Sci-Fi Silly Versus Sci-Fi Serious (Or Style and Substance in Genre Movies)

Alien Trespass (two stars total) I recently got the Robot Chicken Star Wars Episode II on DVD and I noticed that the funniest sketches were also the ones that made the most obscure references. I mention this so you'll know that I'm not strictly against entertainment that's for insiders only. Science fiction seems to depend on its audience being knowledgeable, either of science in general or of useless trivia pertaining to fictional people and places. Exclusivity is its nature and yet in its loosest form it can become universally entertaining - like Star Wars. The original trilogy made no reference to real science although it did refer back to science fiction tropes of drive-in B-movies. Kids didn't have to realize any of that to appreciate the series, because the new special effects made them think that science fiction had been recently invented just for them, but adults who did catch the references were able to enjoy an otherwise silly story on a sentimental level. My point is that Star Wars looked very little like the movies it was inspired by, and sharing substance but not style made all the difference. What does this have to do with Alien Trespass? Well, one of the producers from The X-Files TV show directed Alien Trespass, and it comes off as the opposite of Star Wars, neither loose about form nor universally functioning. He had already got it right the first time. The X-Files posed scientific questions the same way drive-in B-movies did, through monster-of-the-week MacGuffins that drew in unsuspecting mainstream audiences. Just like Star Wars, The X-Files provided a new look for genre fiction borrowed from the previous generation. In Alien Trespass, you get the monster (which was somehow creepy and silly at the same time) without any sneaky moral message. You get the dad from The Wonder Years TV show, but none of the scientific wonder of yesteryear. As for actors, you also get Will from the TV show Will & Grace, the bad guy from T2: Judgement Day, and two women from The 4400. I read a review where someone complained that movies today are filled with beautiful people and I can see how that might be somewhat true. I'm glad there were some familiar faces though. If I was to complain about only one thing on Alien Trespass, it wouldn't be the shallow script (full of innuendo which felt out of place for the period) or the wasteful big budget recreation of low-budget cinematography (inconsistent between shots in the studio and on location). It would be for the girl with the boy's haircut. Would that have been acceptable in the 1950s? I know it's silly, but I'm as serious about this detail as I am about most details in science fiction.

District 9 (four and a half stars total) If any of the following sounds like esoteric nonsense to you, just remember I liked the explosive action first and foremost. I overheard some girls sitting next to me in the theater describe District 9 as "a total guy movie because $#@! blows up." I wouldn't disagree, but thick South African accents and subtitles for the alien language prevent it from being a popcorn movie. As with the best sci-fi, it works as social satire of anything you're against: apartheid, fast food, militarism, pharmaceutical drug testing, reality TV, you name it. At face value, you get four competing interest groups of people, the ineffectual government agents representing the scared citizens and the superstitious gangsters exploiting the energy-depleted aliens. There's one main character, who is a chump (read: not an underdog, because that would be too Hollywood), and he becomes the champion for each of these groups at different points but betrayed by each one too. When he starts transforming into an alien, he says wants a cure just to get his wife back. I think subconsciously, he doesn't want to become an alien because he knows from personal experience how humans mistreat them. By the end, we learn that aliens treat others better than humans do, so as long as he can avoid being eaten by a human thug long enough, he will be cured... probably in the sequel. He's kidding himself if he thinks that things can ever go back to the way they were though. Even if he eventually does get cured, he'll still have to explain to his wife that he was once an alien, he'll still be considered a test subject for science and witch doctors will still want to eat him. I love it when a movie leaves so much to be resolved after the credits have rolled. The only part of the plot that I didn't get was why no one tracked all his cell phone calls when he first went on the run. I was worried when the main character started flying away with the alien child that the movie was going to turn into something like Enemy Mine (1985). Fortunately the plot as a whole shares more in common with the body horror ouvre of David Cronenberg (The Fly remake, 1986). Whereas France and Egypt were pretty backgrounds for the ugly American special effects in the G.I. Joe movie and Transformers 2, Johannesburg IS the plot of District 9 and its special effects are distractions from the LACK of Hollywood slickness. I just didn't understand what practical purpose the claws on the aliens' chests would serve.