, which of course never happened. Why the big delay, I hear you ask? Well I think some of you, if not ALL of you now know why. It's a clunker - they simply got it utterly, horribly wrong. Now normally I would reserve such vitriol in the final analysis, after the show had completed it's run. But no, it's already a mess, a big bloody mess. I fully suspect that BBC Executives, NOT Peter Harness - the credited writer, dictated most of what we actually see onscreen. Harness adapted the wonderful Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell into an equally wonderful TV adaptation, so why did he fail so miserably here? I would suggest interference, why? Because I am a Writer with experience of BBC Executives and their propensity for full-on interference. You go into a Script meeting and everybody is upbeat and the general outlook is postively very good. But then, as the meeting progresses, you slowly start to realise that they're gradually trying to change it, not just in certain sections, but in the piece as a WHOLE, until essentially it is completely, if not radically different to what you first presented. Now you might not notice this at first, because they're REALLY that good, but it is totally insiduous and basically standard practice at the BBC right now.

They know there's a book, right? (ED. IN LIGHT OF EP3)

[privateer-52622 · 1/10 · 25 November 2019]

That's a serious question; are the idiots who wrote this mess aware of the original novel? I ask because this piece of work feels very much like they thought they were making a TV series based on a Steven Spielberg film based on a prog rock album and didn't bother to look any farther than that.

Let's list the things they've taken out:

The cylinder. The Martians. The heat ray (seriously, whatever they use in this version slightly chars clothes but leaves buildings largely intact). The battle at Weybridge where the Royal Artillery force the Martians to retreat. The battle between the Thunderchild and a force of several Fighting Machines (AKA 'The Best Bit'). The pit. The Handling Machine. The tension that comes from not knowing whether the armed forces of Britain can beat them or not (that's partly why Weybridge and Thunderchild are so important to keeping the audience engaged.) Any sense of jeopardy. The horror of seeing familiar places devastated by war. The twist at the end.

Now, let's list what they've added instead:

A pointless soap opera-style romantic plot tumour. A female lead who doesn't need to exist but is apparently going to save the world, thus completely undermining the point of theoriginal ending. A cast of male characters apparently cribbed straight from Monty Python's 'Upper Class Twit of the Year' sketch. A pointless post-apocalyptic future plot. That stupid blue LED lighting effect that's been in every poor-quality sci-fi work since Skyline.

I'm going to go and listen to the Jeff Wayne version now to calm my nerves.

Give this garbage a wide berth.

Post-episode 3 edit:

Oh, dear God in his weird pinky-orange heaven, it got worse. The Martians are unspeakably awful (and not in a good, Lovecraftian way), the majority of the episode is spent sitting around doing nothing in a place that looks a bot like that derelict village from Zardoz and the writer finally comes clean and admits that he thinks the audience are morons, having a character actually stand up and shout out- literally- the point that Wells was making with his allegorical invasion of the UK. That scene is akin to having Victor Frankenstein dementedly screaming 'Maybe setting events into motion before I've fully considered the consequences is a bad idea!?' as he slams down the switch.

Yeah, no shit?

Not to mention the aliens- for some reason- look like their machines again. Mr. Doesn't-Get-Allegory even claims the British Empire tramples other cultures in 'machines built in our own image' during his little rant. I'm not sure if this means he has friends who look a bit like pre-Dreadnought battleships or if the British Army won at Rorke's Drift by using Gundams and I just missed that bit in Zulu?

Honestly, it's like somebody let a blitzed first year creative writing student loose with a couple of million quid.

We could have had another seris of Blackadder or something instead. Think about that.

The chances of anyone calling this art, are a million to one...

[aircodh9 · 1/10 · 1 December 2019]

No one would have believed in the last weeks of 2019, that the BBC would release a production of the classic HG Wells novel as appalling as this. Yet in that very time, came the great disillusionment.

Yup, this one is a stinker. It's not just bad, it's an insult on virtually every level possible. There are production, character, editing and scripting decisions going on here which are so clumsy, ill-advised, bereft of sensibility for the original work, and just plain wrong, that it is difficult to imagine these artistic faux pas even making it past a preliminary suggestion stage, let alone numerous scripting and production meetings without someone having the nerve to just open their trap at least once and simply say: 'but, this is awful, can't we just film the book as it is?'

To save you the trouble of having to endure this utter rubbish, on the off-chance you might be thinking: 'surely it cannot be that bad, I'll give it a try', I'll point out the main travesties and why you should not even come near this steaming pile of garbage for any other reason than perhaps to use as a screenwriting tutorial on how not to do it. You can thank me later for saving you from sacrificing three hours of your life that you will never get back by having actually watched this load of embarrassing cack. So, here goes...

First up, you've got the bogus attempt to make you think it is an authentic adaptation, by setting it - visually at least - in approximately the same time period as the original book. But the illusion doesn't last long I assure you, as you pretty much instantaneously witness 21st Century politically-correct sensibilities clumsily tacked onto a story which is set in 1897. This in itself is bad enough as a concept, but when it is done in such a staggeringly inept, historically anachronistic way, it is just embarrassing to watch it unfold.

Not content with this, the script then adds an extra-marital affair to the storyline for no readily discernible reason in terms of improving the tale. If they'd had the intelligence to perhaps contrast the shock of infidelity on period sensibilities as an alien concept, with the shock of an alien invasion, then as an idea it might have just possibly had some merit conceptually for a dramatic device, but nope, it's just thrown in there to try and make it a bit 'modern' and 'racy'.

Worse still, scripting efforts at making the female lead into a 'strong modern woman' (TM) or at least cookie cutter version of one, end up making her male partner come across as one of the most simpering wet blankets that has ever been committed to film. This to the extent that any notion such a progressive firebrand vixen would find such a man worth having a romantic crack at in the face of the obstacles the time period would throw at her, stretches credibility to breaking point as it collapses under the weight of its own failed internal logic.

But this is just for starters as far as cack production, adaptation and editorial decisions go. We are treated to a series of intrusive flashes-forward to a misery-laden post-invasion Earth, where strong female lead struggles to bring up her Victorian designer urchin (TM) offspring. A child who is so well-scrubbed that he looks like he's auditioning for a RADA production of Oliver! All he needs to do is launch into a Lionel Bart-esque song perhaps entitled: Cor Blimey, it's tough being invaded by Martians' or some such and it's West End here we come.

It is at this point we quickly realise we are being robbed of even the remotest chance at suspending our disbelief and going with the story as it unfolds chronologically, as the story behind this adaptation is quite literally telegraphed to us courtesy of an appalling chronology mash-up editorial decision. But whilst this offers no dramatic purpose whatsoever, in fairness, it does at least serve to give us fair warning that HG Wells' classic has not merely been butchered with a PC agenda, but also pretty much trashed in terms of how it plays out too.

Not content to mess about with so many of the elements of the classic sci-fi novel already, the trend continues as we get a bloody awful side story of a confrontation with the aliens who have disembarked from their craft, revealing themselves to be rejects from the Klandathu homeworld of the bugs in the screen adaptation of Heinlein's Starship Troopers. At least in the Starship Troopers movie, choosing to make the aliens look like that was okay because their design was not contingent on them believably being able to operate spaceships and attack vehicles, yet in this production, despite the Martians apparently not having the appendages necessary to be able to perform such delicate feats as constructing spacecraft, launching and landing them successfully, then mounting a land-based invasion, they nevertheless appear to have pulled it off for some inexplicable reason. Frankly, this takes us so far into bad b-movie territory rather than an adaptation of what is literally one of the first and indeed finest sci-fi novels ever written, that it makes Independence Day look like Lawrence of Arabia.

As we know, in the original novel, there is very little concerning the creatures themselves other than to mention their difficulties in coping with Earth's gravity and atmosphere, most of it is wisely left by Wells, to one's imagination, but no, the screenwriters of this travesty think they can do better. It's really quite something to witness a production by a bunch of collectively amateurish buffoons who have the temerity to suppose they can improve on Mr Wells' classic by messing about with pretty much everything which make it the classic it is. You would have thought they'd realise there is a rather obvious reason why people are still reading the original novel after well over hundred years of having been in print; that's because it is good; it doesn't need a collection of talentless fools to re-write it.

So, is there anything good about this production at all? Well, some of the effects and CGI matting into live footage is pretty good. Some of the costume design is nice and the locations are not bad. Sadly, all of that is not enough window dressing to save what is just a very ill-advised venture. Mr Wells deserves much better than this, and so do we.

How to ruin a classic

[ianwildman-64903 · 1/10 · 21 November 2019]

I was looking forward to this mini series. Wait - a remake of a classic sci-story, set almost contemporarily to the H.G.Wells original novel? Great - throw some modern technology and CGI at the production to realise Wells' ideas in the book and it should be a cracker! So I thought.

Oh dear. Weak or stereotyped characterisation, unnecessary sub plots (whilst at the same time losing key points of the main story) and confused/unnecessary flash forwards to a hackneyed view of a post apocalyptic world.

So essentially, the author had taken one of the greatest sci-fi novels ever written, nicked a few ideas and characters and themes ....and ruined it. What a missed opportunity.

Disappointing

[brucethomson-47872 · 6/10 · 21 October 2019]

Episode 1 was reasonable, setting up a good storyline. Episode 2 dragged indefinitely with almost no content. I'm never going to find out about episode 3 because the chances of anything coming from this are a million to one.

And early in the 21st century came the great disillusionment.

[imdbnotyou · 1/10 · 18 November 2019]

No one would have believed in the 19th year of the 21st century, that the BBC was still being watched keenly and closely by intelligences soon to be mocked and insulted. Men scrutinised and studied a great fictional work, alas as shallowly as a man with an iPhone might scrutinise the Mona Lisa. With infinite complacency men rewrote the fiction including extramarital little affairs and yammering on about their boring empire versus the Russians. It is possible that the incessant programmers on Netflix do the same. No one gave a thought to the older generation patiently forking out our license fee year after year, patiently awaiting a truly grand presentation, but thought only to dismiss the ideas of H.G Wells as impossible or improbable and downright old-fashioned.. It is curious to comprehend some of the mental habits of those involved in this fiasco. At most, terrestrial men fancied there might be a reasonable BBC adaptation of creatures coming from Mars, perhaps inferior to the novel, but still ready to welcome a quality enterprise. Yet across the road in White City, minds that are clearly devoid of intellect, smallscale and unsympathetic, regarded this commission with blinkered eyes, and slowly, and surely, drew their plans against us.

H.G. Wells meets Virginia Woolf and the result is a mess.

[jason-210 · 6/10 · 8 December 2019]

Virginia Woolf once criticised H.G.Well's work as being materialistic. It appears that in this mini-series, the BBC decided to try to update Well's work with her thoughts in mind.

Set close to the date of the original novel, and featuring a handful of good actors and all the latest CGI tech, this should have been a classic. Unfortunately, the BBC just couldn't manage to stay true either to Edwardian era or novel. Instead of an authentic Edwardian setting, we have a world that looks poorly researched and unconvincing. The sets get the basics right, but somehow they looked contrived and miss authentic details. This is especially noticeable in the external scenes showing the destruction, where the rubble and fires seem to have been carefully placed in discreet little mounds.

The British government seems to comprise of just three men: the protagonist's brother, a deputy prime minister and a Lord Kitchener lookalike. The characters representing the elite of society are presented either as ridiculous caricatures in what seems like a parody of the Edwardian era, or have been "updated" to make them politically correct by and accessible to a modern audience, including the obligatory feminist. It reminded me of the 1960s classic "The Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines" but without the charm or humour. In fact, the only character I was rooting for about was Frederick (played by Rupert Graves) as he was the only character that showed signs of development. It's pity he was eaten in the second episode.

The BBC changed many details from the original story, which is OK, but then they went and padded it out with those long "flash-forwards" to show a gloomy surreal aftermath of the invasion, which for me ruined the experience of watching the events unfold because we know what is coming. At first these flash-forwards are merely annoying and unwanted interruptions to the alien invasion, but as the series plods on, they take over in frequency and length until the flash-forwards become the present and the events of the invasion become the flash-backs. Then we have to suffer the immensely dull and implausible epilogue where Amy and Ogilvy, in their surreal, red world, save humanity in between philosophising about what is important in life. Thankfully Robert Carlyle's work eases our pain, but even he can't rescue this mess. The overall result is a implausible, unconvincing adaptation of the novel. I mean the idea that the aliens have to eat humans to get infected, and that two people save the planet by spraying the red-weed with a typhoid-infected-rotten-flesh-solution, while arguing it out with a self-appointed anti-Darwinian religious leader, is all rather silly and misses the point of Well's original ending.

It's just too dull and too badly done to enjoy without cringing, and I often found myself checking to see how long was left before the end. What a wasted opportunity. H.G. Wells would not have approved.

Mrs Poldark should have stayed in Cornwall

[klpd-38307 · 1/10 · 19 November 2019]

If you thought Tom Cruise' effort at this classic was bad this revision is worse. Why modern producers think they can all improve upon stories told by classic wordsmiths is beyond me.

Read the book and make a product that honors it. Stop trying to "update" the stories with your take on current mores. If think you are that good, write an original story and have it produced. Leave your betters alone.

Excellent retelling of War of the Worlds

[dogma-53668 · 9/10 · 7 August 2021]

I'm not sure what the other reviewers were expecting to see maybe that overhyped version that Spielberg did with Tom Cruise but this one is closer to what HG Wells story was like. Takes place in the right place and time. Excellent performances by all and good tense moments. Ignore the naysayers, I don't know what movie they were watching, it wasn't this one. Picks up the pace by episode 2. Direction is great, special effects are perfect for this type of story without being flashy and overwhelming. Definitely worth a watch. This Is War of the Worlds without all the updating.

Disappointing

[mark-charles-bennett-nz · 6/10 · 15 October 2019]

Hmm...positives. The first 30 minutes were moderately ok. As for the rest of it I had to force myself to get to the end of the first episode. If it had been another 5 minutes longer I'd have given up on it. The characters were dull and uninteresting and I simply didn't care what happened to them.

Unfortunately the alien technology borrows from Spielberg's botched attempt at telling the story some 15 years ago. If you want a better telling of this story then listen to the original radio broadcast, watch the movie from the 1950s or listen to Jeff Wayne's musical.

Shame they didn't read the book.

[andrew-capon · 2/10 · 24 November 2019]

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.

No Wonder They Held It Back

[Amble_along · 2/10 · 19 November 2019]

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.

Offensive

[captain-balrog · 1/10 · 18 November 2019]

I disagree with many of the reviews on here. This did not start well. I think it's best described as controlled descent into terrain; that's what they call it when a pilot knowingly crashes a plane.

Watching this is like reading the BBCs balanced scorecard.

Strong woman - Check Explore taboo - Check Highlight how far we've come as a society - Check

If you want to write a story that's basically a vehicle for contemporary morals then by all means do that. I don't think it's possible to make a good story that way but go for it anyway; indulge your weird preachy fetish. But why try to crowbar it into an existing classic? That's what i don't understand.

It seems clear that the actors know it's a stinker. I mean i'm a huge fan of H.G. and The War of the Worlds is my favourite (Well some days it's the island of doctor Moreau) but i think if i'd never heard of H.G. Wells and someone handed me this script i'd still know. That must be why the characters appear to have succumbed to despair even when there's no specific reason for it.

Seriously world, whats with the complete lack of respect for literary classics? What are these people thinking? I can write a better story than H.G. Wells is what whoever made this was thinking! Which is arrogance beyond belief!

And another thing! The setting and the costume are period but the special effects are not. The fighting machines in the book were shiny, lurching, fast moving, clanking, and belching green smoke. They're described as healing over on one leg, like a milk stool bowled across the floor if i remember right.

The fighting machines in this are somewhat magical in that they are able to lift one of their three legs without having to lean or compensate in any way. They're also dull and plodding and of course they have a big blue light. That's a must have for any modern alien machine. Don't know why; don't think anyone knows why. Awful.

What's next? An adaptation of Moreau where the animals learn to respect each other's boundaries and value their differences?

Just stop it!

So disappointed

[guypid · 1/10 · 24 November 2019]

Why do people think they can change classic literature for second rate drama? I am so disappointed. Utter rubbish. Second rate effects, second rate acting and second rate script. I can't tell you how annoyed I am. Here was an opportunity to make a classic version of The War of the Worlds, keeping to Wells' vision. But no, you had to go and make it your own. You should be ashamed of yourselves. Not only have you ruined this opportunity, but no one will touch a true to the book version now for years. I hope you are content with your effort, because you only need to look at the stars given for this crud to know that you have utterly failed.

Totally Boring!

[jonathanpjones · 25 November 2019]

The BBC took a classic masterpiece and turned it into a steaming pile of ####!

Why meddle with a classic?

[Bert45 · 7/10 · 13 October 2019]

News that a new screen version of HG Wells' classic sci-fi/horror novel The War Of The Worlds would finally be set in roughly the right time and place for the story (Victorian/Edwardian England) was most welcome, after so many dismal attempts to set it in later years, or even other countries. The story, after all, was intended to shock out of their complacency people who were living in what was then the world's biggest and most powerful empire. The message was "what if there was something even bigger and more powerful and more deadly than us?" That said, the production values are great, the special effects excellent, and the brooding, haunting atmosphere of the alien and unknown permeates the story as it should. Sadly though, the screenwriter and producers just couldn't resist the temptation to insert their 21st century sensibilities into a late Victorian story. So, instead of an ordinary husband and wife of their time separated by a cataclysm, we get an unmarried couple rebelling against the norms of Victorian society by openly living together - and then being separated. Add to that a heartless and unforgiving elder brother of the main character, plus an equally unforgiving and bitter deserted wife, and much of the first half hour to an hour is wasted on a completely unnecessary and irritating sub-plot. Granted, the producers may well have been eager to enhance the role of the wife beyond that in the novel - but that could have been just as easily achieved by simply showing her own fight for survival when separated from her husband. But that wasn't enough for the writers. They had Eleanor Tomlinson in that role, so they wanted Poldark's Demelza in the character. And, of course, the men in the story must be shown to behave so chauvinistically towards her that they deserve the inevitable slap-downs. The other distraction to the story is the strange jumping forwards and backwards in time. This not only destroys the pace of the story but also undoes the suspense to a huge degree. We need to see how bad things can get in progression as the forces of the British Empire are overwhelmed by the alien invasion - not to be shown how it ends and then shown in stages how it got to the end point. H G Wells' story included brief hopes of a fightback against the enemy, followed by repeated defeat and despair, and that's what is needed to keep us invested in the narrative. I will watch the series to the end but unfortunately that end will have been signalled far too soon to anyone who has never read Wells' original work. I also fear we will have even more gratuitous social lessons thrust at us from our own time and society. Such a shame that they couldn't have just left the story alone to tell itself.

How Could They?

[simonhudson · 1/10 · 17 November 2019]

Seriously, how could they have got this so wrong? They had the opportunity to finally create a TV version of this classic novel which honoured the original story, timeline & setting but instead they came up with such aimless irrelevant drivel that I can only assume this is some kind of prank to wind up those of us that love both the HG Wells classic text & Jeff Wayne's sublime concept album. I cannot express enough what a steaming pile of horse excrement this lame pointless interpretation is. I never thought I'd say it but I now forgive Spielberg & Cruise.

Disappointing.

[sodiumtt · 6/10 · 27 November 2019]

Some good moments but generally spoiled by hackneyed ideas of extreme male stupidity, illogical and unbelievable reactions and an inconsistent storyline. Throw in polystyrene bricks and bendy wooden beams and you've got 1980's Doctor Who but with better special effects. A real shame. Felt like the job was just too big for the production team.

Wilful destruction of literary art.

[KingBarnaDuke · 2/10 · 24 October 2019]

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.

Loved it.

[searchanddestroy-1 · 8/10 · 17 January 2020]

I frankly don't get why there is so few good comments about this amazing mini series. I am not a science fiction specialist though, but I was not bored at all and I found it rather faithful to the HG Well's book. OK, it's quite different from the other versions, more modern, but who cares? I love the ending, very gloomy. That's actually the most important element that makes I like this series. I will try the other series, produced in the same time.

THE WAR OF DREARYNESS

[james-eggett · 6/10 · 6 December 2019]

The chemistry of this production shows how dreary and disappointing it can become with the pace being slow and amounting to hardly anything. The overdone of colour effect at most parts adds to the dreariness, and puts you off even to a 3 episode margin. The actors try to fit in their shoes the best they can but Spall's character can hardly earn respect for his existence. The only couple of good notes is some visual interests and wide-scenery atmosphere works only for particularly a few seconds. The drama which it centres on puts you off the hopeful interest of seeing a pure adaptation of Wells' work and fails to be entertaining.

Hated it - reading the reviews on here is more entertaining than the TV series

[FakeReviewsSuck · 1/10 · 26 November 2019]

In my own personal opinion I thought it was badly scripted, badly acted, badly produced and the special effects were appalling. I really didn't enjoy this at all. What was promised was a genuine adaptation of HG Wells novel - what was delivered was nothing like it other than they roughly got the time period right.

But what got my back up most of all was the number of 10/10 reviews or to be honest ANY review scoring it over 3/10. It is almost as if they somehow wanted to get its score up to mitigate the disaster that it is.

I gave it 1 out of 10 because I thought it was garbage. I have no ulterior motive for this I just genuinely thought it was that bad.