Pajiba

stay off my planet, pzthedldworb-pants!

Here's the twist: a splinter group of extreme Green Peace-niks begin an underground-railroad extraction of the aliens from their internment camps. Soon, they have a sizeable army of aliens and like-minded humans, ready to take on the world governments and militaries in an attempt to liberate the alien spacecraft.

The aliens just want to ET and go home, their human allies are of the "take us with you" mindset.

Hilarity ensues?

And I don't get the whole "aliens must look alien-y" thing either. Starman gave us the best alien ever, and he looked just like Jeff Bridges.

Why would aliens ever evolve to be attractive to a species on a different planet? What is attractive to one species is not necessarily attractive to another. Plus, the whole point of making them 'ugly' is to point out that their whole being is alien to us.

Look at Star Trek. It is distracting that aliens from another galaxy that have no common ancestor as us and evolved in a different planet would even come close to looking like us, let along being attractive to us.

Also, as an evolutionary biologist, I can tell you that there is no such thing as 'more evolved'. It makes my brain hurt when I hear it.

I think you ask some interesting questions. The look is there to make them look different. Anything which looks different will look ugly to us because humans are so self centred but if they don't look different enough we won't get the feeling that they are aliens. And beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Why are they always evil? I think sci-fi films play on racist sentiments. It took us thousands of years for blacks, whites and yellows (ahem, Asians) to accpept each other even when they live in the same country! And right now there are loads of countries (for example America and many EU countries) taking anti-immigrant measures. Apparently immigrants are to blame for all the ills of society. Are you surprised that aliens from ANOTHER PLANET would not be treated very nicely and considered evil? They'll take our jobs, our women, our oil and our water!

Sci fi writers play on the fears of the unknownk, xenophobia and racism and get away with it every time... This movie looks like it will be fun.

Or it could be our assumptions that aliens are automatically going to be evil. Did we learn nothing from Keanu in The Day the Earth Stood Still?

Also...they're gonna take our jerbs!

I don't give a shit what anybody says - I'd totally have sex with that alien.

Hey there, space bug... What say you and me go to the public swimming hole and make a mess of the hot tub? Afterward, I'll take a shower and you can maybe eat a toddler from the kiddie pool. Afterward? Nothing but the best half-price appetizers from America's Favorite Neighbor, Applebees. And don't bother getting your moon-man boozing on now, my buggy lover - I've got half a case of Busch Light on my three-season porch. We'll polish it off by the dying light of day while I massage sensual oils into your mesosoma...

Between this post and the last, it's obvious we've hit Skitz' mating season.

Ladies, lock up your... actually, I'm not sure what to lock up. Maybe your box turtles and interesting-shaped lawn tools.

no visible appendages that would help them construct extremely complicated computers and space travelling ships.

Why do you think they have those mandibular tentacle-y things?

I thought that a lot of alien designs were based off bugs because bugs are the most well adapted to survival, physically.

Posted by: Genny (actually Rusty now) at June 10, 2009 12:00 PM
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Evil aliens (or aliens that are meant to freak us out) look like bugs (or reptiles) because, in general, humans don't like insects or reptiles. After all, any film about aliens is really a metaphor for common human xenophobia, just like how any film about zombies is about common human thanatophobia.

We like soft, warm, furry things that look like dogs or cats or monkeys. We don't like cold, spiky, black, slimy, scaly things that look like spiders or snakes. Simple.

Same goes for fish-like aliens -- as long as they look more like guppies than sharks or squids, we're okay.

Rule #1: Humans must have an enemy.

Rule #2: If the enemy is not human or animal or fish or ghost or monster or robot or hybrid, the enemy will be alien.

Rule #3: The enemy must be unattractive to further human ability to hate the enemy.

Nah, sic the zoophiles on 'em. That'll fuck up their little invasion plans. Oh, sure most of the invasion force would make it through unscathed, but you try convincing an alien soldier to take part in a battle that could end with him getting raped by a 300lb. carny and see how many volunteers you get.

I don't give a shit what anybody says - I'd totally have sex with that alien.

DAMN YOU!!! You totally stole my line!!

And in the above post I typed the word sci-fi enough times for it to lose meaning.

Sci-fi.
Sci-fi.
Sci-fi.
Sci-fi.
Sci-fi.
Sci-fi.

Everybody knows they are required by the Predator code to be ugly motherfuckers.

Damn if this movie doesn't look like the balls.

My question is more concrete: How do the humans come to understand the aliens' language? How long would it take for Earth's finest linguists, working with the aliens' best linguists, to figure each other out? Once that happens, how long would it take for individuals from either side to become fluent translators?
I hope this movie doesn't poop out some "universal translator" cop-out like so much sci-fi does.
The closest analogy I can think of is when the Spanish arrived in the Americas; from what I remember of history, they didn't have reliable translators until a generation after first contact, when kids trained from birth in both languages got old enough to interpret.

I know this reads as a sci-fi movie for most of the rest of the planet - in South Africa I suspect it is intended to read as political commentary on recent xenophobic riots, immigration by Zimbabwean refugees, and of course the whole inescapable apartheid thing. Which means it will depress me, and I will be forced to skip an otherwise perfectly good sci-fi movie.

Dammit I hate message movies.

"More evolved" doesn't necessarily mean "better." It just means more adapted to fit to that particular environment. So something that evolved on another world with wildly different conditions and struggles to cope with would look vastly different than us and probably stranger than we could imagine. They wouldn't really be 'better' than us, aside from the obvious technological advances necessary for that kind of space travel.

Even if they weren't outright ugly, it would still probably offend the average human, simply because it's so strange.

Its not an "alien-more-involved-than-humans story", this is based on the original short the director did years ago! There is extreme xenophobia in south africa and Neil is one of the few directors left that intends to pass a message, to him cinema is not just entertainment / business, but it is a medium to pass information without causing worldwide stir about the move but rather the message, the aliens are supposed to be Zimbabweans and the movie references Nigerian thugs coverting goods, which is very much true of South Africa today as Nigerians come in to hold prestigious positions as do Zimbabweans, News from South Africa dosent broadcast without reports of violence towards fellow non South African blacks as the South Africans always protest the lack of jobs due to foreigners, therefore I applaud Neil and I hope this movie sparks concerns as well as some sort of talks as to what could be done to that region

P.S. the day the earth stood still was a god awful movie. All I saw it as was a jacked up, dialogue-tweaking, special effected Inconvenient Truth, except for a much more idiotic main character. OMG EARTH! If you guys don't start recycling and saving the god-damned dolphins, Aliens in Keanu Reeves form are going to come steel-termite your asses to death. SO WATCH OUT! Fail.