slacktivist went to see Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, and was intrigued to find that many conservative pundits are interpreting it as an anti-American diatribe. But as he points out, H. G. Wells wrote the original novel as a commentary on the colonialism of his day. He was trying to get his readers to understand what it might have been like for aboriginal peoples to be confronted by the overwhelming and inexorable fire-power of Britain and the other European powers.
“These conservative film critic wannabes want a story to follow the moral outline of the old comics code or of Job’s foolish friend Bildad. They want the good guys to be rewarded for their virtue and the bad guys to be punished for their vice. But Wells’ story isn’t about morality, it’s about power. His Martian invaders have bigger, better weapons so they win and we lose. Period.
This, I think, is what the rightwing critics find most threatening in Wells’ story and Spielberg’s film. It vividly illustrates that might and right are not the same thing, that military superiority is not evidence of superior virtue. If the illustration of such a basic truth can now be interpreted as an ‘anti-American’ political statement, that is neither Wells’ nor Spielberg’s fault.”