Aliens Who Come In Peace

  Sent here down to Earth by his father, Kal-el is the soul survivor of Krypton, a distant planet that was destroyed by a worldwide ecological disaster.
   Here on our world, the yellow sun of this solar system provides him with the power of a god.
Under the name Superman, Kal-El has the ability to fly faster than a speeding bullet, be more powerful than a locomotive and to leap over tall buildings with a single bound (his flying ability probably helps him with that). Not to mention x-ray and heat vision, withstand extreme temperatures, hurricane force breath and the ability to wear a wardrobe ensemble consisting of a cape, boots and colorful underwear worn over equally colorful tights.
And what does Superman do with all this power that would allow him to squash us mere mortals with not so much as a mere thought?
He uses it to protect us from all those who would mean us fair citizens harm through the violation of truth, justice and the American way.
Because even within an alien sentient being, no matter how distant his origins, or how impervious he may be to gunfire, there's always chance to find a heart of a hero.
And when it comes to the Man Of Steel,
that's just how he rolls.

Steven Spielberg's sci-fi masterpiece. That is, with the exception of the number one entry on this list, of course.
An extra-terrestrial becomes trapped on our planet and befriends an Earthling boy who shares a it's love for Reese's Pieces. From there, these two beings "from different worlds" (one of the rare times that this phrase is used in the most literal sense possible), began to share each other's experiences in a bond that can only result from unconditional acceptance.
A moving picture which teaches that when it comes to a deep longing for love in the form of kindness and friendship we humans are not alone.
And all we have to do to get it, even on a universally galactic level, is to just "be.... good".

Or "Close Encounters Of The Under-Water Kind".
Or maybe "The Day The Ocean Stood Still".



  We humans are a species capable of our own destruction. Or of our own salvation.
  And though sometimes, it's can seem like we're going down the road of total annihilation, there's still enough within us to choose otherwise.
  At least, that's the kind of hope the water-breathing life-forms from outer space in this film seem to hold about us.
Personally, I think this is James Cameron's masterpiece. And it's actually two stories in one. The alien story-line that provides the twist for the film, crossed over with the tension building plot involving the conflict between the scientific crew and the naval SEAL team. And both plots, while differently paced, are still very excellently executed. Now, while the edited version that was originally released into theaters is a fine film, for my money, the uncut version is what truly reveals the kind of glorious light that can emit from The Abyss.

  In this Stanley Kubrick 1968 sci-fi classic, extra-terrestrial life comes in the form of heavy monolithic blocks.
  And after escaping a death at the hands of a crafty computer that we created and yet had taken on an evil sentient intelligence of it's own,
these aliens will sweep you up and send on you on the most psychodelickest trip of your life.
And all without the use of drugs.

Damn.
Where was I during the year 2001 that I missed the party?

  Yo, the aliens have landed!
 And unlike our worst fears about 'em, they are not here to destroy us with superior technology and weapons.
 No, they're here to extend to us an invitation. Sure, it's a telepathic invitation that will make us go crazy, sculpt shapes into our mash potatoes, and cause our families to leave us, but still, it's an invite for a one-in-a-lifetime meet-up with big-headed E.T's over there on the Devil's Tower . Where we can jam with them on electronic sythesizers and have the humans they kidnapped decades earlier finally returned to us, unscathed. 
 It all reminds of back when I was a kid after I first watched this movie, and I remember thinkin' to myself, "Mannnn....I wish a UFO would come down and fly me away into the limitless potential of space."

 Sans anal-probes, of course.

An alien being comes down to Earth, morphs into a human form in order to understand our species and then begins a race against time to meet with his star-faring rendevous party before the government military can get it's hands on him/it. But not before he/it can get a girl pregnant.
Simply put,
this movie is E.T. for adults.
Or at least, it's for those of us whose mind's are mature enough to understand that when it comes to traffic lights, red means "stop", green means "go" and yellow means "go very fast".

In K-Pax, Kevin Spacey is "Prot", a "wandering spirit" who is either a mental patient masquerading as an alien
or
an alien masquerading as a mental patient.
Jeff Bridges plays Dr. Mark Powell, the psychiatrist who's job is to figure out which one it is. And though, as a man of science, he tends to strongly lean towards the former, he can't ignore that this patient/alien gives off the signals that it might be the latter. Signals in the form of Prot knowing certain astronomical information that few others on this planet know. Or being able to solve seemingly improbable mathematical theories.
And even when Dr. Powell comes across a background history of Prot as a man who has been severely psychologically and emotionally scarred, Prot still shows an unearthly ability to be able to soothe, unite and ultimately, provide hope to his fellow institutionalized inmates.
As a film, K-PAX weaves through it's various "less epic" identities of E.T., Starman, and even of a fluffier version of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.
But, as with most sci-fi movies with the "aliens walking amongsy humans to better understand humankind" theme, it tries to end with a life-lesson that teaches us more about us than it does "them".
In this case, no matter how crazy our individualized inner-scars can make us,
sometimes, all we need is a hopeful hand extended in friendship to help brings us back down to Earth.
And if that lesson comes off sounding as a bit too "spacey-headed", please take into account what Hollywood writers of these types of scripts have in common with people from K-Pax: They both tend to be a buncha distant souls that live out amongst the stars.

What Close Encounters Of The 3rd. Kind did back in the 70's, this film takes to the next evolutionary step, in terms of the actual physics and concepts of a meeting 'tween us mere mortals and any life-forms from beyond the stars.
For my money, Contact contains some of the best discussions of religion and atheism in any film ever made. It's depictions of the manner that things like general fear and politics can get in the way of a true quest for knowledge is both basely intelligent and comprehendibly poignant. This film's plot does a great job treading on the subject of how our society is constantly struggling between the comfort of what we already know & the confrontational truths about our species that can be revealed as result of the discovery of what is new, especially if seen thru the "eyes" of a life-form that's a lot smarter than us.

The aliens have touched down, and they're not here to conquer us, morph into our bodies, drain us of our energy sources, or steal our sun. They just want to take a few of their "left-overs" from their first visit, home.
And if not, at least take some of our senior citizens with 'em.
Which is fine by us.
Cuz in space, no one can hear an old man fart.

What if the the first alien life-forms to make contact with us happen to be the kind that watch too much television? Or even worse, what if they're Trekkies?
Galaxy-Quest starts out as a parody of the Star Trek franchise, but then, with just the right amount of heart, wry humor and even some satirical intelligence, this movie then evolves into a sci-fi adventure film with a premise that is a lot of fun, on point and with a story that ends up standing distinctively on it's own.

Well, the millenium's answer to the 1997 sci-fi thinker Contact, has made it's arrival. And just like the Jodie Foster movie, this one deals with a more "realistic" approach to Earth's first contact with extraterrestrials, encompassing the struggle between peaceful approaches of communication and the "better safe than sorry" attitude from the more militarily minded. Also sharing the same theme as Contact is the endeavor to decipher the penmanship of the visitors.
However, The Arrival still has enough within it's concept to give it it's own signature and allow the film to stand alone in the "we come in peace" sub-genre of science fiction. A "big" movie with a "small" cast, led by a strong performance by Amy Adams as an expert linguist and mourning mother whose combination of expertise and grief-stricken memories is the only link to a meaningful discussion between the entire planet and its interstellar guests.

We Earthlings did it to the American Natives, we did it to the Australian Aborigines and in the not-so-distant future, we tried to do it to the alien populace of Pandora.
Only to find out that, despite not having any weapons, what these blue-skinned giants do have on their side is Mother Nature.
And as dictated by that one universal law that applies everywhere,
no matter what planet you're on,
you do not mess with Mother Nature.

Paul is one of those typical bug-eyed, big-headed aliens that we've grown accustomed to believing that are hiding in Area 51.
  Although, as we get to know him in this story, we find that he completely disproves the mythical stereotype that he and his kind are subjected to here on our planet, just so’s we can have way to explain in the circles in our crops, the mutilations of our cows, and the probes in our anuses.....



   Paul shows us that all he wants to do is to share with us what he knows about the galaxy and to smoke a doobie.
A really good doobie.
The kind of doobie that killed Bob Dylan.

 Somewhere out there in a distant galaxy, there is a war that is raging on.
It's a war between two different alien robot species that have the ability to transform. Into cars, planes and stuff. 
The bad guys are known as the Decepticons. Because, they deceit you into believing that they're ordinary Earth vehicles, when in reality, they're evil cyber-otherworlders lookin' to conquer our planet through, well, uh, y'know.... deception. 
  However, we good citizens (and the bad ones too) of this planet need fear not. 
For the heroes of the Transformers are the Autobots. And they have also tranversed through space and lightyears to Earth in order to combat those dastardly Decepticons, and thus, protect us from them and their malevolent machinations. 
   Now, if you'll excuse me, after typing out this entry, I feel a strong desire to go and play with my robot action figures.....

Just when I thought that my hairy pimp-ass had finally reached a point in life that was so hardcore,
that even the idea that I could get misty over a movie-ending was, for me, so far away of an idea, that it was practically on the otherside of da 'hood. Dawg.
Then comes along the Iron Giant, and proves me wrong.
And it's not just that it's a movie,
but even worse, it's an animated movie.
A cartoon.



Whenever I watch the scene with the line " ....Superman.",
I always find it quite difficult to refrain from repeatingly dabbing at that "something in my eye" that starts to become annoyingly persistent.
Damn.
This movie makes life hard out here for a pimp.

I think I vaguely remember the day way back when the Earth stood still.
Wasn't that the day that nothing moved?
Or am I thinking about Labor Day?
My memory gets kinda fuzzy when it comes to the McCarthyism Red scare sci-fi era.



Anyways,
this is a film where the aliens do come in peace,
but they also come with a warning.
We humans need to behave.
Or if we don't,
the aliens are likely to give us a spanking. On a galactic level.

A teenage kid discovers that the video game he has mastered is secretly a celestial training simulation program, when he is notified by an alien who reveals to him that he is a gunner/star-soldier in an intergalactic war between good and evil.
So, to all you video gamers out there, don't listen to society when it tries to convince you that all those hours spent on your x-box, gameboy or psp will eventually accumulate into a vast amount of wasted life.
For all anybody knows, you could very well be the last starfighter.

Therefore,
feel free to grab your wii and play with yourself as much as you like.
The future of the galaxy may depend on it.

Take E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial,
make Elliot more ethnic and change him into a girl,
then take E.T. himself and make him a lot more bad-@ss, but still cute,
and then transform the whole thing into a cartoon,
and there you go.
You've got this movie.

Enemy Mine is a film that starts out as a "bad alien" movie and then evolves into a "good alien" movie by intergalactically pondering the question of "Why can't we all just get along?"
The truth is, no matter what planet one is from, when it comes to reaching racial harmony, even on an interplanetary scale, we all need to follow Jerry Seinfeld's advice and try to take a bite out of both sides of the black & white cookie.
Look to the cookie.
We must all look to the cookie.
Oh, and to all you sci-fi geeks out there,
that's cookie,
not wookie.
So don't start looking towards Chewbacca for any kind of sage words on the subject.

An uneven film that contains separate moments of good stuff. Enough of 'em, that, despite it's unstitched story flow, hits on a few certain plot points that were interesting enough to keep my attention. As a big fan of Stanley Kubrick's work, I can't help but look at this movie with the potential that it held if the original director had lived to make it.
But despite that, Steven Spielberg's effort at keeping A.I. alive is the main reason why this movie makes an appearance on this list.

  An elderly couple who are very sweet and owners of a small, crumbling tenant building are threatened with eviction. Luckily, they are in a story that takes place during that Speilberg inspired era of science fiction feel goodiness known as the 1980's. Therefore, before they can get kicked out on their flabby asses, they are saved by tiny sentient flying saucers.
  A Mini-Me version of Close Encounters Of The 3rd. Kind, with a splash of Cocoon, for a "just the way Grandma used to make it" kind of flavor.

For all those woman who ask "Why aren't there any good men around?",
this movie answer that question.
Because they're all on other planets.

And to be honest, these other-planetary men aren't really all that good.
It's just that, well, y'know... Earth girls do tend to be a bit too easy.

Take my Superman: The Movie entry at the beginning of this list,
replace all the parts referring to the lead character as a man with references to being a female,
make the movie alot lamer,
and there you go.
You've got this movie.

After watching this particular "favorite martian" movie, I realized that the favorite martian in My Favorite Martian is definitely not my favorite martian.
Evenmore, My Favorite Martian is definitely not my favorite martian movie.
However, it's not my worst favorite martian movie either....

.....this one is.