a review of 世界大战

I first saw this version of The War of the Worlds at a very young age, maybe six or seven years old. The apocalyptic mayhem caused by the Martian spacecraft's deadly laserbeams made a lasting impression on me. I was curious to see how well the film had withstood the test of time, and I prepared for a really dated, very campy giggle experience. But I was pleasantly surprised by the relatively impressive quality of the special effects, if you regard the film in its contemporary context, long before computer-generated effects, and almost a quarter of a century before the first Star Wars movie. I really liked the screen compositions and atmospheric colored lighting, reflecting the then relatively new color film era. I also loved the numerous stereotypes throughout the film, and the eye-pleasing 1950s aesthetics. It felt like taking a dive into a pool filled with gloomy 1950s science fiction pulp novels and comics, with the characteristic communist invasion paranoia of that time being the bottom of the pool. In short: an iconic sci-fi classic.