io9
Humans are a plague, shredding across the galaxy and destroying other peace-loving creatures. At least, that seems to be the theme of a number of movies that are coming out in the next few years. I've been wondering what would replace the post-apocalyptic-Earth as the stock plot for "dark" science fiction movies, and the evil-humans-in-space plot seems increasingly likely to rule. Among others, James Cameron's Avatar and the new animated film Terra seem to be exploring this theme, which is a standard plot in written science fiction, but is fairly new to the movies. Click through for details.
As I said above, the story of evil humans coming and despoiling an alien planet is nothing new in written science fiction. Off the top of my head, there's Ursula LeGuin's The Word For World Is Forest, among others. I'm almost done reading Jeanette Winterson's The Stone Gods (review coming soon) which deals with this theme. But I can't think of too many movies which have handled this type of storyline. (Enemy Mine, I guess.)
We still don't know all of the plot details for James Cameron's Avatar, coming in 2009, but an early "scriptment" that's reputed to be real includes a lot of information. In a nutshell, Earth is ruined due to centuries of exploitation, and we've used up all our resources. So we decide to go and plunder the mineral wealth of the planet Pandora, whose atmosphere is poisonous to us. Humans can only walk around on Pandora by growing special alien bodies, akin to the native Na'vi aliens. The humans can control their own vat-grown Na'vi bodies, which are called avatars. (We don't know how much of this stuff survives in the final script, but Sigourney Weaver's comments about her character having "her own avatar" make it sound as though it's still there in some form.)
In addition to these surrogate aliens, the humans have also landed some bloodthirsty troops who hate the natives and want to wipe them out. So there's a conflict between the Avatar-using humans, who want to understand the natives (who are basically Native Americans) and the power-armor-using troops, who want to bulldoze all the natives' sacred lands and kill them all. This leads to a speech by our hero, Josh:
Pandora is not Hell, it's Eden. And Eden is being bulldozed and stripmined and raped. We have no right. We are the aliens here. We are the space monsters.
If that sounds too subtle for you, then there's Terra, which we covered the other day. The new full-length animated film is about humans coming to terraform a planet of peaceloving aliens, after Earth has become basically uninhabitable. We already terraformed Venus and Mars, but then the planets had a huge civil war. So now we have to come and use our transforming device to turn Terra's helium atmosphere into oxygen.
Are you seeing a trend here? The stories about humans as scourge of the cosmos are what come after the post-apocalyptic Earth stories. We ruin our own planet, so we have to go and fuck up someone else's planet. (That's also the storyline in the Winterson book, where Orbus is about to become unable to support human life.) There could also be some guilt about the Iraq war and our various other foreign adventures, which we could be excising.
There's also the remake of the original humans-are-assholes movie The Day The Earth Stood Still, coming this December, in which peaceful aliens warn us not to take our asshole ways out into space. And there's a new direct-to-DVD sequel to Starship Troopers coming out in a couple of months. In the original Troopers, director Paul Verhoeven's aim was to show that humans were the aggressors and the bugs were simply reacting to human colonies encroaching on their territory. This message flew over a lot of people's heads, so maybe Troopers scriptwriter Ed Neumeier (who's directing the new movie) will make it more blatant this time around.
And then there's also the animated Planet 51, starring the Rock, in which the peaceful aliens think the humans are there to invade and despoil their planet. But they're wrong... or are they?
I guess there's not enough examples there to argue that this is a sweeping new trend. And of course the post-apocalyptic Earth movie has one major advantage over the alien world epic: it's cheap to film, since you can make a post-apocalyptic landscape almost anywhere you can find some rubble.
Comments
If it means my survival, then yes. Screw the peace loving aliens and their helium breathing ways.
The Eagles said it best - The Last Resort
We satisfy our endless needs and
justify our bloody deeds,
in the name of destiny and the name
of God
And you can see them there,
On Sunday morning
They stand up and sing about
what it's like up there
They call it paradise
I don't know why
You call someplace paradise,
kiss it goodbye
Yeah, I'm a 70's something long haired, greenie ...
@B:
No regrets! No mercy! You know they coveted our bountiful mylar balloon resources! They would have killed us dead, and yanked those Disney princess balloons right out of the hands of our children! ...and for what? Breathing?
Bah. Let 'em get their own damn, Snoopy birthday balloons..
@Miranda Kali: Oh won't someone please think of the children!!!....(and their balloons)
@B:
Hydrogen bombs fuse hydrogen into helium, so we could nuke them all and pass it off as a clean air project! Then laugh at their silly high-piched screams...
Many, if not most of these also seem to have an environmentally-inspired subtext in addition to the anti-colonial one. That could be one reason they're suddenly taking off, what with the rise of that attitude in the US in general and Hollywood in particular.
Why doesn't someone make a movie where we unintentionally destroy an alien race through no fault of our own? Like, simply by going to their planet, somehow we mess everything up, and they all die, even though we went to make friends with them and bring them all our delicious foods?! Heck, it could even be a comedy!
@Bob_of_Mars: The Martian Chronicles...
@Bob_of_Mars: Like revers War of the Worlds?
@Bob_of_Mars: Dude, Where's My Ecosystem?
For how many generations are the colonists evil? Perhaps the Amerinds have opinions.
@Bob_of_Mars: Perhaps we could give them blankets with smallpox on them?
It looks like that guy in the pic is sucking on a big-boy pacifier. Survival is predicated on being adaptable. Nature (in general) shows no mercy. Ironically, humans have the ability to be altruistic, empathetic, compassionate and "loving." These qualities help to balance out our aggressive, animal nature. If we take over the universe and end up killing off a lot of other creatures, oh well. I'm sure we will be forced to do so because of economic concerns. Or maybe just out of boredom.
You humans have ruined your own lands, you'll not ruin mine!
/Heard from an orc in North Karana
Also, I hate movies that involve native Americans, even as symbolism. Even more boring than the civil war.
@donkeyjote: I guess, but maybe something besides germs. Something like....poop?
@Slatz_Grobnik: HAHA!
@Balius: Nah, you see, that would be intentional! I was thinking something completely unintentional and unforeseen, like somehow something of ours makes the natives burst into flames, or something crazy like that.
wow the ultimate exploration of empathy - even better than 'walk a mile in someone's shoes' - integrate yourself with the body structure of the aboriginal populace.
It is interesting when sci-fi movie themes go mainstream and affect/influence/brain-wash (pick your synonym) the movie-going population. If we could say that 'Day After Tomorrow' (among others) pricked people's sense of global disaster.. could it be said that portraying the human race as an imperialistic pest could influence policy with future space travel/exploration/colonization plans - uh-oh - what will be made of Bush's 2020 moon/mars concept?
@designguybrown:
It's not like this is a new concept in SF (the Star Trek-industrial complex comes to mind) and it goes back to the book of Genesis.
But will humans actually bear the possibility of creating a negative effect in mind WHEN we actually get into space? I think it'll go out the window with the first uranium mine discovered by Exxon Galactic.
BTW--Bush's space plan is probably the only sensible thing he's introduced in 8 years. Why go back to the moon? Two words Spaceship Factory!
@Bob_of_Mars: If you haven't already, read Maria Doria Russell's "The Sparrow"-- it's all about the law of unintended consequences.
I read years ago that some production company in Hollyweird optioned it, but nothing has ever come of it. Too bad.
I'll never stop bringing up Sidney Poitier in Brother John.
@Daveinva: The Sparrow is far to intelligent for Hollywood. It's not popular to make sf that doesn't have stuff blowing up.
People from rich countries tend to romanticize living in poor undeveloped countries. They wax poetic about rustic values and living in harmony with the land, take a few pics, and then head back to the hotel.
When someone wants to bring in factories, electricity and running water, they get accused of destroying culture, nature, tradition, etc. I've met few "natives" who aren't delighted to trade superstition and back-breaking subsistence labor for schools, roads, plentiful food and easier jobs.
Really, this new trend doesn't seem any different from Ferngully.
@Sihanouk-s-Poodle: There's a serious difference from bringing modern technology and resources and bringing planet-wide (or country-wide) genocide. Just so, you know, you keep those two separate. From the outlines, it's pretty clear the "bad" humans aren't trying to uplift the natives.
@Sihanouk-s-Poodle: Say, were not some of, or ALL of those 'rich' countries at one time poor and undeveloped?
Why would any native or aboriginal be considered better than a developed one or even vice-versa?
People in developed countries tend to romanticize native and idiginous peoples as, "noble", "living in harmony with nature" and "peaceful". Human nature is human nature.
Now if we are ever determined enough to get out of out solar system and possibly encounter other life, I hope we are beyond our weaknesses.
@icelight: Oops, I thought we were talking about a fictional movie that was symbolic of culture clashes. I didn't realize it was a documentary. Can you keep fiction and reality separate?
Are the being(s) Humanity is destroying also Human? Yes/No
Are the being(s) Humanity is destroying beneficial to Humanity? Yes/No
Does destroying said being(s) harm humanity in a direct or indirect manner? Yes/No
I figure if the answer is "Yes" to any of these questions we probably shouldn't do it. If "No" to all of them then have a field day! The second and third questions are why I'm generally in favor of environmental regulation, at least until we can get off this spinning ball of mud. But hey, some intelligent alien species that doesn't have a stick to shake at us lives on a planet we want and isn't protected by something? Break out the nukes boys, those rad levels will go down after a few hundred years.
See also 'Jem' by Frederick Pohl ([www.frederikpohl.com]) where the 3 warring factions on Earth take their war to a new planet and forge allegiances with the 3 races there - all to the new planets detriment, of course.
[www.amazon.co.uk]
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