Deliverance: Need Help with this Movie

It's an OK movie. Yes, it's shocking...especially for 1972, but when you get right down to it, there's not much dialog, not much violence (other than the obvious) and not much action. It's 4 guys riding canoes down the river. There's one car chase, one hillbilly rape scene, two murdered hillbillies, one murdered camper, one compound fracture. I thought everyone was great in the movie. I completely forgot that was Ronnie Cox!

So, my question is, near the end, just before Jon Voight and Ned Beatty leave town (I assume Burt Reynolds stays in the hospital for a while) Jon Voight walks off to the side, peers through the trees, and sees tons of pine box coffins being buried and what appears to be dozens of hillbillies. I get the whole movie, but that scene throws me. WTF?

Now I remember the one cop saying something about "this will all be under water soon...best thing to ever happen to this town" or something like that. Thanks! Don't know why I couldn't make that connection.

And the guy Jon Voight shot? He wasn't the same guy from the earlier scene was he?

I think he was innocent, but I'm not sure that question was ever completely answered.

From what I remember, they came to realize that they had "probably" killed a completely innocent man.

removed the bridge between the guy's front teeth.

HAHAHA.

I thought it was left up to the viewer to decide whether Voight's character was protecting himself or whether he, too, had turned into a predator.

I don't know, though. It's been about 20 years since I saw the movie.

Excalibur and The Emerald Forest namely, that it deals with the idea of man/technology/civilization/progress versus nature/primitivism/magic/tradition.

I have not seen Deliverance in a while, so maybe I am making a stretch, but I have seen the other two a lot, and I think there are many similarities, both superficial and thematic. All three movies seem to explore the conflict between the two, with various results. Maybe I am reading too much into them, but that's how I interpret those movies.

Zardoz... I don't know about that one.

Maybe I was just too young at the time, but it scared me and depressed me.

I thought it was just sick all the way around. *shudder*