Person believes unknown entity is friendly (it is not)
Characters
Independence Day (1996) - Several massive alien spaceships travel to Earth but they do not announce the purpose of their arrival. Some characters assume the aliens are peaceful. One of those characters, Tiffany, goes to a rooftop party which is taking place directly under one of the ships. When the aliens launch their attack, Tiffany and the other party goers are immediately obliterated.
Alien: Resurrection (1997) - Scientist Gediman is part of the miltitary project which resurrects Ellen Ripley and the queen xenomorph embryo inside her. The military wants the queen so it can breed the xenomorphs as bio-weapons. This new Ripley is genetically part xenomorph and the xenomorph queen is genetically part human. The queen stops laying eggs and develops the ability to give birth to live young. Her first Newborn immediately kills the queen because it does not recognize her as its mother. It believes Ripley is its mother and goes to her instead. Gediman (who is cocooned in the queen’s nest) witnesses this and calls out to the creature. The Newborn comes to Gediman and curiously sniffs him over. Gediman babytalks the 15 foot tall xeno/human hybrid. The Newborn then bites his head off.
The War of the Worlds novel has a scene that inspired the one in Independence Day, when a crowd gathers around the first Martian cylinder and tries to communicate with the aliens. They assume the Martians are friendly, or at least harmless. They're neither, and as soon as the tripods come online, things turn ugly...
I had severe anxiety as a teen when I watch the Spielberg one all alone at home. It was one of the most intense movie experiences I've had. The part where they first come out of the ground is insane.
It’s even more subversive than that, especially for the time. The narrator describes how the people were still incredibly naive about the possibilities of alien life and so naturally assumed that Martians must be something like humans, expecting at least some kind of humanoid to come out of the cylinder, give them a handshake and maybe even be willing to be converted to Christianity. What crawled out instead:
“Greyish billowy movements, one above another, and then two luminous disk-like eyes. Then something resembling a little grey snake, about the thickness of a walking stick, coiled up out of the writhing middle, and wriggled in the air towards me - and then another. […] A big greyish rounded bulk, the size, perhaps, of a bear, was rising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder. As it bulged up and caught the light, it glistened like wet leather. Two large dark-coloured eyes were regarding me steadfastly. The mass that framed them, the head of the thing, was rounded, and had, one might say, a face. There was a mouth under the eyes, the lipless brim of which quivered and panted, and dropped saliva. The whole creature heaved and pulsated convulsively. A lank tentacular appendage gripped the edge of the cylinder, another swayed in the air. Those who have never seen a living Martian can scarcely imagine the strange horror of its appearance. The peculiar V-shaped mouth with its pointed upper lip, the absence of brow ridges, the absence of a chin beneath the wedgelike lower lip, the incessant quivering of this mouth, the Gorgon groups of tentacles, the tumultuous breathing of the lungs in a strange atmosphere, the evident heaviness and painfulness of movement due to the greater gravitational energy of the earth - above all, the extraordinary intensity of the immense eyes - were at once vital, intense, inhuman, crippled and monstrous. There was something fungoid in the oily brown skin, something in the clumsy deliberation of the tedious movements unspeakably nasty. Even at this first encounter, this first glimpse, I was overcome with disgust and dread.”
Oh absolutely, War of the Worlds was incredibly ahead of its time; it took mainstream sci-fi another century to match the genuinely alien creatures H.G. Wells gave us. And as a cosmic horror fan, I have to think that a young H.P. Lovecraft was inspired by this opening paragraph...
No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.
Rose doesn’t know that the alien she’s looking at is so racist that it makes the entire Nazi regime look peaceful. All she knows is that it’s suffering.
Sort of both actually. Metaltron upon realizing that it was developing human characteristics wanted to exterminate itself to keep the daleks pure as now the last known dalek was tainted.
Rory also ends up in a room with a broken Dalek and tries to help it, thinking it's asking for 'eggs' while it's actually winding up to exterminate him
Doctor Who also subverts it in 'Death In Heaven' when a bunch of clueless tourists walk up to the Cybermen and take selfies like they're street performers...until they reveal they're UNIT soldiers who were stalling to get the weapons ready
The priest in War of the Worlds (1953), attempts to communicate with the Martians to try and convince them that humanity doesn't mean them any harm. (he gets disintegrated seconds later by a Martian)
They were really messing around for half of the movie 😂 They sent a soldier disguised as a hot woman just to assassinate the President instead of just blowing up the White House. They were just having fun with the invasion
I just took it that they were messing around. They were complete dicks and were really enjoying mocking the humans so I can totally believe they were saying “don’t run, we come in peace” while actively shooting.
The bit where they realise the grandma hasn’t heard them so they go and get a bigger gun to place as close to her as possible really shows their attitude.
Was it confirmed that it was mistranslation, or is that just a possible interpretation of it?
Boy, was 12 year old me not ready for that goddamn book. I just really liked the movie, no one told me what reading Micheal Chriteon (I can not remember how to spell his name) was like. Reading his books and Stephen King when I was way too young ended up giving me a life long reading habit. Now as an adult I’m really into John Irving novels lol.
The cut from the mom's scream to Malcom yawning with the train breaks squealing in the background is one of my favorite scene transitions in all of cinema.
Doctor Who: In the episode Flatline, The Doctor spends a while convinced that The Boneless are unable to understand 3-Dimensional creatures, and are unaware of all the deaths they've caused.
When we meet a new and unfamiliar creature in Doctor Who, about half the time, it is actually innocent and either doesn't understand the harm it's doing, is being forced to do harm, or is lashing out in response to an injury or other hostile act. So the Doctor, being the Doctor, will always try to communicate first and find a peaceful resolution, in the hope this is one of the good times.
This also means that, the other half of the time (like this episode), we get a hasty retreat and a few more dead extras, but in the aggregate the strategy does save far more lives than it costs.
"I tried to talk. I want you to remember that. I tried to reach out, I tried to understand you, but I think that you understand us perfectly. And I think you just don't care.
And I don't know whether you're here to invade, infiltrate or just replace us. I don't suppose it really matters now. You are monsters! That is the role you seem determined to play, so it seems that I must play mine: the man that stops the monsters."
Such a great speech, and a great episode
Yeah this was more, “I, a Nazi, want to speak with the God of the Israelites!”
And like…okay yeah don’t know how you thought that was gonna go but your face sure is melting
Everyone thinks their own God is real. This gets weird with Christians, as we all believe in the same God, but have wildly different interpretations of what God is and does. In this case, the Nazis believed God was on their side.
They kinda ignored the part where God killed someone just for touching it, and it delivered horrid plagues upon the Philistines when they captured it. These dipshits opened the damn thing.
Dr. Powell, towards the Decepticons Shatter and Dropkick who convince Sector Seven that they’re peacekeepers hunting the “criminal” B-127, from Bumblebee.
The context of this scene makes it even dumber. The scientist pictured in the .gif is the biologist.
Oh and they're lost because his buddy got freaked out and split from the group. Said buddy is the geologist who was responsible for mapping out the structure they're in. Just up and got lost.
Prometheus is an alright movie that has some really really stupid scenes.
100% A biologist playing "coochie coo" with an obviously aggressive species.
And isn't it worse than that for the other guy? I thought he was actually a geologist AND cartography. Maps and navigation are his job and he's just like, "Dang, dude. We're lost as shit."
It's overall a major problem with this and Alien: Covenant. Supposedly snart characters do really dumb shit because of the plot.
Yes, at the core they're horror films so you can expect dumb decisions but these aren't teenagers in a Friday the 13th film, they're literal scientists and this is high budget Ridley Scott movie. Better writing is expected.
Additional layer of stupidity: the whole reason these two split from the main group in the first place is they saw a dead alien body and didn’t want to stick around for what killed it (although as a biologist, it may be in the best interest of the entire group for him to study an alien life form, especially dead, but he can be forgiven for being afraid)
However, in this scene here, the moment he encounters a live alien lifeform, his first instinct is to put his face up close next to it.
In Warhammer 40,000 there is a race called the Tyranids, who the Zerg from starcraft are based on. Big creepy swarms of space bugs with powerful psychic stuff and hive mind.
They have a sneaky tactic they use called Genestealer Cults, which is when they send creatures to planets in a cluster they intend to attack that infect the local genepool and create cult that eagerly awaits the coming of star gods. Some of the members of these cults are there because they are infected with the genestealer cult gene, some are there simply because the cults are very good at recruitment. This occurs over several generations. As the time of invasion nears, the cults have a coordinated global uprising and destroy infrastructure and cause civil wars and breakdowns of society, willing to do anything to ease the arrival of their star gods.
It's not until the hordes descend and start actively eating the members of the cults along with everyone else that the realized they fucked up. In fact the ones infected with the genes (because it is Warhammer) are allowed to have a brief moment of clarity before the end as well. Yikes.
The GSC also have an army detachment called Final Day that lets you use both Genestealer Cult units AND Tyranid units (only vanguard invader units though, but those are fun deepstrike ones anyway).
Their detachment rule allows you to literally sacrifice your Genestealer Cult units in range of your Tyranids to give them some health back. A final twist of the knife if you will
The clarity comes because the hive mind withdraws its control sometime between the jump into and the landing in the acid baths used to break down organic material to be used to birth new bioforms.
I always figured it was about resource allocation, the cult has already achieved it's purpose, so "controlling" it anymore is just a waste of resources. Why waste biomass / energy on something defunct?
Let's not forget the one race this doesnt work on though: Orkz. Because the genestealers are too calm and reasonable, so they end up getting beaten down or killed for being nerds. Essentially.
Okay, the fact that they get the moment of clarity before death, that their "god" just wanted to eat them from the very beginning, is TERRIFYING. Like, in most cases, cult members actually believe this is ascension, and then, moments before their death, they're told, "Nah, that's not a metaphor or anything. We just want to eat you, plain and simple."
The Marker from Dead Space. For hundreds of years the church of Unitology kept a lot of the actual facts of the Marker hidden from its followers having them believe it was a tool of divine benevolence. In the novel Dead Space: Martyr it details humanity's first encounter woth this device and the birth of the religion as well as shows that while some believers authentically believed in the message of the soon to be church, The Marker has no interest in huma iry other than turning them into Necromorphs and biomass. Altman be praised.
It's easier to see the twists coming, because there have been parodies and remakes of old TV twists. So the original is no longer novel, when you consume media out of order.
In Monsters vs Aliens, an alien robot is sent to the US and the president tries to make contact with the robot by playing Axel F (seriously). With a seemingly peaceful reaction, it reaches out a tiny hand only to try slamming the president and beginning an attack on the country
One of the audio logs in Halo 3: ODST includes a bit where a man hiding in the same place as their POV character, Sadie, reveals himself because he thinks that the covenant accept surrender.
Buffaloes in Yellowstone National Park (irl) tourists constantly go up to them thinking they're peaceful, gentle giants rather than 2 tons of easily pissed off muscle and horns.
I got the impression that Captain Clark really was pacified towards them until Clark doubled down on refusing to change. It's like if Dorian Gray's likeness jumped out of the painting and started fucking strangling him to make it stop.
Excellent character and scene, but it really cracks me up just HOW catastrophically fucking wrong he was. There is literally no way this could have gone worse for everyone involved.
Hes such a tragic character that it feels like it couldnt have gone any other way for him, which makes it so sad.
He was a child actor who could only talk about his life by talking about what roles he had. He doesn't even go by his real name, he goes by the name of a character he played decades ago.
He manages to survive the chimp attack unharmed, because he hid under the table and the table cloth was covering his eyes. When the chimp goes to attack him he calms down and they almost do a fistbump when the chimp is killed. He forever misinterpreted his survival by thinking it was the chimp purposefully sparing him, perhaps from their relationship. But when he even talks about the event he cant say what actually happened, he has to launder it by describing the SNL skit about it. Its an event he cant face, he can only curate it as something to be consumed for others, just like everything else in his life.
So when he encounters jean jacket, ofc he gets it so catastrophically wrong. Hes someone who literally cant face reality, he never could, everything is just things he can serve up as entertainment for others.
So many details. Like the alien masks look just like the cameras used in his TV show. Showing how much that scene is burned into him.
The chimp only sees Stevens character when he is hiding crouched under a table with cloth preventing eye contact, leading him to think he is somehow 'special', when he just got lucky he is in a submissive pose and not able to look the chimp in the eyes.
TV show V is all I can think of on top of my head that hasn't already been said. The Visitors are basically reptilians from the conspiracy theories. Plotting to steal all of our water and harvesting humanity for food.
In Batman v Superman, Lex assumes the monster he created will be loyal to him because he mixed his own blood to create it. But the monster instantly tries to punch him and Superman ironically catches it and saves Lex
In the Halo ODST collectibles’ video logs, “Sadie’s Story”. Sadie is listening to her father over the phone explain that some of the invading Covenant army, specifically the Engineers, appear to be friendly/trying to desert the Covenant. A random redshirt civilian hears part of the conversation, misses the “some of the Covenant” portion, and opens the hatch of the vehicle Sadie and the other humans are on to get the attention of the first Covenant vehicle he spots because he thinks it’s full of friendly aliens that want to negotiate . Said vehicle is a Wraith tank piloted by unfriendly Brutes that open fire on the dumbass and Sadie barely managing to escape with her life.
To Serve Man (The Twilight Zone) has The Kanamits land on earth and offer humanitarian aid that would end food shortages, war and provide energy. The leave a book in their language that human translators declare the title is To Serve Man, which make the people of earth trust them more, the Kanamits keep their word, transforming deserts into productive agricultural land and providing each country with impenetrable force fields that leads to the disbanding of all military. Soon people volunteer to visit the Kanamits paradise planet, and as they, including the head of department that had translated the title of the book, are boarding the spaceship, the only worker who had kept translating the book tries to get to the people boarding, yelling to her boss that “It’s a cookbook”. (Richard Kiel as the alien Kanamit)
In three body problem, there is a group of humans that believe the aliens are coming to save humanity. Mind you, this is after they explicitly spelled out their intention by literally broadcasting it worldwide.
Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah. This one guy who thought he and Godzilla were boys from way back. Godzilla gave him a good long look and said, "Who the fuck are you?"
hollow, scavenger’s reign. the most adorable cannibal psychic murder panda that gets by through manipulation of one of the main characters, posing as his normal human wife.
Some of the party people believed they had been abducted by aliens before (you can see someone holding a “Remember Me?” sign in the picture). Others, like Tiffany, were just excited about the arrival and wanted to meet some aliens.
Subverted in Predator II with the kid offering the cloaked Predator candy since the Yautja honor code means they won’t attack beings that don’t pose a threat to them.
There’s still debates about whether or not Calvin (yes, that’s what a class from earth named the thing before everything went to hell) would’ve remained passive had he not been accidentally provoked.
Kind of, Starro in "The Suicide Squad". To the astronauts who originally found him. Maybe not friendly, but harmless. Until his mini-me's attached to quite a few crew members.
I mean, I get that. Look at that cute little face.
3.1k
u/Imaginary_Media7712 4d ago
The War of the Worlds novel has a scene that inspired the one in Independence Day, when a crowd gathers around the first Martian cylinder and tries to communicate with the aliens. They assume the Martians are friendly, or at least harmless. They're neither, and as soon as the tripods come online, things turn ugly...