2001: A Space Odyssey • Close Encounters of the Third Kind • E.T. The Extraterrestrial • Contact • Arrival
I love, love, love movies with mysterious aliens who turn out to have our best interests at heart — movies where the “villain” is our human fear of the unknown and the impulse to destroy what we don’t understand.
We need more stories like that.
It Came From Outer Space • The Day The Earth Stood Still • Forbidden Planet
The aliens come in peace, and our instinct is to strike. When our ape ancestor discovers tools in 2001, he goes within seconds from simple work to hunting and then to killing his enemy — the urge to weaponize our discoveries is strong within us, but as we grow we put away childish urges and impulses — don’t we?
I love when the strange and mysterious adversary becomes our best friend, or at least an ally, because we’ve all been strange and mysterious to someone at some time or another in our lives, or we’ve taken a chance to be nice to a mysterious stranger or newcomer who ends up being our best friend for life.
If we dig deep enough, we almost always find that we have more in common than differences. I would rather be the foolish scientist who tries to reason with the alien and gets swatted away than the kid who shoots the benevolent stranger out of fear. Of course, my real preference is to be Elliot helping E.T. get home, or Ellie making small moves on the beach with the image of her father, or Roy Neary signing up to fly into space, or Louise Banks figuring out what Abbott and Costello have been trying to say.
It makes more sense to believe the aliens come in peace, because we come in peace every day in almost every interaction with others.
Project Hail Mary and some of the stories by Asimov as well. No chance for Martians anymore but the early sci-fi writers imagined that.