(AFP) – “The war of the worlds” returns Monday on Canal + with a virus that could save civilization, like a snub to the news. And, true to its first season, this sci-fi series probes the torments and faults of humanity.
Aired on Mondays at 9:00 p.m. at the rate of two episodes per week (8 in total), this second season (entitled “Chapter II: the confrontation”) will impress viewers.
While the first season, broadcast in 2019, saw the protagonists wander through France and England, tracked down by mechanical creatures disembarked from alien ships and exterminating everything that moves, thus creating permanent tension, the sequel is yet to come. more muscular and carrying answers eagerly awaited by fans.
It will offer the protagonists, including the heroes Bill Ward and Catherine Durand, tormented scientists embodied by Gabriel Byrne and Léa Drucker, the opportunity to take their revenge on the mysterious invaders. And we will finally discover the origins and motivations of these attackers.
But behind the guerrilla scenes that raise the adrenaline even more in this sequel, this very free adaptation of the work of HG Wells poses philosophical and ethical questions.
“We continue the same themes: how far are we willing to go to protect the species and to protect our loved ones, and how would we be seen by aliens,” said series creator Howard Overman, during ‘an exchange with journalists.
In Season 1, characters who had nothing in common had to overcome their differences and grudges to fight against the common enemy. But in “The Confrontation”, they will realize that this adversary is not that foreign, creating many dilemmas …
– A metaphor for the risks of self-destruction –
As in real wars, “we always think that our enemies are very different from us and military strategists do everything to dehumanize them, but in reality they are not very different,” explains Howard Overman.
And behind the cliché of intergalactic invaders, this “war of the worlds” was conceived as a metaphor for the risks of humanity’s self-destruction.
“The series works like a thriller, but also, on an unconscious level, it challenges us and prompts us to think about the world we live in and the existential threats which, for the first time in history, are very real, like climate change or the risk of nuclear annihilation which can totally destroy humanity “, decrypts Gabriel Byrne.
“The threat does not come from extraterrestrials, the real danger comes from us,” he says.
In this second season, the character played by the Irish star actor attempts to develop a virus to eradicate aliens (an idea drawn in part from the novel by HG Wells). And, as in the Covid-19 crisis, scientists are being erected as saviors of civilization.
As for the abundant scenes of cities emptied of their inhabitants and plunged into silence, very cinematographic, they resonate strangely at the time of the confinements caused by the pandemic.
“It’s as if fiction engenders reality,” observes Emilie de Preissac, who plays Sophia, Catherine Durand’s sister. “There is like an echo to what is happening today”.
The other strength of the series, behind its “very spectacular visual universe”, is its ability to show what makes the worst but also the best of humanity, notes for his part Léa Drucker. For her, the work shows us “how to find the path to hope” when everything seems lost to us.
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