SIHA 2021

Триббл in space! Galactic fantasy.

Apparently Cosmoball was released in 2020, with trailers put out in an effort to attract attention as early as 2019, but I did not know that this movie existed until today. I mention Cosmoball here in this SIHA blog post for two reasons; firstly because in the Alastor Clustor novels of Jack Vance, he included the future sport hussade. Vance had little interest in doing things in a conventional way so his fictional sport did not even involve a ball.

Fantasy Space Aliens

fuzzy fantasy space alien

This blog post is about aliens from Hollywood and other odd corners of the global entertainment industry. Based on what is in the trailers, Cosmoball features several types of fantasy aliens from around the galaxy, including one fuzzy creature that seemingly "swims" through outer space. Eh? (story "explained") 

fun for children: blasting holes through characters

 Cosmoball is targeted at children, so in addition to the routine and sickening fantasy violence that graces children's "entertainment" these days there is also a Very Evil™ alien maniac threatening the universe in this "family friendly" film. 

Of course, here in the CGI era, nothing in your movie needs to make sense. All you have to do is just make your battles, fights and explosions look cool on the $creen... the ca$h will role in.

Searching through the Styrofoam and CGI caves of
Hollywood for interesting aliens in 2021 and 1965.

This blog post marks the beginning of my 2021 Search for Interesting Hollywood Aliens (SIHA). I've never seen Cosmoball and I have no interest in all the "superhero" fantasy violence being produced by the film industry. As usual, a looming question is: can any of the dreck or drivel emerging from the television and film industry here in 2021 attract my attention and seem interesting enough for me to spend an hour or two watching the boob tube or (gasp) sitting in a movie theater? 

As has happened in past years, I'm again tempted to award a "retro-SIHA" this year because I am struggling mightily to find any interesting new aliens in movies or on TV. I still have fond memories of aliens from the 1960s such as the telepathic Talosians.

Dune film 2021

For me, scientific plausibility matters. Dear Hollywood: if you don't care about science then please simply call your stuff "fantasy" and don't market it as science fiction (or even Sci-Fi).

Last year I mentioned (here) the 2021 film version of Dune. I don't expect there to be any interesting aliens in Dune. The whole giant "sandworm" idea is as absurd as Star Trek's Horta and the asteroid worms in Star Wars.

Skylines is the third in a series of films that began in 2010 with brain-sucking aliens who were invading Earth. Skylines was apparently released on December 18th 2020. I never heard of it until 2021, so I'll count it as a 2021 film. Does it have interesting aliens?

While growing up in the previous millennium I was disgusted by the seemingly insatiable appetite in Hollywood for stories that depicted dehumanized "injuns", "Japs" and assorted "gooks" who were the targets for "heroic" movie stars to confront and battle. 

"horror science fiction depicting humanity’s desperate
fight against an overwhelmingly powerful alien force
that seeks its complete extermination" (source)

Now we are at the point in time where it is fashionable in Hollywood to endlessly battle robots and space aliens. As far as I can tell, the only goal in these films is high EPM: how many Explosions per Minute can you cram in? Standard Hollywood depictions of artificial life and aliens are almost always boring, stupid, repetitive and unimaginative. The writers don't care about how amazing it would be to actually meet and interact with alien creatures, they just want a convenient target for the fantasy hero's blaster. 😩

alien drone in Skyline

I do like the idea that if and when aliens arrive on Earth, they are likely to be in a non-biological form. The Skyline fictional universe is populated by the Borg "biomechanical" aliens and includes human-alien hybrids. Although there are entire websites devoted to cataloging such aliens (example), there seems to be nobody who can actually explain any of the potentially interesting aspects of the aliens in these Skyline movies. All that counts here is ACTION and confronting the Death Star Mother Ship Core... or something.

alien "pilot"

In Skylines, our heroes magically go through a black hole/worm hole and reach the home planet (Cobolt) of the Evil Aliens™. Getting too close to the black-hole-space-drive system will kill you unless you have Rose's magic wand. The trailer shows the Dark Styrofoam CGI sets where Rose must battle "mutant" aliens who are allergic to sunlight because they look so silly unless they are filmed in the dark of a cave. Ah, the heart-rending travails of low-budget films trying to impress audiences with special FX.

super-duper Rose hybrid

If I understand the "plot" correctly, billions of alien shell-like bodies called "pilots" have been equipped with "harvested" human brains. The star of Skylines (Rose) is some kind of alien-human hybrid with superpowers™ who ages rapidly, but otherwise looks human. Rose is the special creation of the Alien Matriarch, having been given her superpowers while still an embryo. Why? So that Rose can later kill the Matriarch and save Humanity, of course. Nothing in this pile of  💩 makes sense.

2020

Alien Monsters. I suppose there is no point in me trying to make sense of these Skyline films. We viewers in the audience are expected to believe -and ask no questions- when told that the previously pacified pilots with human brains are now going to "revert" to evil-doing becau$e we wanted to make a third film in a trilogy they are infected by a viru$. I doubt if either Joshua Cordes or Liam O'Donnell knows what a viru$ is beyond it being a $ciency-$ounding plot element that will help them make money. In the end, Cobalt is destroyed and Humanity is saved: once again the aliens with fantastically advanced technology are beaten by the primitive humans. One of the lines in the film is "...no respect for science..." and truer words were never spoken.

1967

And telepathy, too. In 1965, you could tell that the Talosians were using telepathy because the huge veins on the side of their heads would twitch.

The aliens of Cobalt were all led by their telepathic Matriarch. Maybe the mysterious "blue light" first seen by viewers in 2010 was how the film makers decided to depict an alien telepathic force that seemingly turns the people of poor planet Earth into zombies, ready to take their places inside the "pilot" body suits? I'm a sucker for alien hybrids and telepathy, so I wasted 2 hours watching Skylines on Netflix, but could I ever enjoy an alien invasion action flick? I doubt it. And certainly not this one. I rate Skylines as R for being a Revolting and woRthless excuse to make profit$ from two hours of fantasy violence. Anyone who makes disgusting films just to harvest money from people is the monster. I want those two wasted hours of my life back. 

honesty in advertising

The fantasy aliens of Skylines could have been crafted into interesting science fiction, but that was not the goal of this mindless video game violence festival. My advice to science fiction fans: don't waste your time on this hyper-violent nonsense. When you see reviews saying that this film provides "action-packed fun", don't be fooled by people who thrive on blood splatter and dismemberment. There is nothing fun in this movie except a couple of out-takes that you get to see when the credits role after the end of the movie. SIHA 2021 Awards

Related Viewing: Foundation 2021 - Related Reading: SIHA 2020

See also: Chapter 11 of "Meet the Phari".

Next: Reality Editing

Search for Interesting Hollywood Aliens