{"id":1754,"date":"2009-07-11T15:04:09","date_gmt":"2009-07-11T15:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=1754"},"modified":"2009-07-11T15:04:09","modified_gmt":"2009-07-11T15:04:09","slug":"there_can_be_only_one_martian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2009\/07\/11\/there_can_be_only_one_martian\/","title":{"rendered":"There Can Be Only One… Martian Tripod?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m not a big fan of either animation or steampunk,* but I am intrigued by this:<\/p>\n

\"wotw-goliath_poster.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That’s the poster for a straight-to-DVD film project currently in production and scheduled to be released in 2010. The premise is that 14 years after the events of H.G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds<\/i>, the Martians try again. Only this time, humanity is ready for them, armed with weapons and fighting machines that were reverse-engineered from the alien technology left behind following the first invasion.<\/p>\n

That all sounds amusing enough, but what really caught my eye was the cast and crew credits on that poster. It appears that War of the Worlds: Goliath<\/i> is going to be something of a Highlander<\/i> reunion! Peter Wingfield, Elizabeth Gracen, Jim Byrnes, and Adrian Paul all starred on my favorite obsession of the mid-90s, Highlander: The Series<\/i>, and the writer of this film, David Abramowitz, is a Highlander<\/i> alum as well. (Credited as both Supervising Producer and Creative Consultant on the series, Abramowitz is widely held to be the guy who changed Highlander<\/i> from a cheesy villain-of-the-week syndicated action show — think Lorenzo Lamas’ Renegade<\/i><\/a>, only with swords and Quickenings — into something that actually asked questions about the human condition. I didn’t always like Abramowitz’s ideas, but the show definitely improved under his guidance.)<\/p>\n

If the Highlander<\/i> angle isn’t enough, Goliath<\/i>‘s other listed star, Adam Baldwin (no relation to Alec, William, et. al.) played Jayne in the cult favorite Firefly<\/i>, and executive producer Kevin Eastman is the dude who created the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. That’s a seriously geeky pedigree there!<\/p>\n

I hope this turns out to be good. Adrian Paul, in particular, could use an artistic success, if (most likely) not a financial one. I find him a very appealing actor, but since Highlander<\/i> wrapped, he’s unfortunately been trapped in a creative ghetto, churning out one low-budget crapfest after another (and yes, I count the last Highlander<\/i> movie, The Suck<\/i><\/a>, er, Source<\/i>, among those). Interestingly, this isn’t Adrian’s first encounter with Wells’ Martians; he also starred in the second season of that War of the Worlds<\/i> TV series<\/a> way back in the late ’80s. Not that anybody remembers him from that… I don’t, except as a point of trivia.<\/p>\n

Anyhow, if you’re interested in this at all, the official site for War of the Worlds: Goliath<\/i> is here<\/a>. It includes a production blog<\/a> (which hasn’t been updated since April, hopefully not a bad sign), and a gallery<\/a> of concept art. I particularly like the look the Martian tripod<\/a> machine. Very creepy…<\/p>\n

* Steampunk, if you don’t know the term, is a sub-genre of science fiction and fantasy that’s set in the Victorian Age or early 20th Century, but includes technology that’s somehow analogous to late-20th Century levels. It’s also a design aesthetic that seems to be very popular among DIYers and in certain corners<\/a> of the InterWebs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m not a big fan of either animation or steampunk,* but I am intrigued by this: That’s the poster for a straight-to-DVD film project currently in production and scheduled to be released in 2010. The premise is that 14 years after the events of H.G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds, the Martians try […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1754\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}