MovieChat Forums > The War of the Worlds (1953) Discussion > Pal's religious overtones in overdrive i...

Pal's religious overtones in overdrive in this movie

posted 8 years ago by nashspacerocket
6 replies | jump to latest

Pal was never afriad to add a bit of scripture to his scripts.

when pastor collins walks out quoting psalm 24, the effect is meant to show that aliens are godless heathens, and by killing a human they have sown the seeds of their own destruction, because god will take revenge, eventually in the form of bacteria.
But,
he inadvertently opens up a roland emmerich style moment, that believing in god will not save you from disaster, like emmerich does in 2012.

as we all probably know, emmerich is a Pal acolyte, borrowing heavily from his movies, but with a distaste for the religious side of things.

Pointless witty comment here ...

[–] TOASTnJAM 8 years ago

I had a different reaction with the pastor scene. I thought it showed he's a fool and suffered a fools death for believing he could reason with the aliens.

I thought P.E.T.A. meant People Eating Tasty Animals

[–] andrewwwjohnson 7 years ago

No one knows what the aliens believed in.

Spoiler: They should have believed in microbes and gone somewhere else.

[–] Ite 7 years ago

Same here.

[–] trevorh321 (5495) 4 years ago

Agreed. It's the same thing when people try to reason with liberals. It cannot be done.

[–] strntz (10905) 4 years ago

I had a different reaction with the pastor scene. I thought it showed he's a fool and suffered a fools death for believing he could reason with the aliens.

Agree.

I guess there are a couple of ways of looking at that scene. I'm agnostic at best and my view is that the pastor was being stupid hoping his God would save him or the aliens would see the "light". It seems to me they were bashing religion more than anything else.

[–] twinA (4826) 4 years ago

September 18, 2020 Friday 5:35 p.m.

Understand when this film was made Eisenhower was the American president and the Cold War was in its beginnings. Organized religion was boosted up in the United States to counteract growing influence of communism and the subjugation of places of worship in the Communist world, especially the Soviet Union. "In God We Trust" was inserted on the U.S. dollar bill during this time. The earlier World Wars had brought about a religious revival in a sense.

From what I have gathered the scene you are describing has less to do with religious commentary itself and more to do with becoming complacent, taking potential threats for granted, not seeing the wolves from the sheep.

Considering the historical info in the the first paragraph above, it was used as context in order to get its point across better to the audience of its day.

~~/o/