The changing face of aliens

In the 80s aliens used to terrorise us. Now they help solve our problems

Kabir Singh Bhandari

If you were to ask someone which was the seminal point as far as depiction of aliens in Hollywood is concerned, their answer would depend on which era they belonged to. A 90s kid would mention 

Independence Day (1996), where the US fights back an alien invasion involving a gigantic UFO. The 80s child would talk about Predator (1987), where the Austrian oak, Arnold Schwarzenegger, takes on an alien bigger than him too. Someone from the 70s would talk about either the friendly alien in ET: the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977) or the most fearsome alien ever conjured up by Hollywood in the simply titled, Alien (1979). 

Currently, it's Steven Spielberg's 

Disclosure Day that is running in theatres. And with it, the shift in which aliens have been perceived on the big screen is clearly visible. The 80s and 90s saw most of them being a threat to human life, something which stretched in to the 2000s too. Post that, the evil aliens started to reduce, and other themes began to take over. Avatar (2009) followed a paraplegic former Marine guard who travels to the alien moon of Pandora with the task to infiltrate the indigenous Na'vi population, eventually switching sides. Interstellar (2014), which explored the theme of communication between different timelines. Disclosure Day revolves around an expose on how the government hid evidence of extraterrestrial life for decades and how alien intervention saves the day, for a change. 

Inbetween, ofcourse, there were other alien movies too that are totally worth a watch. Mars Attacks (1995) was a parody take on a situation where aliens from Mars launch a full blown attack on earth, starring Jack Nicholson as the president of the USA and 'James Bond' Pierce Brosnan as the hilarious pipe-smoking professor who brings humanity close to extinction with his misplaced idealism. Not to forget Men In Black (1997), which had a lot of us wondering where these alien investigators actually live on Earth and opening up potential job opportunities for those of us who had an active imagination.

But will the aliens with an objective of taking over earth be back and give us more exciting movies, a bit less on the intellectual quotient? Let's wait and watch, the box office numbers might point us in that direction.