Man as the Space Invader

Man as the Space Invader

By Prospero Pulma Jr.

The horrific death toll and cities turned to rubble in “War of the Worlds” and “Independence Day” are strong reasons for not wishing to share the universe with another intelligent, albeit, warlike race. That Steven Spielberg and Roland Emmerich’s fertile minds and not NASA or other organizations with cryptic acronyms spawned apocalyptic scenarios of man barely surviving an alien invasion is not comforting. Scientists sometimes confirm science fictionists’ fantasies such as the existence of alien worlds with the discovery of the first extrasolar planet in 1995.

Fantasy predictably broke away from reality soon after their brief union as science fictionists powered up their word processors and resumed sending man routinely to the depths of the cosmos while scientists have yet to launch another manned lunar mission, so it will be probably be a long time before humanity has a real close encounter of the third kind. In the meantime, writers and filmmakers will entertain and remind people of the possibilities that await man as he leaves earth for the stars with films that range in theme from exploring the solar system to sailing a few light years away and finally achieving the Holy Grail of space exploration: making contact with intelligent extraterrestrials.

Like Ferdinand Magellan and other intrepid sailors of yore, space explorers face many risks, a fact that “Apollo 13” vividly demonstrates. Helmed by Ron Howard, the 1995 film captures the desperate race to save the astronauts of Apollo 13 after an oxygen tank explodes in the spacecraft, endangering everyone onboard as other systems fail after the explosion. Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, and Bill Paxton portray the real-life crew of the follow-up mission to the historic Apollo 11. Praised for being highly realistic, Apollo 13 pulls the perils of space travel from the realm of science fiction into reality.

Man’s infatuation with Mars is boundless, and the “Red Planet,” is just one of several movies about humanity’s love-hate relationship with the fourth planet as films sometimes depict it as humanity’s future home and often as a base for an invasion of earth. In “Red Planet,” Val Kilmer is a member of a mission that investigates the disappearance of algae seeded earlier to terraform Mars. The life form that consumes the algae becomes their minor concern as they battle one another, the Martian weather, and their malfunctioning robot to survive. Aside from its honest serving of science fiction, “Red Planet” delivers interplay of factors that make the cosmos more forbidding.

Traveling farther than Mars, scientists head to Jupiter in “2001: A Space Odyssey” to investigate the destination of a transmission from a monolith excavated on the moon. The expedition turns tragic when HAL 9000, the artificial intelligence running their spacecraft, malfunctions and kills all but one member, Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea), who discovers another monolith on the giant planet. The monoliths point to the existence of intelligent extraterrestrials that influenced human evolution as the first monolith taught early man the use of tools. A product of Stanley Kubrick and Arthur Clarke’s collaboration, the film’s sparse dialogue and extensive use of imagery convey the vastness of space and the smallness of man in the cosmos.

Set in the near future when man’s search for extraterrestrials ends with the discovery and colonization of Pandora, a moon inhabited by primitive humanoids, “Avatar” tells the story of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) who develops a deep attraction to the Na’vi, which he is supposed to help subjugate, and finds love in the unlikeliest of places. These newfound emotions eventually overwhelm his loyalty to humanity that he leads the natives in their fight against the encroaching humans and trades his body for that a Na’vi. Beneath the apparent freshness of “Avatar’s” story are familiar tales of exploration of new land and the brutal conquest of natives that follows and the hackneyed story of love blossoming in the most hateful environment.

In these films, man evolves from an explorer trailblazing a path in the cosmos for future generations to follow while waging battles with himself, his technology, and the universe to a conqueror in a spaceship lustily eyeing an extraterrestrial world’s riches. Even though creative minds painted these scenarios, we only need to look back into history to remember that ignoble intentions can subvert the noble thirst for knowledge that drives man to sail seas of water and infinite oceans of stars.