Never before on film have I witnessed a more pure realization of the atmosphere of apocalypse. The images and sounds in this movie are terrifying and unforgettable, building upon each other to immerse us in the ultimate feeling of doom.
It starts with an ominous sky that looks like a storm, but beyond anything we've ever seen. We then get loud and unsettling lightning bolts repeatedly striking the same place with ferocity. Next there appears to be a giant earthquake and something comes out of the earth. This is some serious biblical, apocalyptic imagery. Throughout all of this we see neighbors, who just minutes before were going about their daily routines, looking on in panic and terror. Wow. This is some heavy shit. The overall tone makes "Independance Day" feel like "Mary Poppins".
Out of the earth come the tripods and they are some ominous looking motherfuckers. They look like something both mechanical and biological, the form of giant mechanical insects with monstrous pyramid-like heads. And the sound they make, it's like a mechanical fog-horn from the underworld. It's loud, unsettling, and becomes a reflex for terror every time we hear it.
Within minutes the world has changed forever and these tripods are exterminating people in large numbers and it is incredibly uncomfortable to watch because it conjures up this deep archetypal feeling of holocaust. We are experiencing the end of life and the absolute powerlessness to do anything about it. Somehow Spielberg tapped into these deep unconscious fears and gave them truly vivid life. It's as if he went into the collective unconscious of all humankind and retrieved theses images that had always been waiting there, buried, unseen.
My favorite scene in the whole movie is the ferry scene. Spielberg masterfully captures mass-hysteria. He's proven this in "Schindler's List" and "Saving Private Ryan", and I think he does his best job here. There are images of large groups of people walking along the road because almost nothing mechanical works, so there are no other cars. There is sudden violence when a mob takes the protagonist's precious car, and soon after we have a beautiful shot of a large flock of birds flying rapidly past some tall trees and we know instantly that this a bad sign, as we realize that they are flying away from oncoming tripods. True panic sets in and everyone is rushing to get on this ferry, shoving, trampling, clinging for dear life, and as the ferry begins to move a tripod again comes out of the bowels, but this time the water. There is no escape and everyone is totally fucked as mechanical tentacles come down to claim everyone. The main characters make it out of the water to the other side and we, through their eyes see the absolute horror of it all. We are watching a holocaust. People are being plucked out of the water and a huge terrified crowd is running down a hillside as the tripods randomly vaporize one after another. There is no music, lending to the overall atmosphere of the scene. All you hear are the sounds of the tripods annihilating people and loud screaming. And it gets darker. Soon after we watch the military swatted aside like small insects. We see truly powerful images of tanks on fire and jets exploding.
We have a series of dark, powerful images in this movie. We see large groups of dead bodies floating down a stream, clothing falling from the sky because its owners are dead, and fertilizer from human blood being sprayed from the tripods onto a new, red veined earth.
One of the most powerful images in the film is a crashed plane in the middle of a suburb. It looks so out of place, as does everything in this film. A reporter near the plane explains the true scope of what's happening as we see images on a monitor of large groups of tripods in another area of the world. This is when we truly digest the magnitude of what is happening and realize that we can multiply exponentialy what we have already seen.
Transformer Baby....... 2!!!!!!!!!
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