The two big science fiction-ish hits of Steven Spielberg's early career, Close Encouters and ET, were notable for the niceness of the aliens: little squishy botanist ET wouldn't harm a fly; and although the CE3K aliens appeared to have no concept of how disorientating it may be for humans to be sucked up into a mother ship and returned to their families 60 years later, they were touchy feely nice guys in the end. No alien's perfect, I guess: ET may well have turned rapidly into an alcoholic if he could have tolerated family absence better.
So, while watching Cowboys and Aliens on DVD last night, which Spielberg executive produced, I wondered why he now only seems to be involved with films showing aliens that want to squash humans like so many bugs.
His own War of the Worlds showed physically weak looking aliens who nonetheless thought humans were the most convenient source of blood and bone fertiliser for the lawn; last year's exec produced Super 8 had an alien that was (if I recall correctly) being treated unfairly, but nonetheless was ultra violent in response; and now Cowboys and Aliens had another set of grotesque designed aliens who, despite having the technology to come to Earth in a pretty cool looking spaceship, thought the best way to dispose of interfering mammals is to bite their neck out or stab and slash them with their built in dagger fingers.
Doesn't anyone write science fiction with nice aliens any more?
As for Cowboys and Aliens as a movie: the critical response was about right - not great, not horrendous, but had a bit of a feel of a lost opportunity to do a cool genre mash up better.
6 comments:
That's a good point - I thought the one close up look at the aliens in War of the Worlds was rather pointed though - it showed the aliens not so much as malignant beasts but as curious inquiring explorers. (Albeit with the obvious undertone of threat).
This could be partially the Baron's influence on me coming out: humans must sometimes look to other species on our planet as pretty malign, too. Should we really expect relations between humans and other aliens to be benign?
Another thought: the SF basic story of 'contact' with other species is a fascinating one but the trope is pretty simple, really - it's hard to see how it can be developed to any great extent without becoming entirely fanciful. (Notice how SF authors come up with great concepts but often stumble about once they've got the big idea out into the open?)
Maybe better explorations of the 'contact' concept are to be found in fantasy genres that aren't bound by rules of scientific plausibility, but rather by the rules and metaphors and modes of expression available in literature and the arts - ie, could be time to revive the contact stories in Ulysses, and other old myths.
It was more than an "undertone of threat" when their tripods were picking up people from anywhere to turn them into fertiliser!
Anyway, let's go through all the variations of alien first contact (on earth):
* intelligent alien invaders who don't give a stuff about humans (War of the Worlds, Earth Vs the Flying Saucers, Independence Day, The Puppet Masters, Cowboys and Aliens, etc etc)
* intelligent aliens who arrive with a threat that we had better mend our ways (The Day the Earth Stood Still)
* nice aliens marooned (ET, Starman, never seen The Man Who Fell to Earth, but maybe that one)
* aliens who seem nice but really are not (V)
* aliens who are secretly changing the earth's atmosphere to suit themselves (the plot of the little seen Charlie Sheen film The Arrival)
* aliens who are secretly using the earth as a refuge from other aliens (Men in Black).
* inscrutable but nice aliens (Close Encounters)
* Norse gods who are actually aliens from another dimension (Thor - I haven't seen it but think that's the quasi-scientific explanation for him)
I think we haven't exhausted all variations yet.
Steve Kates at Catallaxy would be first in line to see a film in which evil aliens were behind Keynesian economics, for example.
I would also add re Cowboys and Aliens - the key reason it felt a bit unsatisfactory was in lack of explanation of the what the aliens were doing with the abducted humans; why they needed gold; and why they had fantastic weapons technology yet preferred to chase and bite or slash humans instead. I'm willing to give a fair bit of leeway in unexplained motivations as far as aliens are concerned, but it does have its limits.
There are probably a few comedy examples of nice aliens too. The sort that you get in Douglas Adams, where most of the time they're basically a way of parodying English/European bureaucrats. Robert Sheckley probably has similar examples.
Nice aliens on TV come to mind too: My Favourite Martian, Mork and Mindy, 3rd Rock from the Sun, even Alf.
I usually find alien based comedies pleasing.
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