I couldn't help but think about Mars Attacks while we were talking about Ender's Game. In that movie, they try to communicate, sort of succeed but it turns out they were wrong and the aliens were hostile. It was using logic and reasoning, as opposed to gut instinct, that led them down the wrong path and got everybody killed. Except for the guy and his grandmother with that terrible country music who saved the day. And in Aliens last night, thinking that they weren't as bad as Ripley said they were got Burke into trouble, besides him being a jerk in the first place. So sometimes, thinking the aliens mean you no harm is kind of stupid.
At the same time, thinking the aliens, or other groups, are always out to get you is equally stupid. I watched this movie, Fail-Safe, for my capstone that dealt with Cold War era mentality that forced these pilots to ignore voice commands from the commanders, even the president, because voices could be faked. The problem was that they'd gotten orders to go and attack Russia based on a computer glitch and Russian jamming of transmissions meant that they couldn't receive nullifying orders in the proper time frame. These pilots didn't even question their orders, never mind that they'd never gotten a go ahead order (which also speaks to the success of their training) and figured that the country had been attacked and they had to go in. At the moment I can't think of examples where the aliens meant no harm the entire time, because we established in Ender's Game the aliens were hostile for a while, but I'm sure they are out there. Probably in Star Trek.
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3 comments:
I agree that the major problem in most Sci-Fi is that aliens are treated too greatly in absolutes. If the humans view them in absolutes then they're not as bad or good as the humans thought. But if the humans view them some where in the middle then they are horrible creatures. Where is the love?
Dunno, Tim, dunno. Maybe we need to learn to wait and see. But that doesn't work either. Go figure. Maybe we just need to be a bit more humble. Tone down on the idea that of course they are like this because of x, y and z.
I think you raise a very interesting point. I feel like when I hear the words "alien movie" I half expect it to have a thriller/horror movie quality...especially before I took classes about sci-fi and read more books in the genre, "alien movie" was synonymous with the good guys trying to protect and save Earth from the monsters, and often those monsters "poses" humans (The Invasion, Body Snatchers, The Astronaut's Wife) so you never know who to trust or they are just big and ugly (Independence Day, Starship Troopers, War of the Worlds, Alien, Species). This says a lot about our societies fear of the "other" and the unknown.
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