[deadmaker7]

Went to see the movie "War of the Worlds". Even though it's obviously not about peak oil, there was one scene that made me think. All the cars were damaged by the invader's EMP attack, but Tom Cruise's charater had a working minivan. He and his kids start driving north. He reaches an area where there is a crowd of people, and they all gather around the van, begging him to take them. Finally, the crowd turns violent and Cruise and his 2 kids are forced from the van at gunpoint. This immediately made me think, Peak Oil Shantytown! Anyone else see this movie yet?

[JB2]

* Spoilers Ahead (but go see the movie).


All in all, one of Spielberg's best. Unsurprisingly, he does a great job with the invasion scenes and the special effects; the aliens and the death machines are indeed, very scary. The biggest weakness was, as usual with Spielberg, the irritating and distracting detour into "daddy" issues.

For the purposes of this forum, though, the most interesting part of the film was the depiction of total societal collapse. At one point, life is normal, then none of the cars work; by the next day, thousands of people are roaming the countryside looking for food and shelter and trying to avoid extermination.

Probably not a "realistic" take on how things will fall apart after TSHTF, but very powerful and resonant. I would cite, not only the sequence mentioned by deadmaker7, but the flaming train a little bit later - one of the most disturbing things ever put in a movie. It's also pretty creepy when Cruise is apparently forced to kill Tim Robbins in cold blood.

[meekoil]

LOL!!

(I am a long time lurker who finally registered to repsond to this. )

I just saw War of the Worlds yesterday, and when the scene you reffered to happened, I actually turned to my wife in the theater and whispered "That's what it will be like when we run out of oil".

[Elfstrom]

Just before the seizure of the minivan, there is a sequence where the family is looking out the window of the vehicle and you see in the twilight:

- people with carts filled with encyclopedias
- a young person riding a horse

I immediately thought "peak oil survivalists!"

[Omaronim]

I remember saying to my brother in law, "Look how cheap gas is." Near the minivan scene there is one of those gas station flipbook type signs that had gas at 1.95 or so.

[DomusAlbion]

Every scene in War of the Worlds made me think what a crappy movie it was and left me wishing that Dakota Fanning would get zapped by the aliens and just quit shrieking.

Mr. Spielberg, you’ve made some very excellent movies. What went wrong?

[Kingcoal]

What made me feel old when listening to people review the movie is the reaction from the younger crowd. Not only did most of them not know that the movie had a predecessor, but they didn't even know that it was based on a book from 1895!

I thought the movie was great, very suspenseful and sometimes even scary. The alien machines where very realistic and were kind a cross between the book and the 50's version.

[DomusAlbion]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Kingcoal', 'W')hat made me feel old when listening to people review the movie is the reaction from the younger crowd. Not only did most of them not know that the movie had a predecessor, but they didn't even know that it was based on a book from 1895!

[JB2]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DomusAlbion', '
')As if an advanced technical alien race wouldn’t know about infections from microbes.

[Fatherof4]

I saw the movie over a week ago and I still get chills when I drive by a water tower.

[avo]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DomusAlbion', 'T')he machines were much closer to those in the book but the entire idea is rather dated. As if an advanced technical alien race wouldn’t know about infections from microbes.

[Doly]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('avo', '
')In the book, this is because there are no microbes on Mars; martian biology is completely different.

[avo]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Doly', 'I') can't imagine an ecology without microbes. In any computer simulation you do of an ecology, you get small parasites.