Yes. I love this scene.

Eh, it's no "People of Earth".

Throw all the special effects away, this is the best scene of the movie.

I love the look of this movie.


I read an interview excerpt a long time ago where he says that the entire goal of this movie was to make the audience feel the same way he did when he first heard "When You Wish Upon a Star" as a child, and that the plot and characters and everything else were secondary to that. It really shows, in a good way.

This used to be one of my favorite movies, but for some reason I haven't watched in years. I guess my general disappointment for Spielberg's incredibly mediocre film career over the last few decades is part of it. I mean, people tend to talk shit about Close Encounters because it moves from a somewhat menacing, creepy tone early on to a sort of schmaltzy third act, but I think it worked (especially for the time period it was made in). I think, in a way, War of the Worlds was purposefully Spielberg making a commentary on his own reputation of Close Encounters being too friendly and cutesy (and especially E.T.) by just making a balls-out, super-dark alien invasion film (which, despite it's flaws, I thought was one of the closest to "old school" Spielberg quality he had gotten in some time).

In one of the extended versions of this film (I think there's like 2 or 3 different cuts in circulation at this point) there's a scene after this where creepy government agents meet the plane as it lands and demand the passengers hand over their cameras, but I don't think it works nearly as well as this scene, so I can see why it was cut in the first place.

When I was 7 years old, my parents took me to see this at the Alabama Drive-in.

Seeing a real night sky surrounding the scene where the mothership arrives at the Devil's Tower adds something to the experience you just won't get in a standard theater.

Sometime in the 90s, Hollywood lost the ability to create a convincing workplace. Compare this, The Andromeda Strain, and The China Syndrome to crap today.

You can probably trace it back to Roland Emmerich and Michael Bay. Douchebag rockstar characters screaming, "GET ME THE PRESIDENT!"