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Your Gay Uncle posted:In any movie where aliens come to earth to steal resources (Indepence Day, Battle Los Angeles,etc) wouldn't any civilization technologicaly advanced enough to have mastered FTL travel also be able scientifically synthesize any organic compound, especially ones like water? Or better yet be smart enough to harvest asteroids or the other 7 (8,dozens) planets in the system instead of targeting the one planet with a species that has already depleted a good percentage of available resources and oh by the way could potentially fight back. There's no reason for the aliens in Independence Day to have come within a million miles of Earth.
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Apr 18, 2014 01:41
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This is an actual plot point in Footfall, where some of the characters point out the alien invasion makes no sense whatsoever, and even some of the aliens wonder why the gently caress they bothered to invade.
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Apr 18, 2014 01:56
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The aliens aren't stealing our resources because they need them, they're doing it because they're loving dickheads.
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Apr 18, 2014 03:10
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There should be a movie where aliens invade earth because they had intelligence that said we had WMDs.
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Apr 18, 2014 03:43
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Gaunab posted:There should be a movie where aliens invade earth because they had intelligence that said we had WMDs. They made it already. It's called The Day the Earth Stood Still. That is actually what the original one is about.
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Apr 18, 2014 03:50
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I think loving Transformers: Dark of the Moon, of all possible movies, had the best motive for an alien invasion: they needed the human race as slave labor to build their whatever-the-hell. Slaves being the one thing you can get on Earth that you can't just take from an unoccupied planet/moon/asteroid within the solar system.
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Apr 18, 2014 03:55
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WeaponGradeSadness posted:I think loving Transformers: Dark of the Moon, of all possible movies, had the best motive for an alien invasion: they needed the human race as slave labor to build their whatever-the-hell. Slaves being the one thing you can get on Earth that you can't just take from an unoccupied planet/moon/asteroid within the solar system. We'll make great pets (but seriously we won't, unless they can survive 2-3 generations of us being terroristic as hell.) The elephantoid aliens from the above-mentioned Footfall tried to use people as duct cleaners because they couldn't get back in there and really scrub, but they forgot about the human spirit. Which is to kill stuff, especially really goofy looking Dumbo Drop mofos.
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Apr 18, 2014 05:04
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I came in a little late to Battle: Los Angeles...what resource were they actually after? If it was water like so many other films, that's pretty messed up. It'd be like us invading a planet because their lakes and oceans were made of blood. The ID4 Aliens meanwhile were kind of written to be basically space locusts. I got the impression it was less about harvesting our resources and more about just running in and consuming it all, then loving off to the next planet that contained consumable resources.
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Apr 18, 2014 05:14
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WeaponGradeSadness posted:I think loving Transformers: Dark of the Moon, of all possible movies, had the best motive for an alien invasion: they needed the human race as slave labor to build their whatever-the-hell. Slaves being the one thing you can get on Earth that you can't just take from an unoccupied planet/moon/asteroid within the solar system. A group of sentient robots couldn't think of a better labour pool? Like maybe making a bunch of robots.
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Apr 18, 2014 06:38
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Choco1980 posted:I came in a little late to Battle: Los Angeles...what resource were they actually after? If it was water like so many other films, that's pretty messed up. It'd be like us invading a planet because their lakes and oceans were made of blood. Whatever it was, I hope it had something to do with why the hell gigantic alien ships were buried in our sewers or whatever. I really can't imagine editors being so expensive that they couldn't get a few to make sense of that mess of a movie.
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Apr 18, 2014 06:41
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Dr_Amazing posted:A group of sentient robots couldn't think of a better labour pool? Like maybe making a bunch of robots. That'd be robo-slavery and that poo poo is wrong.
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Apr 18, 2014 08:04
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Skyline was a terrible, utterly lovely alien invasion movie. But it becomes a bit more tolerable if you imagine it as a 90 minute Hoover Vacuum commercial. Also as much as I love the old V movie and series, I will never not laugh at the ridiculous scene where Julie is being tortured and hallucinates a giant Iguana breaking through a wall.
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Apr 18, 2014 08:11
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Choco1980 posted:I came in a little late to Battle: Los Angeles...what resource were they actually after? If it was water like so many other films, that's pretty messed up. It'd be like us invading a planet because their lakes and oceans were made of blood. Yeah it was water. They were using it as fuel. They showed the news in the movie saying that the ocean level already dropped several inches since the invasion started.
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Apr 18, 2014 08:44
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Lead Psychiatry posted:Also as much as I love the old V movie and series, I will never not laugh at the ridiculous scene where Julie is being tortured and hallucinates a giant Iguana breaking through a wall. I watched both miniseries a few years back. It was interesting to see again, having been a huge fan as a little kid. Both the 1980s overacting, and the weird duality of the effects, where one moment you see some passable knowing it's old model and prosthetic work, and then the next they're doing smoke and strobe lights at a high school play level. And then there's a hand puppet. Which scared the hell out of me as a child, but hey.
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Apr 18, 2014 08:44
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MrJacobs posted:What makes you think they didn't just steal it from another civilization rather than master the technology themselves? It would fit with their MO. Water's ridiculously common in space. Traveling to the Earth from another star to steal water is like living in Saudi Arabia and going to Delaware to gas up your car and drive off without paying.
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Apr 18, 2014 09:28
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I like to think that aliens invading Earth are just a bunch of assholes or it's some kind of frat prank where they're from. Steal a rival school mascot, enslave or blow up a planet, it's all the same. gently caress, wasn't Under the Dome about some alien kids who just dropped a dome over a city to see what the ants (humans) would do?
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Apr 18, 2014 11:32
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Did anyone play an ancient rail shooter called Deadly Tide? The idea is that a small fleet of aquatic aliens invade earth, and instead of bothering to fight us they just land at the bottom of the ocean where we can't get them, and sit there manufacturing water (how? from what?) to raise the sea-level and drown us out. It doesn't make a lick of sense.
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Apr 18, 2014 11:32
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Cowslips Warren posted:gently caress, wasn't Under the Dome about some alien kids who just dropped a dome over a city to see what the ants (humans) would do? Yes, in the book at least, I haven't seen the show. It was supposed to pretty much be the alien equivalent of kids burning ants with a magnifying glass
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Apr 18, 2014 11:35
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Pook Good Mook posted:Or better yet be smart enough to harvest asteroids or the other 7 (8,dozens) planets in the system instead of targeting the one planet with a species that has already depleted a good percentage of available resources and oh by the way could potentially fight back. Well if you don't care what you're hurting, the Earth still has plenty of resources. And compared to everywhere else, Earth has a pretty safe environment. Even if you don't breath the air, you don't have to worry about Venus' crushing pressure or Mars' lack of magnetic shielding. And aliens are dicks.
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Apr 18, 2014 12:59
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Cowslips Warren posted:I like to think that aliens invading Earth are just a bunch of assholes or it's some kind of frat prank where they're from. Steal a rival school mascot, enslave or blow up a planet, it's all the same. This reminds me of Roadside Picnic, which is one of my favorite explanations for an alien invasion because it's not clear that they actually realized what they were doing to us or if they were simply so advanced that their chilling out having fun with a picnic was our hell on earth alien attack. The scientists hypothesized that they just kind of wander the universe like god drat masters of creation and throw their junk wherever they like, causing horrible mutations and natural disasters like a tornado big enough to swallow Chicago.
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Apr 18, 2014 13:40
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Shai-Hulud posted:Yeah it was water. They were using it as fuel. They showed the news in the movie saying that the ocean level already dropped several inches since the invasion started. Then drat, I repeat what I said--the half of the movie that's not just a military recruitment commercial is pretty messed up. The aliens are revealed to be filled with water in the scene where our soldiers capture one of theirs and um, vivisect him right there. Jesus that seems fairly awful in retrospect. The only thing I really liked about that movie was how the aliens seemed to be using tactics much more akin to human military than you normally see in alien invasion films. It wasn't just some big wave of soldiers and nukes, but rather platoons of infantry, artillary vehicles, and recon scouts.
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Apr 18, 2014 14:56
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Choco1980 posted:Then drat, I repeat what I said--the half of the movie that's not just a military recruitment commercial is pretty messed up. The aliens are revealed to be filled with water in the scene where our soldiers capture one of theirs and um, vivisect him right there. Jesus that seems fairly awful in retrospect. The only thing I really liked about that movie was how the aliens seemed to be using tactics much more akin to human military than you normally see in alien invasion films. It wasn't just some big wave of soldiers and nukes, but rather platoons of infantry, artillary vehicles, and recon scouts. The aliens are using drones and the humans are using suicide-bombers.
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Apr 18, 2014 18:32
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Krispy Kareem posted:Well if you don't care what you're hurting, the Earth still has plenty of resources. And compared to everywhere else, Earth has a pretty safe environment. Even if you don't breath the air, you don't have to worry about Venus' crushing pressure or Mars' lack of magnetic shielding. No, you have to worry about the highly toxic and corrosive oxygen atmosphere, and the 11kps deep gravity well (never mind that you are already diving deep into Sols well to get here). There is about as much water on the asteroid Ceres as there is on Earth. There is literally no resource on Earth at would not be available in higher quantities with less effort in one of our debris disks, excepting life (maybe).
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Apr 18, 2014 21:28
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We rarely use the "The aliens just think people are really loving tasty" reasoning for alien invasions in media, but its the only one that really makes sense. People will eat meat from far away which is rare and expensive in preference to locally sourced things, no reason that aliens wouldnt do similar. About the only thing that you can find on earth that you cant find easier in space (provided you have the technology to travel interstellar distances) is earths plant and animal life. When you think about it, the Predator franchise has one of the few motivations for alien invasion that makes sense given about 10 seconds of thought. the predators are after one of the only things that they couldnt find easier on an uninhabited planet. They are trophy hunters rather than food hunters right enough, but the point stands.
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Apr 18, 2014 21:45
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^ Some of the extended universe stuff about the Predators even takes it further: they like hunting us because we're really really dirty fighters. Not a movie, but the Command and Conquer game that had the aliens in it dealt with this topic pretty well. They were supposed to invade after humanity had wiped itself out flinging Tiberium all over the world, but arrived prematurely with what is essentially non-military units at their disposal. Powerful compared to the locals, but still only harvesting units nonetheless. Your AI assistant points out how dumb sticking around is, but your boss is too obsessed with harvesting Tiberium that he orders you to stick around. MisterBibs has a new favorite as of 21:54 on Apr 18, 2014 |
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Apr 18, 2014 21:50
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SiKboy posted:We rarely use the "The aliens just think people are really loving tasty" reasoning for alien invasions in media, but its the only one that really makes sense. People will eat meat from far away which is rare and expensive in preference to locally sourced things, no reason that aliens wouldnt do similar. About the only thing that you can find on earth that you cant find easier in space (provided you have the technology to travel interstellar distances) is earths plant and animal life. That's pretty much the premise of the novel "Under the Skin." The main character is an alien who has been altered to look like a human being and she drives around picking up hitchhikers who would be easily missed. She then drugs them and takes them back to her farm where they're fattened up like cattle and slaughtered. The meat is then shipped back to their home planet.
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Apr 18, 2014 23:24
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MisterBibs posted:^ Some of the extended universe stuff about the Predators even takes it further: they like hunting us because we're really really dirty fighters. Big talk coming from the guys that only hunt while invisible, using auto aim plasma cannons. Dr_Amazing has a new favorite as of 02:18 on Apr 19, 2014 |
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Apr 19, 2014 02:10
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SiKboy posted:We rarely use the "The aliens just think people are really loving tasty" reasoning for alien invasions in media, but its the only one that really makes sense. People will eat meat from far away which is rare and expensive in preference to locally sourced things, no reason that aliens wouldnt do similar. About the only thing that you can find on earth that you cant find easier in space (provided you have the technology to travel interstellar distances) is earths plant and animal life. I really like this premise and it almost works better without humans at all (except we get in the aliens' way). Even the idea of humans being particularly interesting biologically or culinarily out of all the other crazy types of life on earth seems silly, we mostly have nice brains. Can't the aliens just really love sea urchin? Or maybe botulinum is like saffron to them.
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Apr 19, 2014 02:17
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Dr_Amazing posted:Big talk coming from the guys that only hunt while invisible, using auto aim plasma cannons. This always bothered me and was always way I never understood the "they're so cool" fanboys of Predator. They're the galactic equivalent of setting up a treestand, throwing down some delicious nuts and salt licks and waiting for a Deer to come up so you can blast it at 20 feet. Predator fandom is more inexplicable to me than Boba Fett fandom.
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Apr 19, 2014 02:26
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Pook Good Mook posted:This always bothered me and was always way I never understood the "they're so cool" fanboys of Predator. I can't say I'm an expert on the Predator franchise but I never really got the impression they were hunting for sport. If that were the case your complaint would make a lot more sense. Hunting for its own sake doesn't need to involve skill or challenge, so them using auto-aim and invisibility (Or tree stands and salt licks) to their advantage is all that's needed. Now I wonder what Predators would do for sport. Do they have Xenomorph egg races?
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Apr 19, 2014 02:55
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Pook Good Mook posted:This always bothered me and was always way I never understood the "they're so cool" fanboys of Predator. I tend to think that what they are doing is raising the ante on the humans they encounter, until the humans start responding seriously. In 1 and 2, the technology gets dropped as soon as a human takes the threat seriously enough to hurt the predator even with the technology difference. Then once the Predator gives up the technology, the real fight begins.
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Apr 19, 2014 02:57
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Lead Psychiatry posted:I can't say I'm an expert on the Predator franchise but I never really got the impression they were hunting for sport. If that were the case your complaint would make a lot more sense. Hunting for its own sake doesn't need to involve skill or challenge, so them using auto-aim and invisibility (Or tree stands and salt licks) to their advantage is all that's needed. There's no way you've ever seen a Predator movie beyond the first one and not realized they were hunting for sport. There are times when they give their prey weapons to even the playing field, and they manage an extensive game park (the earth) so that they may periodically hunt the most dangerous game of all (xenomorphs, not people). You're missing the subtext hard if you don't think they're hunting for sport.
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Apr 19, 2014 03:03
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Bad wording ( And understanding of "hunting for sport") on my behalf, then. I was working under the belief that more challenge = more sporting. Using a whole arsenal makes sense against Xenomorphs, since they tend to have the numbers. But not against humans, which was the part of the discussion I was commenting towards. No idea what you're referencing when ya say "Give their prey weapons to even the playing field" though.
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Apr 19, 2014 03:49
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When Predators come to earth they tend to hunt groups of humans, not just stalk one prey. It seems to even up the odds a little considering in both of the Predator movies the Predators lost. Pacific Rim had a pretty decent rationale behind the alien invaders. Just send a bunch of monsters through a portal until they kill everything, leaving the home world and species untouched. Although their timing was a bit off, if they had just sent some Kaiju through around 1200 AD or so they could have mopped up humanity with just one. In fact they had a 65 million year window where they could have had their way with Earth. I hope who ever kept putting that off got fired.
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Apr 19, 2014 04:03
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They covered that. The reason we weren't attacked earlier is that we didn't have a hosed up enough planet for these things to live on. Apparently greenhouse gases, global warming, CO2, etc sets up the atmosphere to what they like.
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Apr 19, 2014 04:07
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Your Gay Uncle posted:When Predators come to earth they tend to hunt groups of humans, not just stalk one prey. It seems to even up the odds a little considering in both of the Predator movies the Predators lost. Pacific Rim had a pretty decent rationale behind the alien invaders. Just send a bunch of monsters through a portal until they kill everything, leaving the home world and species untouched. Although their timing was a bit off, if they had just sent some Kaiju through around 1200 AD or so they could have mopped up humanity with just one. In fact they had a 65 million year window where they could have had their way with Earth. I hope who ever kept putting that off got fired. During the movie they say it's actually the polluted atmosphere that attracted them to Earth in that particular era. So maybe by 1200 AD it wasn't polluted enough for them.
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Apr 19, 2014 06:34
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Away all Goats posted:During the movie they say it's actually the polluted atmosphere that attracted them to Earth in that particular era. So maybe by 1200 AD it wasn't polluted enough for them. Plus, they were kicking humanity's rear end pretty good, even with nukes started getting flung around. Most invasion plans don't feature a contingency plan for "and they start building giant two hundred foot tall robots out of nowhere".
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Apr 19, 2014 06:39
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When Palpatine's laying down in the window making weird noises in Episode 3, you can see a bunch of black amalgam fillings in his teeth. Are you telling me that a futuristic civilization couldn't ect. . e: And when Vader and Palpatine are standing on the bridge of the proto-Star Destroyer at the end, the guy standing off to the side has weird sunken-face Peter Cushing makeup on. Fuckin' Riff Trax, making me watch this again. Pneub has a new favorite as of 11:31 on Apr 19, 2014 |
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Apr 19, 2014 10:02
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Ugly In The Morning posted:"and they start building giant two hundred foot tall robots out of nowhere". If we really ever do get invaded by aliens I sincerely hope that the bigwigs in charge seriously consider this option.
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Apr 19, 2014 10:04
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Away all Coats posted:During the movie they say it's actually the polluted atmosphere that attracted them to Earth in that particular era. So maybe by 1200 AD it wasn't polluted enough for them. Splicer has a new favorite as of 13:11 on Apr 19, 2014 |
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Apr 19, 2014 13:06
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