George Pal vs. Roland Emmerich

Monday, June 29th, 2009 • Horrorthon Posts

George Pal was a fair-to-middling producer/director of high-concept sci-fi spectacle movies in the 1950s (like “Destination Moon” and the original “The War of the Worlds”). In other words, he was the Roland Emmerich of the Truman/Eisenhower Era.

Anyway he made a movie called “When Worlds Collide” in 1951 (based on a novel of the same name) that I remember watching on black-and-white TV with my Dad back when I was a little kid. And it was really exciting and scary! The earth’s about to be destroyed and the government sends an “ark” into space in order to save the species.

So now, in the tradition of “Gladiator” and a whole bunch of other 1950s retreads, Sony Pictures has made what as far as I can tell is a remake-in-all-but-name called “2012,” directed by Roland Emmerich (of course). It’s really interesting to watch both trailers, one after the other, just to see how much things have changed in 58 years (both in the world and in Hollywood). Like I said, it looks like practically the same exact movie, except that movies are made, well, a little differently these days.

Watch the trailer to “When Worlds Collide” and then the trailer to “2012” (watch “Trailer 2”). The more things change, the more they remain the same…

[Octopunk: as I mentioned, I moved this up because I had a longer comment to make on it about something besides White House bashing.]