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The War Machines
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Reviews
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The War Machines
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Cute is the New Menacing by Stephen Maslin 14/5/15
Modern television has done us a disservice in being much too convincing. Monsters look monsterish. This should be a good thing, but it isn't: you can just sit back and wallow, which is fine, but without so much need to apply your imagination. You merely need eyes and ears (and to put up with a job you hate just long enough to pay for a huge television). Worse is that it can make things so clear cut. Things on screen are not only more clearly seen but more clearly understood. It's easier to make a snap judgment about something that really does look sinister than about something that is meant to look sinister but in fact looks rather silly.
"War machines must be built immediately."Television morality may for a while have gone in the other direction - away from exactitude towards a sea of grey areas - but a threat that is visually ambiguous from the beginning of a story through to its end is still rare. If a villain looks sweet early on, chances are they will be revealed as in some way 'hideous' later on. It could be something as simple as the sudden glint of CGI fangs, or it could be a total biological transformation (man becoming wolf, for instance). Or, for inanimate objects, it could be a miraculous technical transformation (say, innocent public toilet becoming destructive jet fighter). In the milieu of digital film and television, the world's your oyster.
"War machines will be ready to attack by noon tomorrow."How nice then to go back to 1966: a time when mechanical foes could have a chummy, hand-made, cereal-box-model kind of quality; when something was a threat to be feared but also somehow endearing. There is something about the war machines (the things themselves, rather the story of the same name) that speaks of a certain naive pride in a job well done; of earnest sons of the soil, toiling long into the night with plywood, hand tools, strong glue and buckets of dedication, finishing the job on time, with ne'er a word of complaint; without cynicism; without some prosaic middle manager demanding something straight out of the officially sanctioned 'How To Do Scary' manual; without sophistication perhaps but also without shame. You want some kind of vehicle with non-functional tank tracks, and prongs and a big swinging hammer? Then some kind of vehicle with non-functional tank tracks and prongs and a big swinging hammer you shall have! Oh, and could we have some kind of steam gun? Nothing simpler! (And, no doubt, for next to nothing.)
"War machines must be disciplined."The war machines are special. They are supposed to be menacing but it is entirely up to us to make them menacing. (They are in fact adorable and, like guinea pigs, make such sweet little noises too. They even have a little face. Sweet.)
"War machines must attack simultaneously."There is also something special about the fact that the war machines are captured and not blown up. Rather than there being a specially designed bomb or bazooka or plywood-eating virus, they are gently corralled into an electrified pen, like errant sheep. It's almost as if the production crew didn't have the heart to see them blown to perdition. (Actually, it was because they only made one of them and changed the number on it to make it look like there were more.) Not for them the fate of many a Dalek, to end up a smoking wreck or pushed into a swamp. No, they are quietly rounded up, without recourse to physical violence, given a little reprogramming and a bit of a talking-to and then sent off to help build an orphanage or construct an irrigation system or rented out to a theme park to give rides to delighted children.
AFTERTHOUGHT
Can you imagine what the war machines would be like if they were brought back now? They would be somewhere between life-size Transformers toys and US military hardware that, instead of chasing courting couples down alleyways and knocking over a few dustbins, would incinerate 87% of the population of northern Europe, casting huge shadows as they approached each new target city. The tank tracks would be real tank tracks, stained with the blood of innocents and with bits of CGI bones stuck to their treads. The prongs would have assorted members of a multi-racial military force impaled upon them. The steam guns would melt flesh. The hammer would make an ear-splitting noise, like a badly rusted drawbridge, heard from many miles distant, mixed with the shrieks of helpless victims. It would be carnage, utter carnage... and really, really boring.