These days, old things are getting woke up(dates).

Just check out the #MeToo modernization of James Bond (here) and John Legend’s rewriting of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”

For all you science fiction fans, according to a report by The Sun, there’s a new and improved War of the Worlds for your viewing pleasure.

In this cooler version, the three-parter set for BBC glory waxes philosophic on nationalism, climate change, and religion. And don’t expect to find out faith is a good thing. Same goes for that aforementioned “N” word.

Bonus: A female lead.

As per the article, actress Eleanor Tomlinson plays Amy, who’ll be reading the famed introduction to the story — a text originally written for some dude.

In previous film versions, it was delivered by Richard Burton, Morgan Freeman, and Orson Welles.

Amy thinks it’s high time for something different:

“It’s time for a woman to do it. I mean, come on!”

And how ’bout that whole “God and country” thing?

Here’s screenwriter Peter Harness:

“[R]eligion is pretty roundly rubbished. Religion and militarism and these notions of nationhood in Wells’s book and in this adaptation, they just wither in the face of these aliens.”

Slashfilm observes the veering away from H.G. Wells’s classic:

The War of the Worlds uses flash-forwards to explore the time after the so-called “war,” a time where the survivors turn to religion for a solution to their new toxic Earth where nothing ever grows and red weed covers the world, and the elders don’t listen to rational solutions to their problems. While the cast in general does a fine job with their roles, the show is definitely more interested in Tomlinson’s Amy, who becomes the real protagonist of the story and is quick to offer explanations and find ways to survive.

Science fiction is certainly no stranger to messaging. In The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling and his brilliant group of writers (including profound Stephen King influence Richard Matheson) used the medium to smartly and evasively comment on society in ways that wouldn’t go over so well if attempted directly.

I guess these days, “indirectly” is for the birds. Notions such as metaphor might be largely lost on the most aware among us. Same goes for irony (shout-out to Antifa and Kamala Harris’s Family Friendly School Act).

And so here we are — the war of the worlds. I’m not talking about the movie; I mean the battle between the way things were and the way they’re being made to be.

But that’s societal evolution for ya — something, by the way, that The Twilight Zone didn’t anticipate.

So if you’ve always felt the hugely successful novel just wasn’t up to par, here’s your chance to be riveted by a rewrite.

Much like “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”

It’s woke outside, too, baby.

-ALEX

Relevant RedState links in this article: here, here, and here.

See 3 more pieces from me: 

An 80’S Children’s Cartoon Hit Gets Rebooted And Newly Woke With Gay And Nonbinary Characters

How Dumb Does It Have To Get? Pamela Anderson Dons A Skimpy Outfit, And The Woke Attack – Over Politics

Seattle Public Education Posts Its White-Privilege ‘Math Ethnic Studies Framework,’ And It Just May Blow Your Mind

Find all my RedState work here.

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