War of the Worlds: Goliath

I went to go see this movie because Kevin Eastman's name was attached to it. Kevin Eastman just in case you don't know created the Ninja Turtles with Peter Lard and is also the publisher of Heavy Metal Magazine. Whenever I think of Heavy Metal magazine I always think of hotly drawn scantily clad girls, and was expecting that in the adult themed animation, but of course adult does not just mean nude girls. Lucky for me this movie did not disappoint when I realized that.

In fact, only one woman was featured in this all-star cast made up of actors from the TV show Highlander. Elizabeth Gracen, who played Amanda on the show and its spin-off, The Raven, played the one woman, while the highlander himself, Adrian Paul toke a side step as a supporting charter. Also Jim Brynes who played Dawson on the show, and is a voice-acting veteran by now, also has a part in the film.

It's a really awesome premise. The movie acts as a sequel to War of the Worlds taking place 15 years after the events of the H.G. Wells novel in a steam punk influenced world where the human race creates an organization to train solders to prepare for another Martian attack just in case it happens. In a time and place when the "issues" that would lead to the First World War are causing conflict with the solders in this organization, which consist of men and women from every country in the world, the solders come together to train in war games only for the Martians to pick that time to attack again.

The movie has a slow start as it tends to run on with it's explanation as to what's going on in the world, but form the beginning the movie was awesome to look at as the animation, which was a blend of traditional animation and CGI and the art design, especially that which focused on a steam punk vibe was as good as the stuff in Heavy Metal Magazine.

Thought the 3D is not worth the price the action is. The battle scenes in the movie were great, not just from the animation point of view but it was very dramatic in it's story telling.

A total thumbs up!

I am an ardent movie-goer and when someone told me of a USA-Malaysia collaboration of an indie animation film project, I was intrigued. For one thing, I know how difficult it is to get to the point where indie projects DO get made, and that would involve money, time, a lot of passion and tons of support from all directions. For another thing, I am a fellow South-East Asian and I am always looking to help boost signals of the range of artistic talent and wonderful stories that belong to our geographical area.

It so happened that I was invited to the special preview at last year's Comic-Con and I cleared my busy hectic SDCC schedule just to make it there.

For the budget that it had, "War of the Worlds: Goliath" (WotW:G) was entertaining fare. I went to the premiere being practically realistic and didn't expect to be totally Wow-ed as if I was a cinema audience watching a Pixar movie. But I was surprised at how good "WotW:G" turned out to be.

Yes, some parts of the dialogue were stilted but it got a little more fluid about a third into the movie. The movie didn't waste time on too much prose but was centred on lots of action, warfare and those "hey, you are my bro, man" kinda moments. Very "guy" stuff.

I had thought the addition of Raja Iskandar Shah would be the typical token-Asian stereotype but then, he also started using a kris in some key fight scenes.. that's when all bets are off ;)

The animation was a mix of 2D-3D.. if you are used to watching anime, it is not really distracting. (Again, this is not a Disney production - nor meant to be!) And I loved the futuristic steampunk concept artwork that was applied quite consistently throughout the film.

After all the guns and smoke and explosions that marked most of the movie, the beautiful music scoring for "WotW:G" was something that nailed the emotion and heart of the entire story. At least for me.

Watching "WotW:G" gave me some hope --- the mix of styles/ mediums and characters showed how various work in films can cross "the East-West divide" in a positive and unique way.

Here's to more successful collaborations like these in the future.

As a fellow animation director, I understand how difficult it must have been to make this beautiful film on a low budget but Joe pulled it off nicely. Some very innovative camera work and nice direction kept this film on track. The look is very refreshing for an American made feature. It reminded me of some of the great Japanese anime films like Steamboy and Akira. I only wish the character animation could have been done here in the states. I would have loved to work on it. Science fiction fantasy films that are animated are the type of productions we all like to see. It's rare to see one done with such love and attention to detail. Joe is a fine director and did a great job guiding his overseas animators to deliver the best acting possible for this film and they did well.

This movie is HARD to review, if anything it is a prime example of a 'mixed bag'.

At first the good stuff: The premise of the movie is downright genius. The design of the world (not the character design, later more on that) is wonderful and complaining whether it is steam- or diesel-punk is nitpicking. There are many ideas/designs, that made me downright jealous, why I did not come up with them. At some points I even wanted to point at the screen and say: "They put this historical character in this situation? Awesome!" or "Oh, look at this!", especially when it came to the creative background art. The opening-sequence is wonderful, too (the song accompanying is not). And finally, I enjoyed the action-scenes, despite all the issues the movie has.

It is a decent action-flick if you don't have too high expectations.

Having that said, here the bad things:

Animation: First and foremost, the animation of the characters is bad, 1980s-western-television-animation-bad. It is clunky and the characters convey less emotion, than the puppets from the Thunderbirds T.V.-Show. The phoned-in voice acting does not help either.

The bad animation attributes to some serious blending issues the film has. Especially the bad character animation does not go well with the rest of the film. WOTW Goliath feels like the teams of CGI-, classic animation and 'rest' did not communicate at all. CGI is passable.

The character design is poor. Many characters have the same stereotypical body-type repeated over and over again. You will also notice that some of the men apparently have their shirts directly painted on their skin.

Writing: Although there are some fun ideas in the movie, the writing is something between bland and bad. Many lines and actions stood out as stupid, forced or contrived. You know that you in for sub-par writing, when someone drops the line "As you know..." and then spills exposition to an audience that already knows these facts... an exposition, mind you, that was already perfectly conveyed to the viewer in the 10 minutes prior.

The movie devolves into "fight fight fight", with no real character-development after the point the martians have landed, but I don't complain about that – that was what I wanted to see after all. I would guess that this movies was originally planned as an OVA or series, but then got cut down to the length of a movie.

Direction: There is one thing that really ANNOYED me: In nearly every shot of this movie the camera is either panning, zooming in or out and/or tracking somewhere. Often this establishes something the audience has already seen before. This annoyed me so much so, I had to think at the 'slanted angles' from Battlefield Earth. I even assume that some people might even get motion sick while looking at it.

Conclusion: "Force the Guillermo del Toro to do his take on this."

I've seen this film twice, in theatres, in 3D, and loved it both times. The 3D is really good, and the production values far exceed the film's modest budget. As a steampunk sequel to the Wells classic, Mr. Pearson and his team have nothing to apologize for. I know that some find it hard to accept the blending of 2D hand-animation with 3D CGI (for the mecha) but this technique has been done before with both Korean and Japanese theatrical anime. As WOTW Goliath was animated in Malaysia, it fits right in with these other examples. I hope that western viewers will be able to check their prejudgements and enjoy the film for what it is.