Question

For this assessment, submit your Venn diagram with notes about the similarities and differences between the two versions of War of the Worlds.

Answer 1

differences

The film's most obvious difference is that it takes place in the early 21st century northeastern United States rather than southern England "in the last years of the 19th century."
Another significant difference is the change of the protagonist from a happily married middle-class intellectual without children to a divorced working-class father of two. The social background plays an important part in the plot. The protagonist's wife had left him for a richer and more successful man, her parents in Boston never approved of him, and — most important for him — his children treat him with open contempt. A significant sub-plot are the protagonist's efforts, not only to survive and save his children from the invasion, but also to win their respect. The embrace with his son in the final scene shows that he succeeded. All this, of course, has no parallel in the original novel.
The film's aliens do not land on Earth in giant cylinders before unleashing their war machines. Instead, the machines have already been buried underground, and the aliens arrive in capsules transported via lightning bolts. The details of this are never clearly explained, although the aliens are mentioned to have been buried since far before human civilization and were most likely waiting for human population to burgeon (otherwise there would not be sufficient food to harvest). This seems to have been a modification of the story resulting from Mars's conclusively having been shown by American space probes to harbor absolutely no intelligent life, and hence no longer being a plausible origin for the invaders.
The aliens' tripods are more formidable in combat than their in-the-novel counterparts: the latter, although deadly, are still susceptible to conventional weapons and can be defeated in combat. The movie's tripod counterparts are fitted with a "shield" that makes them nearly impervious to an attack. The idea of the force-field shields stems from the 1953 movie version of the story. (Lacking such shields, modern weapons would have made short work of the Martian machines that were envisioned by Wells in 1898, or even of the tripods in the film, which were easily knocked down by small Stingers and Javelins.)
The film omits a prominent element from the novel: the Black Smoke, which was a part of the original Martians' deadly arsenal. Writer David Koepp has explained that this was dropped more or less due to lack of time and it didn't make it past his first draft, so any sightings of a similar substance are purely coincidence and can be attributed to other smoke sources.[10] The film also does not include the Thunder Child, whose symbol of power but ultimate failure to stop the invaders was represented in the 1953 film by the failure of the atomic bomb attack; however, there is a vaguely similar scene taking place on land in which U.S. Army forces fight valiantly in an effort to hold back the tripods until refugees make it to safety.
This movie's aliens are drastically different in design, featuring more humanoid mouths and also being tripedal, where Wells' Martians have lipless v-shaped mouths and tentacles. Also, the Martians of Wells' book, as well as in the movie, feast on the blood of humans (Wells described the clean skeletons of humans and other animals) but the aliens in the book apparently don't use human blood as fertilizer for their xenoforming project. In this movie, the invaders are also uninterested in animals (rats, birds, etc.). The aliens' design has been the subject of some criticism, considered too cute and humanlike, as opposed to the novel's entirely non-human and repulsive aliens.
In the film, Tim Robbins's character, Harlan Ogilvy, plays a synthesized dual role of the curate and the artilleryman from the novel, while sharing the name of the novel's narrator's friend. The film's Ogilvy has the qualities of the novel's increasingly mad curate, who drives the narrator to fight with him frequently. In the book, the character named Ogilvy is one of the first people killed by the aliens' Heat-Ray. The film's Ogilvy has the qualities of the novel's artilleryman in that he is digging a tunnel for an underground city with the goal of resistance. The novel's curate is taken, and presumably "eaten", by the aliens after being struck in the head and left for dead by the narrator. In both versions, the story does not state outright that the main character killed the man, but the novel narrator does say "the killing of the curate" was "a thing done, a memory infinitely disagreeable but quite without the quality of remorse."
The film never says where the aliens are from, unlike the book, where they are from Mars; in 1898, when the book was written, the possibility of life on Mars was considered realistic. This difference in origin shrouds the motive for the attacks on the Earth. In the book, the Martians are escaping from their dissipated planet, searching for a place to continue their civilization, rather than the "extermination" explanation given by a character in the film. The prologue makes a few visual references to Mars, once while an image of Earth shifts into that of a red stoplight and later when the camera leaves the edge of an outer neighboring planet of Earth. In Koepp's script, there is a brief shot in the prologue depicting the invader's home world. However, it remains unnamed, referred to only as a "barren planet."
H.G. Wells never had the narrator play the hero. In fact, the story is told as a recount of the war, thus eliminating any doubts about the welfare of the narrator. In the film, the main character, Ray, succeeds in blowing up an alien tripod, creating the idea that heroes can be made in the face of an unbeatable foe, an idea Wells believed was inappropriate for the tone of his story, abandoning an early idea, similar to the film, in which the narrator plans to suicide bomb a tripod (though even in this early idea, the character is not allowed to carry it out). The narrator was not meant to be a hero, but merely a survivor. However, Ray's idea of giving himself over to the invaders is still similar to the novel's narrator after he had lost all hope.
Much like in the 1953 film, the unnamed narrator and main character is not the same as he is in the novel. He is not divorced (although Ray shares a very similar goal of reuniting with his ex-wife), nor does he have a son or daughter to look after.
While Ray has a brother much like the book's narrator, the film does not touch upon anything from this character's point-of-view, as the narrator recites some of what the brother witnessed during the invasion.
In the novel, the narrator becomes trapped in an abandoned house when an alien cylinder lands close by. In the film, Ray, Rachel, and Ogilvy are trapped in the house because the tripods are still outside. However, the scene in which the airplane crashes into Mary-Anne's house is similar to the scene in the book when the cylinder lands.
No matter the location, virtually every version of the story tells of an arrival and then assault by what are the first aliens to land on Earth. However, in this version, it is established that the invasion has already begun in other parts of the world, though the main character is oblivious to this until much later in the story. Additionally this scene also gives both the character and the audience their first image of the invaders, something that only happens later in both this and the 1953 film.
The design of the tripods is not the same as their description in the novel. Wells describes the machines as "Walking engines of glittering metal... pieces of intricate rope dangling from it... green gas squirting from its joints... its motion was like a head moving about..." There are also no references to the invaders having any other machines than the tripods — in the novel, the Martians also had a Handling-Machine (a five-legged machine with three tentacles used to build the tripods), Digging Machine (an automatic excavator), and a Flying Machine.
In the novel, the Martian machines make a kind of "Ulla! Ulla!" sound, whereas, in the film, the machines drone out a very low, loud, two-pitched sound as a sort of battle cry.

Similarities

Although there are very many differences from the book, there are also various similarities. Some are obvious, and others are noted by the naming of certain scenes in the DVD chapters.
The aliens are ultimately defeated by terrestrial microorganisms.
The lines spoken in the bookends of the film by the narrator are almost verbatim from those written in the novel.
The fighting machines are tripods.
The tripods are armed with Heat-Rays, however unlike the large funnels described in the original novel these heat rays fire large blue laser bursts instead of waves of heat and are held below the head of the tripod and not above it as in the novel. Also, in the novel, the Heat-Rays simply incinerate the tripods' victims, but in the film, the Heat-Rays disintegrate the humans entirely (leaving only their charred clothes behind).
A speeding train runs by with every carriage aflame.
There is a scene in the movie where the main character and his daughter witness a mass of floating bodies going down a river, just like the narrator witnessed in the novel.
Tripods are equipped with long tentacles that grab humans and put them into metal carriers or cages, just as in the book, where eventually these human prisoners will be drained of their blood for the use of food for the invaders.
The red weed is spread everywhere the eye can see.
There is a scene where the characters are trapped in a farmhouse because of the invaders being outside.
Ray's van is taken from them just like in the novel, where the narrator's

Answer 2

I don't believe you typed all of that -.-

@Mr.Helper2

Answer 3

^ please stop spamming the post @Conqueror

Answer 4

What's your problem? @just_one_last_goodbye

Answer 5

You don't have to trash me just because I told you to stop giving out direct answers.

Answer 6

problem? O_O what i dont have a problem just follow the CoC and you'll be ok here please take the time to read it and you'll be on a great path http://openstudy.com/code-of-conduct

Answer 7

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Answer 8

I think you need to read it more than I do, because I actually read it when I joined when I was supposed to. Unlike you, going through the motions checking on some boxes that don't mean anything to you.

Answer 9

^ please be nice @Conqueror and stop spamming the post

Answer 10

Conqueror is not spamming the post. He is pointing out that this was ripped off from here:
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080508165822AAVF9Od

Which is a copyright issue. Even though this was done for educational purposes, it is better to give the source credit.