{"id":132159,"date":"2016-12-04T19:54:04","date_gmt":"2016-12-05T02:54:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/04\/martian-war-machines.html"},"modified":"2016-12-11T15:33:22","modified_gmt":"2016-12-11T22:33:22","slug":"martian-war-machines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/04\/martian-war-machines.html","title":{"rendered":"Martian War Machines"},"content":{"rendered":"

I dearly love the Albert Nozaki design for the war machines in George Pal's 1953 The War of the Worlds.<\/i> They are smooth, elegant, still unique, and (coupled with the sound design) utterly menacing.<\/p>\n

The 1980s TV show had many flaws, but whenever they threw in one of these babies (which were sort of the Ultimate Menace, given invulnerable they were), it was magic.<\/p>\n

George Pal originally envisioned using classic Wellsean tripods, but it was more difficult to portray and military advisers said mechanical tripods would be vulnerable to attack (see: The Empire Strikes Back<\/i> for the vulnerability of quadripods, for example). <\/p>\n

The "easy" answer, magnetic "tripod" legs holding the war machines up (which is why they don't actually "fly"). These are visible in a few scenes, but the original effect was deemed too much of a fire hazard to sustain. Still, even when the magnetic "legs" are not visible, the ground effect is often shown.<\/p>\n

The sound effects (https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=pS1QapooZrM<\/a>) are a big part of it, too (and sufficiently cool that many of them became stock).<\/p>\n

Cool stuff.<\/p>\n

Alas, the original Martian War Machine props from the movie were actually made out of copper, and were donated to a Boy Scout metals drive. Almost as prosaic an end as that suffered by the Martians …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n
\n<\/a>\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

In Album 12\/4\/16<\/a><\/p>\n

View on Google+<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I dearly love the Albert Nozaki design for the war machines in George Pal's 1953 The War of the Worlds. They are smooth, elegant, still unique, and (coupled with the sound design) utterly menacing. The 1980s TV show had many flaws, but whenever they threw in one of these babies (which were sort of the … Continue reading “Martian War Machines”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":132160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[106,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-plusposts","category-media-movies"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/The-War-Of-The-Worlds-115B15D.jpgimgmax=660.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7934,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/07\/19\/wars_of_the_wor.html","url_meta":{"origin":132159,"position":0},"title":"Wars of the World","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 19-Jul-05 11:49am","format":false,"excerpt":"Fascinating look at book covers of eleventy-dozen different editions of The War of the Worlds. A whooooole lot of tripods there (though I still have a fondness for the swan-necked...","rel":"","context":"In "Books"","block_context":{"text":"Books","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/media-books"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":26159,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/02\/07\/rip-john-christopher.html","url_meta":{"origin":132159,"position":1},"title":"RIP John Christopher","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 7-Feb-12 1:30pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I dearly loved the Tripods trilogy as a kid. Need to prod my daughter to read them. #ddtb Embedded Link John Christopher obituary Science-fiction author who created the Tripods trilogy and also published under the name Samuel Youd","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":19147,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/11\/08\/war-of-the-worlds-1953.html","url_meta":{"origin":132159,"position":2},"title":"War of the Worlds (1953)","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 8-Nov-10 9:26pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Finally got Kay to sit still for the George Pal War of the Worlds<\/i>. \u00a0As a movie, it has no more personality than Wells' original, but the effects -- in particular the Martian War Machines -- still are Teh Awesome. A bit of fun trivia from IMDB: Modern viewers often\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Movies"","block_context":{"text":"Movies","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/media-movies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/WarOfTheWorlds_pal.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":19117,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/11\/04\/unblogged-bits-thu-4-nov-10-1730.html","url_meta":{"origin":132159,"position":3},"title":"Unblogged Bits (Thu. 4-Nov-10 1730)","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 4-Nov-10 5:30pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries .... Friendly Atheist \u00bb Trust Him; He\u2019s a Pastor - Um ... I wouldn't give this guy cab fare, let alone my bank accounting information to pull out stuff. Heck, I don't like doing that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books"","block_context":{"text":"Books","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/media-books"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":21558,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/07\/13\/tv-on-a-business-trip.html","url_meta":{"origin":132159,"position":4},"title":"TV on a Business Trip","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 13-Jul-11 7:20pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I ended up watching TV at the hotel, and on the plane. Unfortunately, not much of what I watched was all that ... um ... likely to be watched (by me) again: Falling Skies: It's like War of the Worlds! \u00a0No, it's like the Tripods! \u00a0No, it's like Red Dawn,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "TV"","block_context":{"text":"TV","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/media-tv"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/tv-philco-predicta-234x300.gif?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":132154,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/05\/movie-review-the-war-of-the-worlds-1953.html","url_meta":{"origin":132159,"position":5},"title":"Movie Review: "The War of the Worlds" (1953)","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 5-Dec-16 12:01am","format":false,"excerpt":"One of my favorite SF movies when I was a kid, the gorgeous Martian War Machines remain an icon. Don't watch it expecting a personal drama: this film is all about SFX, amazing miniatures, and faith as the source of resistance to the evils of this world.Three stars and a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/war-of-the-worlds5B15D.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/war-of-the-worlds5B15D.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/war-of-the-worlds5B15D.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132159"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":132259,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132159\/revisions\/132259"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}