2013, dir. Mike Slee, Mark Strong, Jock McLeod;
IMDb /
Wikipedia
A brief history of the Great Martian War, combining interviews with
veterans and archive footage.
Everyone knows the outline of the Great Martian War, of course:
the invasion, the advance, the stand-off, and the eventual defeat of
the invading force. But most of us these days don't know the details
of the course of the war, and the stories of those who were involved.
In 2013 it seemed an appropriate time to make a new documentary,
taking the odd position of assuming no knowledge at all, which would
recount the whole thing.
And this is it: how the Martians landed in Germany and destroyed its
army practically overnight; how other nations disbelievingly
contributed troops to the war; how the Herons and Iron Spiders
rampaged across Europe to be halted only a few miles short of Paris;
how the scavenging Lice and the areas completely stripped of men and
matériel had a morale effect worse in some ways than the defeats; how
the Martian feints lured in the massed attacks of early '15. How a
daring raid on a Heron base gave us the Victisite that would later
define the technological path of the 20th century, and how the
superweapon that would defeat the Martians was developed – and, to be
fair, how this led directly to the "Martian Flu" epidemic that
devastated Europe and the Americas after the war was over.
The style is the usual short-shot favoured by modern documentaries,
with a narrator explaining what was happening, followed by one of the
survivors (mostly filmed in the 1980s and 1990s before their deaths)
talking about how it felt to be on the front lines. Particularly
missed is Gus Lafonde, who retrieved Martian artefacts as a form of
"counting coup" but died forgotten in the 1980s; his
great-granddaughter, who recently re-discovered his notebooks from the
time, does her best to fill in.
As one would expect, not much film footage survives, though this
unfortunately means that what we see is sometimes a little repetitive.
The quality is surprisingly good for the time.
I'm glad to see that this film resists the current trend for
speculative alternate history: there are enough nutters out there with
their theories of a Great War that might have happened if the Martians
hadn't united humanity. Well, they did and it didn't, and that's that.
It's unfortunate that this useful summary should be tied up with
modern conspiracy theory and the recent "Martian Code" nonsense, but I
suppose the History Channel has to have a hook these days. This fellow
Lawrence Hart claims to have come up with a translation of the Martian
language (based on Lafonde's notes); yes, yes, and so has every other
Mars-fixated crackpot over the last century. (Hart is also a fan of
the false-flag theory of the three American destroyers sunk in early
1917, and consequent entry of the USA into the war, so that tells you
how seriously you should take him.) And really, apart from his
grandstanding, what does he actually advocate? To have the courage of
his convictions would be to throw away all the technological gains of
the last century given to us by Victisite, and return to valves,
hand-cranked calculators, and internal combustion engines!
We are the guns, and your masters! Saw ye our flashes?
The trailer and the
History Channel's
site for the film
may prove interesting.
Addendum in 2020: this is now available via
archive.org.
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