Alien Fascination Aliens Vs. Earthlings Is A Battle With A Box-Office Draw

To Bob Brown, “Independence Day” is a potentially dangerous film. One that the Oakland, Calif., resident and his friends in the International UFO Congress have discussed picketing.

No, he hasn’t seen it yet, but its premise offends him: Aliens attack Earth in an all-out battle that unites every nation against a foreign invader.

Maybe the premise is a way to sell movie tickets. Or maybe, Brown says, it’s a message from an underground movement that’s trying to promote the one-world-government idea.

“What scenario would have the power to make people think about a one-world government?” Brown asks rhetorically. “What one thing could make people forget their individual identities and fight for one cause?”

The answer: an invasion by something from Out There.

Whether “Independence Day” is subversive propaganda or just another Hollywood blockbuster, one thing is certain - “bad” aliens are in again, just as they were in the ‘50s, when they served as a metaphor for the perceived threat of communism.

It’s the Hollywood story template that won’t die: Aliens vs. Earthlings, and whether they’re good or evil, benevolent or warlike, often depends on what’s going on culturally at the time. Aliens have always been a blank canvas, a place to express our worst fears about our neighbors (“Invasion of the Body Snatchers”), ourselves (“The Man Who Fell to Earth”) or our future (“The Day the Earth Stood Still”).

“It’s the oldest story in the movies,” says Ray Cannella, program coordinator for the Sci-Fi Channel. “But it’s always a little more interesting if the alien is hostile than if it is benevolent.”

Cannella points to a 1924 Russian film called “Aelita: Queen of Mars.” A team of scientists travels to Mars in a spherical ship. Once there, they free an enslaved race of people, just as the intelligentsia led the Bolshevik revolution a few years earlier. It’s actually been shown on the Sci-Fi Channel.

Most of us, though, think of B-movies from the 1950s as the Golden Age of Evil Aliens. Back then, classics such as “Invaders From Mars” and “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” with those creepy pod people, fueled paranoia about being taken over by outsiders. These aliens didn’t want to learn more about our race or exchange knowledge; they wanted to inhabit our bodies and kick us out of our homes. Just like those dirty commies.

Even when extraterrestrials were friendly, as in 1951’s “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” we were suspicious. In that flick, aliens of superior intelligence and technological command seek to warn us of the potential danger of nuclear power. But their kindly ambassador is met with hostility.

As we entered the Space Age in the early 1960s, space creatures didn’t seem as mysterious. Besides, the genre had burned out on endless takes and parodies of the same story. Hollywood expressed the fear of the day, radiation fallout, through grotesque monsters like Godzilla and Rodan.

“One of the big things in the ‘50s, of course, was alien was just a metaphor for communist,” says Anita Monga, film booker for the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. “The less scared we got and the less we bought into the hysteria, the less scared of aliens we became.”

In the ‘70s, aliens resurfaced benevolently, this time as a mirror of social issues. Most definitive is Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” with its childlike outer-space visitors struggling to communicate with humans, personified by a hyper Richard Dreyfuss and his mashed-potato mountain.

John Sayles’ “The Brother from Another Planet” had a dark-skinned extraterrestrial crash-landing in New York, where everyone has expectations about who he is based on how he looks.

The warm, fuzzy alien image peaked in the ‘80s, with the biggest blockbuster of the genre, “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.” He was loving, he was funny, he even liked Reese’s Pieces. And no alien was more friendly than Jeff Bridges in “Starman,” who adjusts so well that he even procreates with Karen Allen.

“‘E.T.’ really sort of turned things around considerably,” says Peter Moore, who works for the Pacific Film Archive. “It’s just sort of the idea that the universe is basically at peace and we’ll take our place in the league of planets and everything will be OK.”

Which brings us to the alien of today. The cinematic pendulum has swung back toward ‘50s paranoia, fueled by anti-immigration sentiment and terrorist attacks. Maybe the outsiders are living among us, ready to strike at any time. People are more open to the idea of life Out There. Recent polls have shown that up to 60 percent of the respondents feel there are extraterrestials.

“Independence Day,” Roland Emmerich’s long-awaited follow-up to “Stargate,” taps into those beliefs. In the film, which opened Tuesday, an alien force attacks Earth on its most patriotic day. Trailers showing the White House exploding have been titillating moviegoers for months.

Extraterrestrials also infiltrate the government in a new movie Sayles is working on, called “Brother Termite.” Aliens have been co-existing with humans for years, but the relationship is starting to deteriorate. The main character is an alien who is White House chief of staff.

Says Moore: “More recently, it has come back the other way. They’re menaces, menacing our way of life. It’s the cyclical thing of xenophobia swinging back the other way. The world’s a messy place.”

But no matter how messy it gets, there will always be aliens around to blame.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: Other views of ‘Independence Day’ Here’s what critics around the country are saying about “Independence Day:” Duane Byrge/The Hollywood Reporter: “Independence Day” is a blast - a sci-fi-disaster film about an alien force that attacks Earth on the Fourth of July weekend. A generic juggernaut, as well as a story of appealing human dimension, “Independence Day” should set off box office fireworks worldwide. Jay Carr/The Boston Globe: In the ‘80s, we wanted to hug E. T. In the ‘90s, we want to nuke him. “Independence Day” gets this right in a big way. It’s going to be a huge, bloodthirsty hit because it’s plugged into today’s culture of aggression. It plays like a large movie studio dropped on your head from a great height as its city-size flying saucers - launched from a mother ship that covers half the moon with its shadow - position themselves all over the world, hovering so they can exterminate us. You’ve already seen the trailer where the aliens blow up the White House. They destroy the Empire State Building too, and also the Library Tower in Los Angeles. Just before the ship beams down its green death ray, a crowd of New Age Angelenos stare awestruck at it. One says, “How beautiful.” Then - zap! The bad news continues. … What makes it a thing of the ‘90s is its way of linking patriotism and mean-spiritedness. Rod Dreher/Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel: For once, the trailers didn’t lie. “Independence Day,” whose much-enthused-over preview reels featured humongous spaceships pulverizing the White House with destructo-rays, rocks the bejeezus out of the holiday weekend. It’s like the Comic Book of Revelation, in which snarling wrath descends from the heavens in the form of death Frisbees: Apocalypse wow! Ted Anthony/AP National Writer: Technically, everything is right about this film. The sets, the sounds, the music all are magnificent, the narrative is gripping and the characters are likable and intelligent. But boiled down, “Independence Day” is a story about what Smith’s character wants to do: Whoop ET’s butt.