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where's the worm?
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Back
in April, I began my 2021 Search for Interesting Hollywood Aliens (SIHA) and mentioned the new
Dune film. I held my nose and watched the 2021
Dune and I feel that it is very close in plot to the
original story as published in 1966. I was surprised by how little effort was put into creating an exciting visual depiction of the sand worms. I have to imagine that the film makers are "saving" better images of the worms for the sequel films that are yet to come.
Here in this blog post, I comment more extensively on my search for interesting aliens in the film
Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time. As is the case for
Dune, the aliens in
Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time receive very little attention from the film makers and are not very interesting. Finding no new interesting Hollywood aliens in 2021, I once again go retro and dive into films of the past in my effort to find some interesting aliens in Hollywood.
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| Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla |
Earth Angels. According to Dennis Redmond, the Evangelion stories created by Hideaki Anno "
turn the theme of alien invasion on its head". Redmond translates the original title of the Evangelion series (
Shin Seiki Evangerion) as "Gospel for a New Century". I have no objection to religion in science fiction, particularly when you remember Clarke's "law" which says: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." If aliens came to Earth long ago, then some religious myths could include warped and garbled accounts of alien technology.
The Evangelion stories seem to be Anno's attempt to create a kind of science fictionalized version of the Adam and Lilith myths. I have no objection to any of this, but I'm particularly interested in asking if the Evangelion stories are really about space aliens. My most pessimistic take on Anno's Evangelion is that it may be remembered as little more than a chapter in the endle$$ $equelization of Godzilla.
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the alien tease
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I suspect that the Evangelion stories are about space aliens in much the same way that The X-Files was: aliens can be used as a gimmick to attract an audience, then the show runners never have a single interesting thing to say about the aliens. 😢 If we are going to give out awards for cultural appropriation, there should be a category for television shows that milk space aliens for ca$h without giving science fiction fans an interesting alien encounter.
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fight the future; Angelzilla vs Evazilla
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Anti-science fiction. As far as I can tell, Hideaki Anno and
Chris Carter are both interested in science in the same way, which is what I would call the
Mary Shelley way. Just because you include a fantasy scientist or a fantasy computer or a fantasy virus in your horror story, that does not make it science fiction. I love "ancient aliens" as a science fiction plot device, but the directions that idea was taken by Anno and Carter don't interest me. Their "myth-arcs" got all tangled up with absurd fantasy horror spectacles that I would simply laugh at if they were not so disgusting and such silly dead-ends for science fiction story telling.
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THE END... until our next movie i$ ready
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At the end of these horror-fantasy spectacles, viewers are supposed to be satisfied that the powerful alien force threatening to ruin Human Destiny™ has been over-come by the "great (but flawed) characters" that they have come to know. This kind of fantasy "entertainment" makes money in televisionland, but... YAWN. I suffered through this all with The X-Files and I have to be dragged kicking and screaming as I resist going through it with the Evangelion stories for a second time. If such shows satisfy your goal of getting some casual entertainment then fine, but if fans end up wallowing in some sort of otaku wasteland then this nonsensical "entertainment" has done more harm than good.
Having never watched a single Evangelion television show episode or any of the films, I was in no position to judge if the 2021 movie
Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time includes any interesting aliens, but my best guess was
NO. I have seen this film listed as the top science fiction movie of 2021 as rated by a dozen fans at Rotten Tomatoes so, I gritted my teeth watched the movie.
I watched the movie (Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time) on Amazon Prime. As I expected from what I had read previouly, the movie was not obviously about aliens. Maybe some of the angels or gods mentioned in this film are supposed to originate from off-screen aliens, but that was not explained in this movie. The film seems like a Godzilla movie updated for 2021 with endless video-game-like fantasy violence. Yawn. Not having seen any of the previous television or film material that came before in the Evangelion fictional universe, I'm sure that much of the fan-service items in this story escaped me, but the tired plot {boy (with daddy issues) meets girl, loses girl, ends up with girl} did not seem like the basis for a science fiction story, no matter how many fantasy Evanzillas were destroyed.
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the 4th Speed Racer movie
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Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time reminds me of Speed Racer, which I was subjected to as a 10-year-old back in the late 1960s. All I remember from Speed Racer are seemingly endless animated scenes of race cars endlessly speeding along on their way to... whatever. I suspect that ten years from now all I will remember from Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time are the seemingly endless scenes of fighting Evas and Angels.
After the endless video game-like fantasy violence scenes in Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time, the seemingly tacked-on ending of the movie did have an anti-otaku message. So, what is the message? After endless explosions and juvenile angst, we have to grow up?
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You can't keep a good skull down
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Crystal Aliens. I'm intrigued by the process by which each new generation must re-interpret and re-express the stories that they grew up with. Having subjected myself to what feels like Hideaki Anno's effort to re-animate Godzilla with the spice of ancient aliens thrown in (see above) I was reminded of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Interesting Aliens? The 4th Indiana Jones film was set in 1957 and this iteration of the usual Indiana Jones adventure story is spiced and flavored with fears of communism, fear of nuclear bombs and the distinctive tang of 1950s Sci Fi movies. Sadly, the aliens in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull do not get much screen time, but are they interesting aliens? Below, I explore this question: are the aliens in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull worthy of a retro-SIHA award?
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Forbidden Planet; technology for direct-to-brain learning
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I've previously awarded a retro-SIHA award to
Forbidden Planet and the alien Krell.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, with its plot which features telepathic transfer of knowledge, reminded me of the Krell technology for placing knowledge directly into the brain. Dr. Morbius uses the Krell brain-boost technology and suddenly he is able to construct a sophisticated robot.
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Hollywood memory transfer
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For Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, we are not given any details about how the aliens are able to transfer their knowledge into people's minds. In typical Hollywood style, we get a light show with misty clouds of memories being sent from the aliens directly into Cate Blanchett's brain (see the animated GIF to the left on this page). Poor Cate makes the mistake of requesting that the aliens telepathically transfer ALL of their knowledge to her, but when they do, it is TOO MUCH information and it overloads her brain. Maybe the mist contains information nanites: infites.
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my, what a big brain you have
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No Space Travel. The other reason that
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull came to my mind at this time is that I've recently read several old science fiction stories in which "strange new worlds" were explored not by means of space travel but by moving between "parallel worlds". For example, both Philip K. Dick's 1953 story "
The World She Wanted" and Fredric Brown's "
What Mad Universe" (1948) featured "travel" between alternative universes where one person's fantasies or desires could shape events in the world. For the
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull aliens did not reach Earth by space travel, but rather they arrive by means of a portal linking our universe to some other "dimension", possible an alternative universe where there might be somewhat different physical laws.
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The danger of too much sitting.... crystallization!
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the swinging Jones
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Unless I fell asleep during the absurd A-bomb scene or the absurd killer-ant scene or the absurd monkey trapeze scene or the absurd sword fight scene (etc.) and missed an alternative explanation, it seems we are forced to conclude that the big-brained aliens are rather clumsy. The first of the aliens who visited Earth ended up as inanimate skeletons (that magically get re-animated at the end of the film) and when additional aliens arrive on Earth at places like Roswell they all quickly end up in body bags. Alternatively, maybe the aliens got a lucrative movie contract and also the last laugh.
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there are no swords in science fiction
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Where is the King? I like the idea that aliens might come to our world where they would be like archeologists, studying various human societies and possible helping speed up the pace of human technological and social evolution. Maybe the aliens who arrived on Earth 7,000 years ago got caught up in being worshiped as gods and forgot to go home.
My personal interpretation of the aliens in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is that they are a form of artificial life, not biological organisms. Maybe they originated long ago as biological creatures, but then they discovered how to exist in "another dimension" as artificial life forms.
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flying saucer but not a spaceship?
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I have no idea what the 5th Indiana Jones movie will be about, but I'd be up for a continuation of the aliens theme. Maybe at the end of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull the aliens don't actually leave Earth, but simply move to another part of our planet, and get ready for the next film.
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more aliens, please
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Retro-SIHA Award Winner. I'm intrigued by the type of aliens that were included in this 2008 film and award a retro-SIHA to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I suspect there is not much chance of seeing more aliens in the 5th Indiana Jones film, so I'll probably have to write my own fan-fiction account of a backstory for these alien visitors to Earth.....
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aliens in Egypt
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Time Travel. Near the start of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull we were teased with a glimpse of the Ark, stored inside Area 51 with other alien artifacts. It would be fun if the final film in the Indiana Jones saga depicted the Ark as a time travel machine, making it possible for us to be "filled-in" on some events of the past: events relevant to the Jones saga, but that were left on the cutting room floor during editing of earlier films.
In my imagination, the Ark in Egypt of 1936 could be visited by time-traveling aliens, just before it falls into Nazi hands. The aliens might remove a key component of the Ark, rendering it useless. Later (1957) the aliens could regain control of the Ark and restore it to functioning condition.
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"The problem here is that you’re
looking at it as a science fiction movie,
but it’s a comic book movie." source
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Eternals. Seeing the film
Eternals described as science fiction (for example, see
this "10 best" list) and having spent a huge amount of time searching for the aliens in
Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time, I gave the Eternals (and particularly the "
Celestials") a similar inspection. I've come to the same conclusion about the Eternals as I did for the aliens in
Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time;
Eternals is fantasy mythology, not science fiction.
Honorable mention: the aliens in
Don't Look Up who get far too little screen time in the film. Maybe they saved some cut scenes of these aliens for the sequel.
Related Reading: more fantasy aliens in "That Hideous Strength" and see the SIHA 2020. Jump to SIHA 2022.
Next: The Telepaths of Site Q
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Retro-SIHA Award Winner from 2008: the aliens in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
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