By Jason Apuzzo. For the past several months here at Libertas we’ve been covering the massive new wave of politically-charged ‘alien invasion’ projects that are about to be unleashed on moviegoers over the next two years or so. The origins of this intriguing new wave of films probably go back to 2008, when J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves released Cloverfield, a sci-fi cult hit that played out as a kind of faux-documentary riff on the 9/11 attacks. [Abrams would also incorporate a 9/11-style attack on the planet Vulcan in 2009’s Star Trek.] Also in 2008 came Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg’s affectionate riff on 1950s sci-fi invasion films, in which Dr. Jones confronts not only aliens (of a somewhat benign variety) but the Soviet communist menace, as well. Of course, the ‘alien invasion’ genre then got supercharged in late 2009 by James Cameron’s Avatar, which not only revived 3D but ‘politicized’ sci-fi to a degree unseen since the early 1950s.
One of the things that makes this new wave of films so interesting – and redolent of similar waves from the 1950s – is that it extends from the mega-big budget (e.g., the $200 million Battleship from Universal, starring Liam Neeson) to the low-budget (such as next month’s Skyline, made for under $10 million). And on a thematic level, although not all the plotlines are known for these films, many of them seem to be channeling political anxieties associated with terrorism, foreign threats, nuclear fears, as well as paranoia about the increasingly radical tone of American politics. [See my exchange with the LA Times’ Patrick Goldstein on this subject here.]
By the time this new wave of films peaks – probably about two years from now – Gareth Edwards’ Monsters (opening in select theaters today) is unlikely to be remembered as a high-water point of the genre, even for low-budget fare. Edwards’ film is too languorous, too derivative of other (and better) films to really linger in the memory. What Monsters does accomplish, however, is suggest how easily science fiction can be adapted to comment on contemporary political concerns.
The set-up for Monsters is relatively straight-forward. In the near future, America has sent space probes out into our solar system searching for microbial evidence of life. These probes have crashed back to Earth in the vicinity of the U.S.-Mexico border, where alien life forms brought back from space have swiftly grown into massive creatures – ‘monsters,’ that more or less look like grilled scampi – that have ravaged the countryside, and even major cities. The U.S. and Mexican militaries have thus conducted a massive (but largely futile) operation to both contain and destroy the creatures, resulting in urban warfare and endless bombing runs that have reduced many urban centers in Mexico to rubble. What’s more, we’re led to believe that the American bombing runs over Mexican cities have been far more devastating and lethal than the creatures themselves. Continue reading The First Wave of ‘Political’ Sci-Fi: LFM Reviews Monsters
