LITTLE GREEN MEN IN FLYING SAUCERS?
I’ve been constantly intrigued as to why films and TV shows have always portrayed aliens visiting Earth with a typical stereotyped regularity. For years and years, beings from other planets have had certain characteristics which insured that you knew they were not of this Earth the moment you saw them. Even the ships they travelled in had a particular shape which guaranteed you knew that they were alien whenever they were spotted.
For those of you who are not familiar with the tell-tale signs of how to spot one of them, let me turn your attention to "The Official Darren Maxwell Guide to Alien Spotting".
There are four golden rules to observe which will aid you in any alien spotting venture:
1) Any alien being that lands on Earth must always be smaller than a human 2) They must always have a large head, small body and unassuming eyes
3) Their ships must always be shaped like a saucer.
4) If their ship comes to Earth at night, it’s gotta have really bright lights.
Let’s look at each of these rules in a little more detail.
- Any alien being that lands on Earth must always be smaller than a human. Have you ever noticed that for some reason whenever you see an alien wandering around on Earth, it’s always really short. Yet whenever aliens are seen in outer-space movies, they’re always much larger - perhaps it’s a subliminal way of saying that powerful beings are not necessarily big beings, or perhaps it gives the humans better odds of winning (whatever happened to the pick on your own size motto). If the alien is in fact a robot, chances are it’ll be the same size as us, or possibly a lot taller (there is a whole swag of films which demonstrate this). All of these films featured vertically challenged beings popping down to Earth for a spot of conquering: It Conquered the World, War of the Worlds, Howard the Duck, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (CE3K), Invasion of the Saucer Men, X-Files, ET (don’t believe what ET told you, he was here to enslave the world).
- They must always have a large head, small body and unassuming eyes. Evolutionists believe that over a course of a few million years, we will develop much larger brains as our intelligence increases, whilst at the same time becoming smaller due the lack of physical necessity required in our lives. This view has obviously been carried over to the many types of aliens who visit us. According to sci-fi creators, these extra terrestrial beings must also have followed the same evolutionary path as us because they too also have large brains and small bodies, which of course makes them a lot easier to defeat. Can you imagine if a ship load of Arnold Schwarzeneggars landed here, man we’d never beat them. But then again, the lack of obvious brain development would go against them in the end. All of these films feature a swag of big headed Things: War of the Worlds, CE3K, Invasion of the Saucer Men, This Island Earth, X-Files.
- Their ships must always be shaped like a saucer. Aliens always travel to Earth in flying saucers, not a flying triangle, nor a flying box, not even a flying squiggle, but a saucer. Presently machines of flight in this world are designed in various shapes, ie: a plane, a hot air balloon, a helicopter. So why do aliens always have to have saucers? Don’t they have any originality when it comes to ship design. Ironically, alien races in most non-Earth based sci-fi flicks have really neat ships of all sorts of designs, but once they visit Earth, they instantly turn into a round ones (maybe it’s due to the ship not needing to have a visible "front", thus it instantly becomes so much more technologically advanced). These films all feature vessels of the frisbee variety: CE3K (an elaborate saucer admittedly), Invasion of the Saucer Men, Earth v’s The Flying Saucers, Day the Earth Stood Still, The Thing, V, Forbidden Planet, Lost in Space (humans visiting other planets in these two), Plan 9 From Outer Space, This Island Earth, Devil Girl From Mars, Kronos.
- If their ship comes to Earth at night, it’s gotta have really bright lights. How many shows have you seen where people say "there was this really bright light..."? Even shows like In Search Of (the 70s version of The Unexplained), had a lot of people seeing brightly lit flying saucers in its "search for flying saucers" episode. For some reason, visitors to the Earth at night always seem to have their high beams on. The X Files is a classic for this scenario. If any show wanted to stereotype aliens from another planet this show is it. Totally unoriginal in every respect and I guess this is the reason why the show’s so good.
Speaking of X Files, "I want to believe!" is a statement that crops from time to time in the show. However my question is "to believe in what? Extra terrestrial life, or the fact that aliens do actually fly around in circular vessels after all?"
On the other side of the coin, some movies and TV shows have gone all out to show that saucers are not the go in their universe. The Millennium Falcon from Star Wars was one of the first non symmetrical ships to hit the screen. The Borg from Star Trek have taken my comments in the previous paragraphs literally and fly around in a giant cube. Space 1999 designed its complex Eagle ships so well, it’s been suggested that they would actually work in real life. Babylon 5 went out of its way to create exciting alien vessels which really do look "out of this world!". Some films have also worked on the view that to get to Earth you need a saucer, but to get off it you need a rocket. When Worlds Collide, Trip to the Moon, Planet of the Apes, Flight to Mars, Rocketship X-M, Destination Moon, Journey to the Seventh Planet, all demonstrate this.
So for some reason, some traditional sci-fi elements have become very stereotyped, and not just with the older movies either. Admittedly I don’t believe this is such a bad thing, I think everyone loves the thought of mysterious flying saucers belonging to some strange visitors from anther planet. At the Valhalla 24hr sci-fi movie marathons, the appearance of these ships on screen often prompted a barrage of paper plates suddenly being flung into the air to keep the ship company in its flight. Perhaps it’s the little things like this that make flying saucers and little green men ever so appealing to sci-fi movie goers.