2009’s War Eagles is based on a story that Merian C. Cooper and Willis O’Brien wanted to turn into a feature film and it is a throwback to the lost world type of tale from an earlier era.
What Is It?
This book is a novelization of a concept by Merian C. Cooper and Willis O’Brien (who together created the original King Kong) and it had originally been planned as a feature film in the 1940s. It follows an army test pilot, Captain Jan-Peter Brandt, who is court-martialed after trying to prove the usefulness of an experimental plane in a stunt that endangers the life of President Roosevelt. After that, he is hired by the person whose plane he was flying to try out yet another experimental aircraft in a flight that will go around the world from pole to pole. The plane is attacked in flight, though, and crashes in the Arctic and Brandt and his crew find themselves in an undiscovered land overrun with prehistoric beasts. There is also a tribe of Norsemen who ride giant eagles, and Brandt befriends this group while also learning to tame and ride one of the large birds. At first, he considers staying with the tribe, but then they discover that a group of Nazis are there testing an experimental weapon, and Brandt convinces the Norsemen to join him in the fight against this enemy.
Author: Debbie Bishop, Carl Macek, (based on a story by Merian C. Cooper and Willis O’Brien and script by Harold Lamb, James A. Creelman, and Cyril Hume)
Originally Published: 2009
Legacy:
This book has not received much attention since it was published, but it brings to life a tale originally devised by Cooper and O’Brien it delivers a wonderful throwback to an earlier era of story-telling.
A Closer Look:
In the late 1930s, Merian C. Cooper and Willis O’Brien started working on this film which had some similarities to their previous King Kong project along with plenty of its own unique elements. It actually got pretty far into pre-production, and a young Ray Harryhausen even got involved at one point. But the cost of the film would have been high and World War II broke out which led to the project getting shut down not long after Cooper left to help with the war effort. Harryhausen would later try several times to revive the project, and according to his forward in the book, the novelization is a step toward realizing that (though sadly he passed away several years after it was published).
And while the book is a consolation prize at this point, it should definitely delight fans of the works of Willis O’Brien and even Ray Harryhausen. This is definitely a love letter to a simpler time of story-telling and you can practically see the characters pop out in full black and white just as you would expect from a novelization of a film script written in the 30s/40s. Captain Brandt is definitely the typical alpha-male hero expected from a film at that time, though doesn’t get overshadowed by the beasts and the setting like Jack Driscoll did in King Kong. The prehistoric land does invoke memories of that 1933 film as well as some Harryhausen projects, but the addition of the Norsemen and the eagles adds a nice twist. And the tale of noble eagle-riding heroes vs. the Nazis who are wicked to the core delivers pure, guilty pleasure fun.
The book does have its leaps of logic–i.e., how exactly did Brandt manage to tame and learn to ride the eagle so easily?–so some suspension of disbelief will be required. You can also tell how it steps one foot into the modern era of CGI-excess film-making, especially with the final battle. That whole part appears to be written to provide an action-packed ending with an overload of sfx scenes, and it goes on a bit long as well. If written for a 30s/40s film, it would have been much more concise and less drawn out. But it does not derail the book and should satisfy those looking for an epic finale.
Basically, if you are a fan of movies like King Kong or lost world books like, well, The Lost World, you should enjoy War Eagles. It has its flaws, but it also has a retro energy to it that carries the story to the end and helps to deliver a fun little tale. This may not count as a classic sci fi/fantasy entry, but it is a nice throwback and goes down quite easily.
Comments on the Audiobook:
The audiobook version is narrated by William L. Hahn and he delivers a boisterous reading that sounds very similar to the announcers of the newsreels of old. At first, that brings a somewhat retro feel and actually works pretty well when he is reading the part of Captain Brandt. But as the book progresses, it gets rather exhausting and you almost feel yourself wanting a more straight-forward approach. It does not quite derail the adaptation, but some might find the over-the-top narration a bit too much.
The Movie That Didn’t Happen:
War Eagles got its start with a plot synopsis put together by Merian C. Cooper, and Willis O’Brien delivered several drawings to help illustrate the concept. It is unclear how much input O’Brien had on this, but his storyboarding certainly helped drive the tale. A script was produced by Harold Lamb and James A. Creelman, but that would go through several revisions with the final screenplay produced by Cyril Hume (who would later go on to write the screenplay for Forbidden Planet). Some test footage was shot, but it has since been lost with the exception of a few stills like the one above. Ray Harryhausen actually first met Willis O’Brien while the film was in pre-production and may have assisted in the stop motion if it had gone forward. But the war broke out and Merian C. Cooper left Hollywood and re-enlisted with the U.S. Army Air Forces. The film also would have been costly to produce and Warner Brothers lost interest with Cooper no longer onboard. The project would shut down and O’Brien would go on to other things, eventually working on Mighty Joe Young in the late ’40s with Harryhausen as his protégé.
The Movie That Could Happen:
In the years that followed, and especially after O’Brien’s passing in 1962, Ray Harryhausen would continue to champion War Eagles, but he received little interest from the studios he approached. And after Star Wars caused a major shift in genre film-making, Harryhausen’s brand of stop motion effects seemed outdated and his final film would be 1981’s Clash of the Titans. But he still had hopes of seeing War Eagles make it to the big screen, and as mentioned above, in the forward to the novel he suggests that it is a step towards realizing that goal. The book by Bishop and Macek definitely acts as an homage to the cinema of the ’30s and ’40s while also bringing in some modern sensibility. I have heard no indication that a film is in the works at this point, but there is always the possibility that it could happen. Perhaps even using stop motion if someone like Tim Burton or Guillermo del Toro got involved. This also could be turned into a decent TV series, starting with the story of the book and carrying on with the fight of the War Eagles against the Nazis. And while the book itself does not appear to have drawn much attention, if somebody in the entertainment industry with influence who is a lover of the works of O’Brien and Harryhausen gets behind this (like the two names mentioned above), War Eagles could still fly at some point.
Interesting Facts:
The War Eagles novel was the first in an intended series of books under the Ray Harryhausen Presents banner planned by the Angel Gate entertainment company. As it turns out, that was the only one published, but Bluewater Comics would later put out several Ray Harryhausen Presents comics which included Sinbad: Rogue of Mars, 20 Million Miles More, Flying Saucers Vs. the Earth, Wrath of the Titans, and more.
Carl Macek is a name that should be familiar to genre fans as he was the producer and story editor on Robotech and the one responsible for the over-arching story that linked the three separate Anime series into a unified whole for the American show. He would later go on to work on several Robotech sequels, but none would continue to series.
Where Can You Find the Book?
The first edition of War Eagles came out in 2009, but that has since gone out of print. A revised edition came out in 2019 with some minor changes and that is available in paperback, hardback, eBook, and audiobook.
