In my life, I’ve watched my fair share of movies. Of those movies, almost none of them have had subtitles and few were made anywhere other than Hollywood. I rarely go to movies that would be considered “artsy” and only twice have I been to my city’s “independent” movie theatre. I do have a bit of snobbery in me when it comes to the arts, but almost none of it is applied to films. In fact, calling them “films” is as uppity as I get about it. I say all of this to inform you that I don’t consider myself a “film critic” in any capacity. I tend to watch movies for entertainment value and not once have I walked out of a theatre thinking “the directing was sloppy.” There is, however, one general criticism that I feel I must make, because I have recently noticed a disturbing trend coming out of Hollywood. The people in charge of making movies seem to think that if aliens travel to earth and attempt to take over, we’ll be able to fight them off with our “advanced” technology and scrappy ingenuity.
I know the trend of portraying humans as the ultimate underdogs didn’t start with movies…it was there in books and on radio dramas before the first movie was made. But someone has to put a stop to this by speaking the plain, honest truth. If aliens from the far reaches of the galaxy have the technology to travel to our planet and they are intent on taking over, they’re going to do it. They’re going to alight somewhere in their spaceships, or maybe just appear out of thin air, and do whatever they came here to do.* I’m not implying we would go down without a fight, and I’m certainly not discounting the amazing technology that has been developed by the human race. We might even manage to slow them down a little. After all, we have put a man on the moon and sent research ships into distant space. But we’re also the ones who lost a spacecraft on Mars because half the team was using English measurements and the other half was using metric.
I realize that a movie about the successful extermination of the human race wouldn’t have much of a box office draw, so I understand why alien invasion movies usually end with humans winning out. You can make a great movie, and a lot of money, portraying humanity as unconquerable. I myself, have very fond and vivid memories of seeing Independence Day for the first time in the theatre. So why am I bothering to burst the metaphorical bubble? The final straw was a movie preview I saw during this year’s Super Bowl.
Really? Come on, people. If aliens are headed to earth, we’re not going to fend them off with horses and six-shooters. A longer preview hints that one of the humans has some help, and trust me, they’re going to need it.
Perhaps I’m making too big of a deal out of this, but someone has to! These movies have a high entertainment value, but….AT WHAT COST? These movies are encouraging a false sense of security while we should actually be developing a force field to surround the earth or some invisibility suits or laser guns. I really hope someone at the pentagon is working on these sorts of things. If I’m going to pay taxes, the money should at least be going toward something useful.
* I don’t, by the way, assume that aliens would only bother to come all this way if they had evil plans. Maybe they would just come across our planet while trolling for new friends. Maybe they’re trying to spread a peaceful message to all corners of the galaxy. Maybe we have the best beaches. Aliens might show up and be the absolute bee’s knees. But they might also just be hungry.
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