This is the 5th edition of my Search for Interesting Hollywood Aliens (SIHA). My question: is there anyone in Hollywood who can imagine an interesting type of alien creature and how it might interact with we Earthlings? My default expectation is that the folk$ in Hollywood will continue to give us endle$$ repeat$ of past alien invasion $cenario$ rather than break new ground and tell an interesting story about imagined beings from distant worlds.
Recap of past SIHA awards
SIHA 2012
SIHA 2013
SIHA 2014
SIHA 2015
SIHA 2017
2016 Nominations
Back
in March these were the four SIHA nominees for 2016:
1)
The X-Files season 10
2)
Terminus
3)
Arrival
4)
How to Talk to Girls at Parties - now has a 2017 release target date
listed
Reminder
The real goal of SIHA is to find science fiction films about interesting aliens that would actually motivate me to watch.
Arrival got me into a movie theater for the first time in 10 years, so it deserves some kind of award.
And the winner is...
I'm still doubtful that
Arrival is even about aliens (see
my non-review), however, given the competition, the
heptapods are Hollywood's most interesting aliens of 2016.
 |
| the terminal patient |
2nd place. Most interesting arrival award:
Terminus. My guess is that
First Contact with space aliens would be more like what is depicted in
Terminus than what we are shown in
Arrival. I don't expect a biological entity to show up on our door step and try to teach us something. It is much more likely that an artificial life form might be able to cross the vast distance between stars and start changing the course of events on Earth...all without any attempt by the aliens to communicate with us. Even more likely: such aliens arrived long ago.
 |
| an alien pod from Terminus |
Sadly, as far as I can tell (based on my search of the interwebs),
Terminus never provides an informative account of the aliens or their backstory, so I could not rank this film as the 2016 SIHA grand prize winner. Besides, I detest dystopian horror movies, which is what the
Terminus trailers look like.
2017 event horizon: trip to
Paradise?
Next: further investigations of
science fiction in Deep Time
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