War of the Worlds: Goliath

I don't know where this "style" of animation comes from. No, seriously, I don't know. But it seems like a lot of similar stuff was cranked out back in the eighties in shows like "He-Man" or "GI Joe." Every man a steroid-abusing lunk, every woman an astringent big sister. Is that how the world looks to eight-year-olds? I don't know.

I do know that what we see here is an alternative Earth where Martian steroid technology was adapted by Nicolai Tesla to enable all men to be gigantic muscle gods. Or something. But the 'roids also cause them to have bizarre behavioral changes--including constant teeth-clenching, weird grimmacing and a propensity to engage in suicidal fights--with each other, with Martians, with inanimate objects. All the actors spit out their lines like they are The Pharaoh cursing the Israelites. "Where're my pancakes!" sounds like a call to battle in this demented world where everything is macho and nothing is...well, um, "un-macho"?

It's all about the booming and the bashing and the hitting and the smacking, with unintentional comic relief provided by the tiny (of course)"girl" who has one heck of an anime hair-do. Anything--anything would have helped this dead whale get off the ground, except what they did. In this demented world, everything is based upon the social structure and skills of eight-year-olds. Conflict? Fight! All it needs is music by Metalica to be a perfect example of why maturity is a good thing.

Give this one a pass.

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.

Before we start, lets explain a bit about where I'm coming from. I grew up with parents who were fans of the Jeff Wayne War of The Worlds album and rapidly grew to like it myself. Hence, when the opportunity to read the novel came up at school I leaped at the chance and have since remained a fan of both of these works.

It has given me a cynical eye, however, hence pretty much every attempt to adapt the story has come up short in some way or another. So when I learned about this "sequel" I had to give it a shot, especially when I took a look at the cast list.

All in all, I was pleasantly surprised. Its certainly not what I would have expected, was was good fun and respectful to the source material in many ways and whilst I wasn't a huge fan of the Martian tripods, I could at least see how much they had drawn inspiration from the novel, so well done there.

Whilst most of the main characters a vaguely engaging, the stand-outs tended to be the supporting cast, who I got a blast out of and really made the movie shine and setting the whole thing in the run-up to the Great War was a similar moment of inspiration.

Its not perfect though. The story feels perhaps a bit too episodic, rather than feeling like more natural chapters - to the extent I found myself wondering if perhaps it wasn't originally slated to be a TV series and I was watching the first few episodes back-to back. As has been mentioned elsewhere, the dialogue sometimes also feels a little stilted but that clears up for most of the movie.

I also need to add that their choice of opening theme had me hooked from the word go.

So, overall the film is a decent package, not as sophisticated in its storytelling as some of its animated contemporaries, nor as polished as others. But its a good package and a welcome return to animated action, which seems to have fallen by the wayside in recent years (indeed, it reminded me in some ways of Titan AE, which seemed to herald the beginning and end of the last resurgence of animated action movies).

I'd guardedly recommend it, I know it won't be everyone's cup of tea, but it is certainly worth a look, especially if you have any interest in the original story, creative anachronisms or steampunk/dieselpunk tales.

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.

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."