[30 years ago this week, the pseudo-documentary film Alien Autopsy aired. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that moment and others that reflect our enduring fascination with the possibility of alien life, leading up to a post on recent revelations!]
On
friendly and hostile extraterrestrials, and the real bad guys in any case.
In the
shape of his head, E.T. (star of Steven Spielberg’s 1982 film of the
same name) looks a tiny bit like a distant cousin of the mother alien (the “bitch,” that is)
from James Cameron’s
Aliens (1986).
But that slight comparison is about the only possible way in which these two
summer blockbusters aren’t wholly distinct from one another. E.T. is perhaps Spielberg’s most
kid-centered film, from its youthful protagonists to its product placements for
Reese’s Pieces and the
good ol’ Speak and
Spell, its drunken slapstick to its underlying theme of growing up in a
single-parent household. While Aliens
has to be one of the most adult, hard-R-rated summer blockbusters ever,
featuring one nightmare-inducing,
graphically violent and horrifying sequence and image after the
next (to say nothing of the Space Marines’ extremely
salty repartee).
E.T. and Aliens aren’t just at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes
to their ratings and intended audiences, however. They also embody two entirely
different perspectives on the question not of whether there is life
other than our own in the universe (both films agree that there is), but of
what attitude toward Earth and humanity those extraterrestials might hold. The
summer blockbuster Independence Day (1994),
about which I blogged
here, explicitly engages with these contrasting perspectives,
featuring a number of characters who believe the aliens
might come in peace before their true, hostile intentions are
revealed. Because of its status as a sequel to a film in which the alien creature
could not be more hostile and destructive to humans, Aliens can dispense with the debate and move immediately into the
story of how its human characters will combat the extraterrestrial threats. And
by tying his extraterrestrial’s first entrance into the film to the creature’s
love of Reese’s Pieces, Spielberg similarly signals from the start that his
alien will be friendly
to—indeed, overtly parallel to—his young protagonist Elliot.
E.T. isn’t without antagonists, though—but
they’re of the human variety, the community of threatening scientists and
government officials who seek to capture and (if necessary) kill E.T. to learn
his secrets (and who in the original film carry
guns, not walkie talkies, in that pursuit). And in that sense, E.T. and Aliens aren’t quite as far apart as they might seem—because in the
latter film’s major reveal (SPOILER alert), it turns out that Paul Reiser’s corporate scientist Carter
Burke is far more overt of a villain than the aliens, who are after all only
fighting for their own survival (rather than driven by greed and manipulation,
and a willingness to sacrifice anyone who gets in their way, as Burke and the Weyland-Yutani Corporation for which
he works are revealed to be). If there’s one thing on which such disparate
summer blockbusters can apparently agree, it’s that the powers that be—whether
corporate or governmental—represent a far greater threat, to humans and
extraterrestrials alike, than any alien invaders.
Next aliens
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think?
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