Aliens In Cinema

A brief look at the portrayal of extraterrestrial life in the history of cinema :

So much for those 'little green men'. If you look back into the history of cinema, it's indeed fascinating that despite having little actual scientific proof on existence of intelligent extra-terrestrial life, filmmakers (and sci-fi novelists) have always applied their wildest imagination and went on to make movies after movies featuring alien life-forms with diverse themes ranging from hardcore science-fiction to even romantic comedies. This article tries to trace back common trends on silver-screen aliens and changes they went through with time. Although presence of alien life-forms in cinema can be traced way back to 1902 in the celebrated Georges Meliés film "A Trip to the Moon" where they appear as 'Selenites' or inhabitants of moon... or in 1920's when the Russian film "Aelita" (1919) and a Danish film named "Himmelskibet" (1924) featured Martians; but it was not until the decade of 1950s when filmmakers successfully exploited the post-World War mass paranoia and made numerous films on alien invasion the golden age of sci-fi began.

A vast majority of films feturing aliens throughout the history of cinema almost typically portray them as ugly violent creatures (with or without their evil superior technology) that make human civilization at peril but, apart from very few exceptions, it's always the indomitable human spirit that defeats those vile Goliaths (of course, since the moviegoers are human, not aliens :P ). Many of 1950's famous B-movies like "It Came From Outer Space", "Them!!", "20 Million Miles to Earth", "Plan 9 from Outer Space", "The Blob", "Invasion of Body Snatchers" etc successfully cashed on this basic idea. Even recent years saw successful films with similar storylines -- e.g. "Independence Day" or "War of the Worlds". And one shouldn't forget Tim Burton's hilarious star-cast ensemble "Mars Attacks!!" - a film that most intelligently spoofs the very basic plot of those aforementioned films. In 1979, Ridley Scott's masterpiece "Alien" brought a whole new concept into this whole 'bad alien' genre - a sense of silent claustrophobic uneasy horror of the unknown. Although its sequels didn't follow this trend but "Alien" itself saw a number of followers of similar execution that featured a rather low-key, sinister and silent extraterrestrial menace in films like John Carpenter's "The Thing" (1982), Ron Howard's "Cocoon" (1984), "Species" (1992), "The Astronaut's Wife" (1999 - with Johnny Depp as the astronaut and Charlize Theron as the wife) and the very intelligent "Pitch Black" (2000).

With the growing public awareness on astronomy and related science since the late 1960's after US sent their manned probe to moon, it was time for filmmakers also to understand that the extra-terrestrial lifeform doesn't always have to be hostile and menacing to human society. Steven Spielberg's two films - "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (1977) and of course the celebrated "ET" (1984) portray aliens as utterly peace-loving and human-friendly and helpful and so on. The seminal TV serial "Star Trek" is a pioneer in inventing the 'space opera' genre... one which emphasizes on the very idea of co-existence of various alien civilizations with the humans in the galaxy and related politics. George Lucas' "Star Wars" (1977) and its sequels and prequels took this 'space opera' idea to a dizzy height of excellence where different alien races appear as both allies and enemies to humans. Other films also adopting this very idea include the lesser-known "Alien Nation" movies which, in my opinion, are few of the most underrated films of the genre.

However, when it came to designing the nature of extra-terrestrial life-forms and their morphology for the movies, I must say, only a few filmmakers were able to think beyond the basic body structure of head-torso-limbs with their own modifications in this whole 60 years of serious alien films. Due to lack of huge budget and necessary technology, 1950s aliens were almost always a man in a vile disgusting ugly-looking rubber suit resembling reptiles/insects/gorillas etc. Ridley Scott's 1979 "Alien" is also essentially the same thing... but the design itself was extremely innovative and indeed quite terrifying. Some of the earlier films that could think outside the box regarding this subject include "The Blob" (1959), where the alien is, well, a giant-sized amoeba... and the very interesting influencial film "Planet of the Apes" (1968) where it shows a planet with gorillas and chimpanzees as the dominant species holding less-advanced humans as slaves. The celebrated alien look of large oval head with large oval eyes and long thin pale-white limbs was most probably originated in an illustration by, yes, Satyajit Ray in his late 1950s (exact year unknown) short story "Bonkubabu'r Bondhu". It is said that Ray also wrote a script (which included a detailed drawing of the design) based on the story for a Hollywood production in late 1960s but before he could finish it, the script leaked in the market and Ray lost his copywright. To my knowledge, this alien exodesign made its first appearance in Spielberg's "Close Encounters..." and with a few minor modifications, in "ET" as well. Interestingly, several real-life proclaimers of alien abduction/'sightings' also describe a fairly similar morphology!

"Star Wars", being one of the most influencial films in the history of modern cinema in my opinion, single-handedly created over 20 alien designs... complete with totally outlandish alien names! Who would forget the memorable characters like Jabba the Hutt, Jar-jar Binks or master Jedi Yoda? Recent films like "Men in Black" also has quite a large number of different alien designs - including a foul-mouthed English-speaking dog :P . But anyway, a number of alien films over the years have only normal-looking human being as the alien visitor (reasons behind this can be anything from really intelligent storylines to low budget issues). They can be either plain humans in the first place or they changed into human forms upon coming to earth. Notable examples include - "Invasion of Body Snatchers" (1957), "The Man Who Fell to Earth" (1973 - with David Bowie as the alien), "Starman" (1984), "Species" (1996 - with Natasha Henstridge as the alien's scantily-clad human female form), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1956) and its terrible 2008 remake (with Keanu Reeves as the alien).

However, some of the master filmmakers did execute the very idea that extra-terrestrial consciousness don't even have to display an external form. It can be just by itself or can appear in a whole different manner (e.g. a planet can itself be an alive and conscious being). Rudiments of this very concept can be seen in the early 1953 sci-fi romance "Forbidden Planet" where the visually nonexistent alien consciousness appear only as the villainous alter-egos of human beings. Two of the most celebrated and influencial sci-fi films of all time - Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" and Tarkovsky's "Solaris" (1972) embrace this very idea of morphologically nonexistent extraterrestrial consciousness in the most intelligent fashion... and why not? Those stories were penned by two of the sci-fi legends - Arthur C. Clarke and Stanislaw Lem. These two films also generated a few thematic followers in James Cameron's "The Abyss" (1989), Michael Crichton's "Sphere" (1996), Carl Sagan's "Contact" (1996), "Event Horizon" (1997) etc.

I wonder if Indian cinema will ever be able to take up extraterrestrial life as a serious concept (No, I'm not talking about the cheesy "Koi Mil Gaya" with its even cheesier alien 'jaadu'). But anyway, I was initially excited about the news that David Fincher was attached to direct a film version of Clarke's sci-fi masterpiece novel "Rendezvous with Rama". I was excited how Fincher could design the Ramans. But the sad news is, friends, that Fincher recently decided to drop the project as he thinks the story is "too complex to be ever filmed". And I think in a way, he's right.

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Note: I decided to write this as I found out that there's a surprising absence of reliable online articles on this topic. It contains my original research mostly done years ago with a few recent alterations.