Posts Tagged aliens

The DDC team, along with movie buffs everywhere, is very excited about District 9. We’d heard a lot of good things about this action/sci-fi flick, but it’s an understatement to say we’re delighted to report that the movie exceeded our very high expectations of it. We don’t even understand how a film with a budget of just $30 million can be so good (to put it into perspective The Hangover cost $5 million more to make and wasn’t even a science-fiction movie). We know what you’re thinking: aliens have been done to death but this film really is disturbing and thought provoking.

District 9 got us thinking about the over-saturation of aliens on film and television. Directors just haven’t given up on depicting critters from outer space. The results are sometimes brilliant, sometimes disastrous but one thing’s for sure, they do get us thinking about what else could be ‘out there’.

Is it wrong for your parents to think you look like this little fella the first time they see you?

Think back to your childhood. What film gives you that warm fuzzy ‘safe’ feeling more than E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial? Released in 1982, E.T. is family friendly and a heartwarming exploration of how friendship can develop between the two most unlikely of characters. We think this is one of Spielberg’s best efforts (are you brave enough to disagree?).

Not that Spielberg ever really got over the whole alien ‘thing’ as is evident by his 2005 effort, War of the Worlds.

Is it wrong to be barracking for the aliens?

It’s a little bit fancier than the first attempt to bring H.G Wells’ classic novel War of the Worlds to life by Byron Haskin in 1953 (although, we did get a good laugh out of the film’s main tagline: Amazing! Terrifying! The most savage spectacle of all time! – and it is savage, savagely funny). Back to Spielberg’s version – we all love to hate him but we must admit, Tom Cruise is quite the leading man. Here, however, he is overshadowed by Dakota Fanning who no doubt has plenty of alien films ahead of her.

We can’t write about alien movies for much longer without mentioning Alien. What an inventive title! Jokes aside, this was one of the most innovative films of its time. Shying away from the popcorn science-fiction titles of its time, it was as much a horror as it was a movie about aliens and outer space. Released in 1979 and directed by Ridley Scott, it was revolutionary in many ways. Firstly, it successfully blended movie genres and secondly, Alien was one of the first films to feature a female action hero in Sigourney Weaver who plays Ellen Ripley.

Think she’s angry?

Predictably, Alien spawned a number of follow-up films but surprisingly, most regard its sequel Aliens as being far superior to Ridley’s first effort.

Unsurprisingly, the whole alien obsession isn’t limited to film. Television has had its fair share of attempts to portray these little critters as well (really, when you think about it, we’ve put a lot of energy into depicting something that probably doesn’t exist).

They popped up in the The X-Files every now and then as Mulder’s search for his sister provided a running sub-plot for the weirdness he and Scully dealt with every week (X-Files later became a movie as everyone born in the last century would know and was released in 2008). Meanwhile, Roswell was labeled the teenage version of The X-Files but it did focus on mainly aliens as its entire plot revolved around 3 aliens (yes, Katherine Hiegl did exist before Grey’s Anatomy). We loved Roswell, especially those nifty powers those lucky kids had. Often ignored because of its ‘teen’ label, Roswell was quality viewing and used metaphors to depict real-world problems such as isolation, the thirst for power, control and more.

It may have taken five seasons but vampires, demons, incubi and goddesses made way for aliens in the Buffy episode Listening to Fear. The Queller demon did only last one episode but take a look at it.

Still not as bad as the close ups of Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie.

There you have it. Aliens have certainly monopolized a lot of our time through film and television. We think District 9 takes the genre to another level.