![]() These didn’t look necessarily like any aliens that had ever been put to film and that contributed so much to the movie’s idiosyncratic tone.Īnother 1990s sci-fi comedy gem, Men in Black, also found creative success in delivering aliens that eschewed the color-drained norms of modern extra-terrestrials. This meant his movie's aliens were chock full of color in their designs, came adorned with lavish costumes, and were bursting with personality. For example, the 1996 movie Mars Attacks!saw director Tim Burton taking visual cues not from gritty realism but 1960s pulp as well as imagery from the film's trading card source material. The total lack of personality is extra frustrating because several major movies over the years have proved that aliens don’t need to look like this. In trying to ground these creatures in reality, movies like The Tomorrow War just waste the opportunity to carve out their own identity. If you did a police line-up of these extra-terrestrials, I doubt your average moviegoer could tell the difference between the Battleship and Battle: Los Angeles aliens. Rather than convey to viewers that they’re watching a movie for grown-ups, these modern alien invasion titles just remind one of other sci-fi action movies. This is a byproduct of how many 21st-century alien invasion movies, especially something like Battle: Los Angeles with its constant shaky cam, are aiming for “gritty realism.” This frustrating creative decision results in a horde of aliens covered in subdued colors, as if restricting extra-terrestrials to just various shades of grey will instantly give something like Independence Day: Resurgence all the lived-in depth of a Mike Leigh movie. Modern CG technology that allows these types of aliens to always linger on-screen makes their shortcomings extra apparent.Įven worse, there’s just no imagination in the appearance or design of any of these characters. While a handful of good monsters have emerged through this approach, many aliens in this mold eschew unique design choices or any traces of personality. Films like Edge of Tomorrow, Captive State, and The Tomorrow War also employ their faux-Xenomorphs to make life nasty for humans on Earth. Covered in white coloring and looking like if the Cloverfield monster had the size and all the tentacles of those Edge of Tomorrow beasties, they’re the quintessential example of this kind of alien.īut it isn’t just in this new Chris Pratt vehicle that one can find these kinds of aliens. This is where The Tomorrow War’s aliens come in. These are aliens covered in either black or grey hues who crawl around on all fours and don’t even bother having weapons, they just attack human adversaries with their teeth. More prominent in recent years has been another type of alien invader that emulates the Xenomorphs from the Alien movies. Though they had green-and-yellow outfits in the comics, the Parademons in the live-action Justice League movie, with their drained-out coloring and interchangeable appearances, are clearly modeled more after this style of cinematic extraterrestrial. These kinds of aliens have become so omnipresent that they even infect adaptations of these creatures that used to look different. That’s not exactly the kind of otherworldly visitor that captures your imagination. Instead, all that these henchmen do is just point, shoot, and inevitably get slaughtered by live-action actors. These aliens are always just covered in drab grey coloring and there’s never any attempt to inject actual personality into the individual fighters. These creatures tend to look like they’re emulating the visual aesthetic of the Spartan soldiers from the Halovideo games. As seen in films like Battleship and Battle: Los Angeles. The first is legions of bipedal foot soldiers covered in armor. In this domain in the 21st century, there are usually two types of alien invaders. ![]()
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