What We Fear: We Cast Into the Stars: The Reflection of Us in Extraterrestrial Films.

What We Fear: We Cast into the Stars

The Reflection of Us in Extraterrestrial Films.

By Eris Grey

People have crafted countless versions of extraterrestrials in novelizations, film and television for well over a 100 years. They have ranged from being sleek and silver (The Day The Earth Stood Still), slimy and insectoid (Alien), beings that project light (Close Encounters of the Third Kind), merciless and cold (The Thing) and more. Sometimes they arrive by ships that comb the vastness of outer space, other times they crawl from the darkness or rise from the depths of our oceans, but regardless of where they come from, they are not just stories of beings from beyond our comprehension, they are stories that reflect humanity, our societal fears, and what it means to be alive.

H. G. Wells polarized an audience in 1898, 128 years ago, with War of the Worlds. 40 years later, under the direction of Orson Welles, a dramatization of the story aired over the radio, sending the masses into panic as it covered the novel as bulletin news reports of Martian Invaders. 15 years after that, director Bryan Haskin released the groundbreaking adaptation of the story, creating the prototype for alien invasion films. The War of the Worlds adaptation mirrored the Cold War Paranoia. Nuclear power had rewritten what humans were truly capable of; the fear of us loomed over our existence, and the alien movies reflected that. It twisted the metaphor for invasion, aliens had no empathy. It was communism, nuclear annihilation and xenophobia wrapped up in mechanical beings. The 50s also delivered The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) was another Cold War plea for peace, but now through an alien who has not arrived to invade but to warn, Klaatu. Klaatu represented a vastly superior interplanetary federation concerned with Earth’s aggression, in particular its nuclear arms. The warning was not simply that, though; it was that if Earth’s nations cannot resolve their conflicts and act responsibly, then they will be eliminated to preserve peace in the galaxy. 74 years later, we still have not gotten the point. Klaatu was an alien based on moral authority; he is calm, collected and humane, and he just wanted humanity to listen. The problem is: aliens are and have always been humans, with our collective fear, militarism and refusal to listen. In Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), emotional humans get replaced with emotionless alien “pods”. In a small town in California, Dr. Miles Bennell realizes that soulless copies are replacing the people around him—they look human, speak logically and function properly, but they lack emotion, free will and empathy. A lot of people have interpreted this film as the fear of communist invasion of the mind, where loved ones suddenly and quietly adapt to a new ideology and lose what makes them human. The fear of someone no longer being themselves taps into conversion, subversion and betrayal of our cultures and societal norms. The original ending was bleak, unresolved, the tone of screaming in hopes of someone believing you, at the end, it is not just about the prospect of aliens replacing you, but the terror of all you know, including the possibility of yourself becoming unrecognizable in a society you’ve always known.

Sci-fi was prevalent in the 1960s, but the theme of aliens was few and far between, except for films like Village of the Damned and a few smaller-budget films. The representation of aliens was also coded in television, with shows like The Outer Limits and Star Trek. Aliens became the stand-ins for morality, and often gave a lens to race, gender and ideologies that needed to be questioned. In a time torn between idealism and unrest, a growing civil rights movement, the space race and war, what we saw as alien media became philosophical mirrors to our humanity. The Village of the Damned (1960) depicted eerie, telepathic alien children that were birthed by an entire village of woman after a mysterious blackout. The children were emotionally cold, and their collective operated under a hive mind. This movie is right on the cusp of the 60s, coming off the tension of the 50s fear of invasion and loss of agency. It evokes fear of control, disconnection and the erosion of free will. As the decade progressed, narratives built in The Other Limits (1963-1965) and Star Trek (1966-1969) were shows that used aliens and extraterrestrials to explore ethical and philosophical dilemmas. In the Outer Limits episode “Architects of Fear,” a group of scientists, desperate to prevent nuclear war, come up with a plan: to fake an alien invasion, with the belief that if humanity faced a common enemy that everyone would forget their division and come together in peace. To do so, they chose Dr. Allen Leighton to undergo extensive surgeries and genetic modifications to transform into a believable alien species. Once this was done, he was to “crash” his ship, but it went wrong; he was killed by frightened humans and his wife, who was kept in the dark for the entirety of it, witnessed his death without recognizing her husband or knowing what he did for humanity. This is manufactured fear for peace, a parallel to the Cold War logic and the concept of mutually assured destruction. The “aliens” in the Outer Limits were often grotesque, but what made the show instill fear was that it was deeply based in what we held inside of us. The show often posed the question, one we still ask 60 years later, “If intelligent life exists outside of our reality, will it judge us? And if so, would we be worth saving?” Star Trek came out just after The Outer Limits and flipped the scope on how we perceive it. The question turned from “What if aliens came to us?” To “What if we went to the aliens?” The Enterprise sought out to explore the vastness of space, and the collectives and communities they discovered were not horrific but beings coded in real-world issues. Species, like Vulcans, embodied logical standpoints over emotional ones, a counter to us, emotionally biased humans. Klingons were thinly veiled soviets, often locked in conflict with the Federation. A particular episode stands out to me, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.” The Enterprise encounters two survivors of a war-torn planet—each one with a black and white face, but flipped, each version of that species at war with one another, with the crew of the Enterprise not being able to understand why they were at war with each other because to them, they looked the same. This was showcasing an at-the-time radical view of racism, war, and imperialism without directly calling out real-world problems.

Despite not being an alien movie in the traditional sense, it would be asinine to leave out 2001: A Space Odyssey. (1968). A chart of humanity's journey from primitive ape to star child, guided only by mysterious monoliths that encompass what is alien—something completely unknown, clean, geometrically perfect, and eerily silent — guides us through evolutionary turning points. Even Hal-9000, the malfunctioning AI board, became a mirror of human fallibility. In a rising era of technology, it highlighted the blurred line between human and machine. The film transcends into spiritual sci-fi, the Star Gate sequence breaks all conventions of narrative, the plot transforms into pure sensation, aliens as cosmic intelligence is something beyond our comprehension—the transformation of Dr. Dave into the Star Child suggests that this contact is synonymous with transcendence, and leads to becoming something new.

The 1970s had a vast range of paranoia and distrust when it came to alien features. There was failure of institutions in that decade, with Watergate and the Vietnam War and the post-traumatic effect that lingered long after, and the rise of women's rights with the second wave of feminism (Roe Vs Wade, 1973). There was a growing tension in the world, our governments (somethings never change, I suppose), our neighbours, and even our bodily autonomy (again, could we please progress from the 70s?), could be turned against us.

In 1978, we received a remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, no longer infused with cold-war paranoia but now depersonalization—the creeping but sadly correct sense that everyone around you has gone numb, or in a sense turned off and away from humanity, has become some other than us. The perception of something emotionless possessing our autonomy was a reflection of the automated and emotionally distant reality that the world was becoming. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) is arguably the most famous alien invasion movie of all time. This film contrasted the growing paranoia that embodied a lot of the 70s, something in more of a spiritual aspect than a malevolent force. The horror in this film was internal and represents the ability to become untethered to yourself and what you have—a life, family, friends—in pursuit of something bigger than yourself and what we only percieve to have. A representation of a different anxiety, a desire to escape our reality, to ache for our lives to have meaning, to feel chosen, even for an instant, to explore the cosmos, even if the cost is isolation, madness and the abandonment of your Earthly attachments. The very famous, and very perfect movie Alien (1979) takes it for me as the most influential and direct mirror of society. It’s a towering example of autonomy in women, and its feminine subtext is so forward that it’s hard to even refer to it as subtext. The xenomorph is a grotesque and perverse representation of rape. Forced impregnation, violent birth and a life cycle that begins in exploitation. The representation of this is crucial to understand and dissect it being about a woman's autonomy, and it’s brilliantly done by having the human species in general be adaptable hosts for the facehuggers' non-consensual impregnation. Ridley Scott and writers Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett did not subject women only to this horrible reality, it needed to resonate that this perfect creature did not care who its victim was—it happened to men, inverting expectations and inviting male viewers to have to confront a horror traditionally pointed to a woman's experience.

The 1980s were definitely a notable time for alien invasion movies, stories that were deeply reflective of the 80s society: Reagan era politics, consumerism, cold-war paranoia and a shift in gender roles. The invaders no longer simply came from the skies; they were already here, hidden in plain sight, with a huge focus on the illusion of freedom, subversion and corporate dominance leading a more and more consumerism-based world. In 1988, John Carpenter dared to come out with “They Live” and it delivered one of the most poignant messages in decades—and in my opinion, the message of consumerism it holds still has not been matched 37 years later. In this film, the aliens are masquerading as the rich and powerful 1%, they can manipulate the masses with subliminal messaging that promotes obedience and pushes capitalism and overconsumption with passivity. The message, critique even, of the film is blunt: the aliens are here, they are our rich, and they feed on our poor and lower-class systems, and they erode free will through media and branding. John Carpenter also did The Thing in 1982, this alien threat being a mimic—one that is internal, intimate, unknowable. This terrifying fear played on the deep 80s fear of infection, born out of the rise in the fear of AIDS and AIDS-related illnesses. A representation of paranoia and masculinity under siege, the all-male cast is stranded in Antarctica with no help, no emotional comfort, and being silently consumed, replicated, and then erased. In 1986, James Cameron followed up Ridley Scott's Alien with Aliens. He expanded the reproductive horror to be an industrial, hive-like, militarized nightmare. The alien queen lays endless eggs, the facehugger continues their bodily corruption, but now Ripley has become an archetypal mother figure in defiance of both military and corporate failures. A representation that a mother, even when facing atrocities, will be expected and through this will naturally protect children. Predator in 1987, at first glance, it’s a testosterone-fueled male fantasy—elite soldiers in a jungle with big guns, but as the Predator picks them off one by one, we see more of a critique of American arrogance and obsession with power.

Blockbuster movies began to dominate in the 90s, but even with their allure and despite their sheen and glossy spectacles, they still deeply reflected the worries of society. The Cold War ending, the world adjusting to a new geopolitical reality, invasion movies diverted from specific threats to ones of a global scale. Independence Day, 1996, stands as the decade's most prominent and well-known invasion film. It was loud, patriotic and full of quotes that packed in pop heroism. The aliens may have been technologically advanced, but who was to say a ragtag group of clever idiots wouldn’t defeat a global invasion? America wanted to be exceptional, not to be a country that embodies fear, but one that showcases comfort in its war abilities. A disposition of “Yes, we have the biggest military force in the world, but we will also totally save it if aliens invaded.” Not all alien encounters leaned into this narrative, though. The X-Files, both the television series and the movie, pointed towards a general mistrust, a hidden part of our history, covered up by our government. The alien was rarely literal. They were stand-ins for abuse, trauma, truths being buried or systems too big to fight. It expertly crafted the fear not of there being an alien invasion and we have to fight for our lives, but that the invasion had already happened, and it was hidden from us. Men in Black (1997) turned that concept into satire. Aliens were now everywhere, and they were hidden from us, but they weren’t scary. They were your boss, your neighbour, your spouse. The destruction was a failure of bureaucracy, an alien criminal being on the loose who’s terrorizing not only humans but the aliens who live amongst them. Destruction? Some, but we’re looking at control, suppression and absurdity. The tone of this film—and the concurrent films after these are fun, but the subtext is clear: humans cannot function within in multi-cultural alien society unless they mimic us, we just don’t have that kind of emotional depth. Starship Troopers (1997) is also a biting satire on invasion. Humanity is now the invading force, a genocidal campaign against bug-like aliens that critiques facism, propaganda and war culture by dressing up the visuals and exagerating their need, but the message is chilling: if we keep telling the same stories of an alien invasion and heroism without questioning the narratives, then we are going to eventually realize they’re based on us. We are the aggressors.

The 2000s led into a darker premise when it came to invasion storytelling. The marker no longer being invasions on a global scale, with 9/11 being fresh, a tonal shift concluded that the spectacle of destruction was no longer thrilling—it was too real. Alien invasion films began to echo the fragility of civilization. Narratives that were once about advanced life forms attacking Earth became metaphors for collective vulnerability, government overreach, and the disorientating pace of global change. In becoming a full circle, Steven Spielberg remade War of the Worlds. The alien threat was imminent, unstoppable, and sudden, and the absent authority was ripped out of trauma from real-life war situations. There’s no triumphant counterattack to unite the world; the focus is intimate. Instead of a scale of billions of humans, we watch this unfold with a father trying to protect his children. Survival over victory. Family over flag. The aliens were here to exterminate, and the average family would have no idea why. We would just have to try to make it out alive. In 2002, we received Signs, another notion of a family trying to survive. The horror was about loss of will, isolation, and the creeping suspicion that something vast and uncaring is out there, and that what is meant to protect us won’t. Then, our hearts broke with District 9 (2009). The aliens are not attacking us, they are here and they’re impoverished, and we sit down and watch a brutal allegory on apartheid, xenophobia and systemic violence. The aliens are forced into slums, exploited by humans and forced us to ask if that’s our true nature. If a species came here and needed our help, would we supply them? Ingrain them into our society? Or stick them in cages? Based on how humanity already treats its own species, I’d be inclined to believe the latter. Even lighter fare alien invasion movies like Cloverfield (2008), this time the alien coming from the depths of our ocean, captured the cultural mood. The handheld footage and fragmented storytelling mimic coverage of a real attack, evoking the horror and confusion that would be prevalent if a real attack were to happen. The 2000s alien scope knew that our society wasn’t in a state of togetherness; we are in a state of survival. Human in its violence, it told stories that mirrored the collective psyche of sudden catastrophe. Invasion was no longer silver ships hovering over major cities. It looked mechanical, like drones, collapsing buildings and the knowledge that our world no longer made sense.

In the 2010’s we began introspection. While decades upon decades before portrayed extraterrestrials as invaders or conquerors of our species and showed them as creatures that wanted to eradicate us, the 2010 films began to ask more nuanced questions: What does it mean to be human? How would aliens truly see us? This era became more about contact rather than conflict. Arrival (2016) is easily the defining film of the decade. The aliens wanted to do nothing more than communicate, and humans took the time to translate. The film explored many avenues: how language evolves, how we can actually learn to understand each other if we try to cross those barriers, even if they are temporal, and how we percieve time and question whether or not our lives and love were worth having if we were aware of the possibilities and the grief that would transcend from them. Under the Skin (2013) inverted the gaze of aliens entirely. A hypnotic and sparse film with minimal dialogue about an alien in a beautiful womans body who preyed on men mercilessly, but as she begins to view humanity consistently, something inside of her shifts and we are given a film that dares to view our species differently: that maybe empathy is a learned skill, as it is to be vulnerable.

As we seemingly evolve in our minds as our species, our storytelling does as well. Alien movies are becoming stranger but also more grounded; they are less and less about space and more about atmosphere, perception and understanding. Reality as we know it feels surreal, our films are a reflection of that. In the past five years, we have survived a pandemic, misinformation, climate dread, AI, societal fragmentation and the devolution of social constructs. Jordan Peele's film Nope (2022) is a brilliant embodiment of this shift in our own reality. A classic-looking alien invasion on first glance until we find out that the ship isn’t that at all, but the alien itself. It’s beautiful, vast and confusing, a spectacle in itself that is becoming witnessed. Nope explores the price of invasion, of being watched and preyed upon. In No One Will Save You (2023), the threat of the invasion is both physical and internal. The film is near-silent, and that silence is the result of the isolation of grief and guilt. Brynn, the protagonist, had nobody in her life, was completely alone and pushed away by all who knew her as a result of an altercation when she was younger. By being ostracized, she becomes a vessel for examining this grief and guilt and has a desperate need for redemption. The aliens in this film are not interested in the planet but the minds of its occupants, an inward look at the cultural anxiety of the 2020s—so many of us are being deeply reflective about our lives. Global events have forced us into isolation, and alienation has become a social condition.

In over 70 years, our alien and invasion stories have served as mirrors that shift and stretch to reflect the era. From the ideological dread and nuclear paranoia of the Cold War era, to the 60s era of reflection and the 70s social revolutions and feminism. The 80s reframed them as our fears of disease, of control, and the 90s subtext fear of conspiracy in our governments. By the 2000s and 2010s, our fear started going inwards as we grappled with grief, surveillance and the beginning fractured trust of what is real and what isn’t. Now in the 2020s, we are recognizing ourselves as the aliens that were seen on the big screen and the little one for decades and decades. Even when the stories loom large over us like our own spherical ship, they still carry nuance. Not invaders. Not observers. Not monsters.

Just metaphors for us.