SIHA 2019: Just Stop

Retro-SIHA 2002: Solaris

Back in April I began my 2019 Search for Interesting Hollywood Aliens (SIHA). There was no winner for this year, but I did award a retro-SIHA for the 2002 film, Solaris.

Stanisław Lem's science fiction novel Solaris depicted and interesting alien life form and the 2002 film version of the story provided movie fans with an updated version of the story for the new millennium.

SIHA 2012

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I began my searches for interesting Hollywood aliens in 2012. The first SIHA interesting alien award winner was Griffin the Archanan.

I never saw Men in Black 3, but love the idea of an imaginary technology that would allow for Viewing of the future. Of course, it would be frustrating if your device for Viewing the future showed you a gazillion possible futures and you had no way of knowing which one would actually come to pass.

Sadly, the alien Archanan have been destroyed by evil aliens, leaving poor Griffin as the only survivor of his species. Maybe someday there will be a science fiction novel that describes the origins of the Archanan and how they developed the means to View the future.

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2013
I've never read The Host or seen the 2013 film. I gave the 2013 SIHA "interesting alien" award to Wanderer, in The Host. I suspect that The Host is not actually science fiction. I can find no evidence that any fans of The Host care about issues such as: 1) what are the "souls" made of? 2) How do the "souls" travel from planet to planet? 3) How did the "souls" evolve? 4) How does a "soul" integrate with a human brain? 5) Why are some humans resistant to being "erased" by an invading "soul"? Maybe the answers to these questions are discussed in the novel, but I suspect there is very little fictional science in The Host. 😢

I'm intrigued by the idea that Wanderer is female. Sadly, I've never actually seen Wanaderer, only the human host. It seems odd that tiny parasitic space aliens from a distant exoplanet have the same genders as primates on Earth. However, this sure comes in handy for selling romance stories.

is this an alien?

2014
I gave the 2014 SIHA interesting aliens award to the alien creatures in The Signal. I've never seen The Signal and I'm not sure that anyone who saw the movie can provide the rest of us with a coherent account. I suspect that The Signal is really just a low-budget horror flick, but I like the idea that Borg-like space aliens could transform humans into artificial life forms. The question is: why bother? I suppose the aliens finance their expensive space travel missions by making a horror movie on each planet that they visit. Side benefit for Earth: a year of work for a few unemployed film school graduates.

2015

Karellen

I gave the 2015 SIHA interesting aliens award to Arthur C. Clarke's "Overlords" in Childhood's End. I like the idea of aliens who spread through the universe assimilating every humanoid species that they encounter. Karellen and his fellow Overlords have the misfortune of being resistant to the assimilation process, so they are condemned to eternally do the dirty work of harvesting life forms like we Earthlings. They have the good fortune of being the only aliens we get to see in Childhood's End, so they win the SIHA Award. However, it would be much more interesting to learn about the aliens who the Overlords work for (the "Overmind").

meet the heptapods

2016
I gave the 2016 SIHA interesting aliens award to the heptapods of Arrival. Sadly, we don't get to learn very much about the heptapods. The film is more about a few bumbling humans than it is about the aliens. Best feature: aliens who travel across vast interstellar distance to Earth and they don't even try to steal our gold reserves. 👍

The Discovery II

2017
In 2017, the Hollywood alien scene was even more dismal than usual. I changed SIHA 2017 into a search for "anything interesting in Hollywood" and gave the award to The Discovery. There are no aliens in The Discovery, but that did not stop me from imagining how the events depicted in this film might have involved alien visitors to Earth and how they make time travel technology available to the bumbling humans of Earth.

Search for interesting aliens: telepathy or nanites?

2018
I gave the 2018 SIHA interesting aliens award to Before We Vanish. As in The Host (2013, above), viewers of Before We Vanish never see the aliens. For a science nerd like me, it is easy to imagine that Earthlings could have their brains invaded by a nanoscopic alien life form.

Lem's autistic aliens

Maybe the aliens of Before We Vanish come to Earth in order to save Humanity from self-destruction. The only way they can do this is to start what looks like a classic Hollywood alien invasion of Earth, stimulating the Earthlings to work together.
Related Reading: SIHA 2021, SIHA 2020
Next: In search of Lakum

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