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10. DISTRICT 9• As well as being responsible for bringing Lord Of The Rings to the cinema screens, Peter Jackson was
also half of the team behind one of the greatest aliens-living-on-our-planet films ever; District 9.
• While the last ten years have given us more pieces of sci-fi pap than any genre geek can bring themselves to recall, District 9 is the notable exception, and in a time of constant remakes and reboots, it brought something new and fresh to cinemas and arrived with such little fanfare that it surprised practically everyone.
• The plot sees racist bureaucrat Wikus van de Merwe being tasked with clearing out a zone where millions of insectoid aliens have lived for decades, and as with most sci-fi, there is a loose link to the real world and the problems being faced by humans every day.
• Oh, and it involves huge robots. What more could you want? Huge robots, aliens and a fantastic script.
9. THE THING
• John Carpenter had already terrified the world with Halloween and The Fog when he decided to dip his fingers in the alien pool and create one of his most memorable films with The Thing.
• A grotesque horror film, The Thing sees Kurt Russell as a scientist in the Antarctic discovering that you really cant trust your friends and colleagues when a shape-shifting, body snatching alien is on the loose.��
• A cross between Alien and a murder whodunit, the film contains special effects that were mind-blowing at the time and still hold up pretty well today. How can anyone watch this film without winding back the spider-head moment a couple of times to see if that did really happen? I can tell you now, yes it did. Yes it did.
8. STAR TREK• The one and only remake to feature on this list, there were a few eyebrows raised on the news that Star
Trek was being rebooted by Lost creator JJ Abrams. Anyone who doubted that the franchise was in good hands needed only a few minutes to be convinced.
• The storyline kicks off with a bit of back story. On the day of James Kirk's birth, his father dies on his ship in a last stand against a mysterious alien time-traveling vessel looking for Ambassador Spock, who, in this time, is also a child on Vulcan disdained by his neighbours for his half-human heritage. Twenty-five years later, Kirk has grown into a young troublemaker. Challenged by Captain Christopher Pike to realize his potential in Starfleet, he comes to annoy instructors like young Commander Spock. Suddenly, there is an emergency at Vulcan and the newly commissioned USS Enterprise is crewed with promising cadets like Nyota Uhura, Hikaru Sulu, Pavel Chekov and Kirk himself.
• The film manages to completely rewrite the history of the franchise, while both making fun of the more laughable aspects of the original series but also keeping an integrity that allows it to fit perfectly for both old-timers and newcomers alike.
7. E.T.
• No matter how little you know about the genre, there are people living in the remotest parts of Outer Mongolia who know who E.T. is. No, this has nothing to do with Katy Perry, it comes down to a short, dumpy bioped with an extending neck and more wrinkles than Keith Richards.
• E.T. has many times found itself at the top of the Family Films lists that do the rounds with good reason. It has Steven Mr Family Blockbuster Spielberg behind the camera, it has a loveable central character, �� ��heart-warming scenes, tension, sadness and of course that golden Spielberg schmaltz ending with everyone happy and audiences feeling they have just had a little bit of cinema magic brought into their lives.
• Discounting a wholly unnecessary special anniversary edition, which featured a few naff updated scenes a la �� Star Wars Special Edition �� E.T. stands the test of time as a brilliant piece of alien family fun, and one of the few films on the list where the alien isnt hostile.��
6. ALIENS
• If Ridley Scott provided the starting block, James Cameron was holding the starting pistol and had equipped the runners with rocket boots.
• As far as natural progression goes, never has it been done as simply or spectacularly as Aliens. From one xenomorph in the 1979 original, Cameron released hundreds of the H R Giger designed, double-mouthed monsters as well as a fearsome queen for the brood and pitted them against a bunch of marines and the terminator-esque Ellen Ripley.
• What the film gave up in atmosphere, it more than made up for in sheer adrenaline as alien blood splatters in the gunfire, while little girl Newt added into the mix as a constantly-in-peril addition to the story, tying up a sub-theme of motherly instinct to protect that ultimately manifests as the climatic battle between the Alien Queen and a crate loaded wearing Ripley that is the stuff of cinematic legend.
5. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND• Alien abduction has been a human obsession since it was first discovered there was something beyond the blue
of the sky. Steven Spielberg managed to bring the quintessential abduction move to cinemas in his early years and brought with him some of the elements that would go on to be become the clichés of the Spielberg world.
• Made in 1977, the film displays the now standard family with issues being drawn back together by something out of their control, children in peril, suspense that builds and builds until you think your face is going to fold in on itself and state of the art special effects that Spielberg films now must have orwell, it just wouldnt be � ��Spielberg without them, would it?
• From the first UFO sightings in Muncie, Indiana to the fantastic finale at Devil's Tower in Wyoming, this is a film that many subsequent alien abduction filmmakers could learn a lot from. Of course many have emulated the film over the years, many without much success, and even Spielberg has returned to the territory on a number of occasions on both the big screen with War of The Worlds and on TV with Falling Skies. However, nothing compares to this true original. No other film has made me want to believe in aliens more, and youll never look at ��a plate of mashed potatoes the same again.
4. AVATAR
• James Camerons epic masterpiece, which encompasses 3D technology like never before, took so long to ��make it to the cinema that we were forced to suffer any number of cheap, badly acted, terribly written sci-fi movies that left many alien-loving cinema goers believing that they may never again see a decent film involving extra-terrestrial life. Similarly, 3D movies had been a bit hit and miss, so when Avatar did arrive everyone wanted to see it.
• The story, in its most basic form, boils down to this by the year 2148 humans have dried up the Earths �� ��natural resources and decide to evict a bunch of aliens from their planet in order to mine for more. Thats right; more moral tales under the surface of vividly rendered planets and quite human aliens.��
• There is so much that Cameron does right in Avatar that it almost exonerates him for bringing the mush-fest of Titanic to the screenstwice. Almost.�
3. INDEPENDENCE DAY• As well as being responsible for bringing Lord Of The Rings to the cinema screens, Peter Jackson was
also half of the team behind one of the greatest aliens-living-on-our-planet films ever; District 9.
• While the last ten years have given us more pieces of sci-fi pap than any genre geek can bring themselves to recall, District 9 is the notable exception, and in a time of constant remakes and reboots, it brought something new and fresh to cinemas and arrived with such little fanfare that it surprised practically everyone.
• The plot sees racist bureaucrat Wikus van de Merwe being tasked with clearing out a zone where millions of insectoid aliens have lived for decades, and as with most sci-fi, there is a loose link to the real world and the problems being faced by humans every day.
• Oh, and it involves huge robots. What more could you want? Huge robots, aliens and a fantastic script.
2. ALIEN
• In 1979, the tagline In space, no one can hear you scream appeared on movie posters featuring what �� ��looked like a crusted egg with a green glow emitting from its split side and a single word. Alien.
• Ridley Scott cemented his name as a force to be reckoned with in the sci-fi genre by bringing to the screen one of the most claustrophobic, shocking and trailblazing films of its time, and one that can still wipe the floor with 90% of its modern counterparts.
• The H R Giger designed aliens iconic chest-bursting appearance is what the film is most known for, but ��that only serves as a central stone around which is weaved a tapestry of strong characters, tense scenes in confined corridors, gruesome deaths, facehuggers, double-crossing androids, and a mythology that would generate a series of questions that would remain unanswered for over three decades.
• A masterpiece of film that proved a man in an alien costume could be scary.
1. STAR WARS• What could possibly top the list of the ten best films to feature aliens other than the series that George Lucas dreamt up
in a nearby galaxy not that long ago, relatively speaking? The fact that he then milked that same idea for over 30 years is something we will just skim over at this point.
• Yes, Star Wars tops my list of the ten best alien films for pretty much the same reason Lord of The Rings holds the same spot on my greatest films ever; vision, imagination, scope and sheer spectacle that delivers everything any sci-fi lover could want in a huge boiling pot of intergalactic dog-fights, wookies, heavy breathing, father/son relationships and borderline incest that would make Jeremy Kyle hand in his notice, plenty of force feeling and a little green Jedi master with the voice of a Muppet.
• It is hard to compile any sci-fi list that does not feature the pure might that is the Star Wars saga, and for all the self-indulgent clap-trap that padded out Episodes 1-3, there is no denying that George Lucas created the films that will constantly have fans and become to future generations Classic, as well as proving to studio bosses that Sci-fi, when its ��done right, can make massive amounts of money. For every publisher who turns down a Sci-fi author as not being mass-market enough, for every film studio who passes up a pitch for a new Sci-fi blockbuster, Star Wars is the film series that should always be in the back of their mind when they hand out that rejection slip.
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