I would have preferred it if we didn't get a glimpse of the alien organism other than an unresolved, blurred bioluminescent blob, or if we did, that they came up with something a little more original than a glowing squid. Having a hostile alien that looks like a squid (or, when on land, a spider trope) has all the innovation and mystery of little green men in a flying saucer.
shareWell what shape should a predator that has evoled in a dark, underwater, high pressure environment take? That is about as good as it would probably be.
share2001 had the right idea of not showing the intelligent alien life forms. It maintained an air of mystery, and avoided the pitfall of many sci-fi films of creating a mostly realistic background atmosphere and then breaking the spell with some hackneyed little green man, flying saucer, or (in this case) tentacled squid-like monster. If you must show a hostile alien, try to go beyond the overused squid and spider models.
shareWell, no. You talk about realism and then say that we should not use an animal type simply because other alien stories have used them too often. Well this film was an attempt at finding alien life on Europa and if there was life there this would most likely be a fair representation of one of the species living down there. So yes, it might be very realistic.
And if we are just to make it alien for the sake of it or for scares or shock value then what is the point? People exactly like you would be in here complaining that the film was ralistic right up until the silly alien that made no sense showed up at the end.
This film followed what would most likely evolve in that environment.
And what percentage of the alien movies out there use squid and spider aliens? I'd like you to point that out. Because I can't think of more than a small handfull. Maybe Starship Troopers, but not really. Maybe The Mist.
Sorry, gotta agree with Edward de Vere. Alien should have been unseen. Left to the imagination. Why something we would recognize?
shareI just now watched it, and I totally agree. I enjoyed the movie, but I think they should have left the alien to the imagination. Seeing the squid-like thing from "The Matrix" at the end of this movie was a bit of a letdown, in my opinion.
shareThe whole point of the film was the astronauts seeking out evidence of life on Europa. That last shot was the entire point of the film! And yeah, I know they'd already found simple organisms, but this was a much more highly evolved creature than they were expecting - so it was a huge discovery.
Had the film done what you're all suggesting and left the alien as an unseen glowing blob, the astronauts' deaths would have been less meaningful. And certainly, the shot gave meaning to the death of the last astronaut standing, who opened the airlock for the sole purpose of getting that shot and sending it to Earth.
Also, the shot was brief enough that it didn't look cheesy or anything.
Right on!
shareUm.... tons actually.....have used spiders / squids.
Beyond Starship Troopers and The Mist, here's a few:
It Came From Outer Space (1953)
Them! (1954) - alien insect spiders
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) - monster squid
Monsters (2010) - giant luminescent land squids
Alien (1979) to Prometheus (2012) - the face huggers and trilobites all exhibit squid properties. Xenomorphs definitely exhibit spider / insect-like qualities given their exoskeletons and thoraxes.
Skyline (2010) - squids alien invasion
Cloverfield (2008) - large and small insects
Ender's Game (2013) - large space insects
The Host (2006) - tentacled squid aliens
Pacific Rim - large insect alien monsters
Grabbers (2013) - squid aliens allergic to drunk people
Star Wars - Admiral Akbar is part of a squid-humanoid race, the Mon Calamari
The Faculty (1998) - tentacled alien body snatchers
Men in Black (1997) - alien squid baby https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqbTLJ0U84M
Of course, Lovecraft originated it with his writings on Cthulu.... which have found their way even into Saturday morning cartoons like The Real Ghostbusters (http://aliens.wikia.com/wiki/Spawn_of_Cthulhu)
It's such a cliche that even The Simpsons depiction of aliens are the squids, Kang and Kodos!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kang_and_Kodos
I could go on and on and on, but I hope you get the point.
Just because you can't think about something doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
And alien squids are massively overused cliches.
And, yes, the movie was nothing but poorly executed tropes and cliches.
I have to disagree with you on that. Had they gone down the road of 2001 and 'left it to the imagination of the viewer' I would have felt very cheated.
Besides which in 2001 the other life form is considerably more advanced than the ocean dwellers in this film. Hence I see nothing wrong with revealing that it was a new organic life form (one of many considering the depth of the ocean) but not one that was going to jump into spaceships and come after us.
Within the restrictions of plausible reality, this was as far, as wonderous and as terrifying (for the astronauts) as the final should have gone.
Small moves Ellie, small moves
Here's a few relatively unique alien concepts not yet put to film or very-rarely:
Micro-biological hive collective (e.g., alien version of nanobytes)
Non-carbon-based life forms (e.g., Horta from Star Trek was a silicon-based life form)
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Silicon-based_lifeform
Life forms in a different dimension or quantum realm which phase in and out of our time/dimension
Energy-based or light-based life forms (where I thought this film was actually going)
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What I think you're missing is that this isn't a horror or action movie. It's supposed to reflect the vagaries of a mission to discover life on another planet (or moon, as the case may be.) The alien's appearance was completely non-contextual -- it had no actual defined role in the movie's events. So interpreting it in comparison/contrast to aliens in other movies, aliens that have specific functions (horror villains, higher beings, enemies, etc) is misguided. They showed the alien simply because that was a reasonable outcome to the final sequence of events in the movie. She opens the airlock, water comes rushing in, and, with it, the alien. The footage ends at that point not because of the alien reveal, but because the basic structure of the movie demands it. It's a "found footage" movie, and the cameras (and communications array) are destroyed by the submersion. I can't see why showing the alien would be a problem in this context. It's not given a moral or philosophical role in the movie. It's not a "character" per se. It simply exists, and is a reasonable approximation of the sort of complex life-form that might develop in the depths of an extraterrestrial ocean where temperature and pressure demands approximate what we know of the depths of Earth's oceans (except more so, given that Europa would be much colder outside of the thermal vent areas, and the pressure at the depths of a 100 km deep ocean would be staggering.)
The point wasn't to amaze us with the aliens, but to show us that the sacrifices and will of the humans weren't entirely futile. Just so long as the appearance of the aliens was reasonable (and, as pointed out above, it was entirely reasonable) the movie did its job in that respect, especially since that last image was the crowning moment of the basic thesis that the crew achieved something meaningful (since "algae" is fairly underwhelming, and the other lights could still have been inorganic in nature rather than biochemical.) They found complex life-forms. They managed to convey their findings to Earth. And that was where the entire movie was headed. The aliens could have been the most original design the movie industry ever dreamed up and it wouldn't have mattered one whit to the point of the movie itself.
The problem with this is that all of this could have been achieved without showing the alien in full detail. A dark figure in the water with bio-luminescence clearly would have been enough. lol
shareI felt like they portrayed the creature as hostile or carnivorous -- not hard to believe if it's an "animal" and not an advanced species of some kind. It bothered me that the crew might have been consumed by the creature; to me this is quite grim for the tone of the movie.
It didn't bother me that it was a "squid", in fact it looked a lot like I always imagined a complex creature on Europa might look. It's speculatively biology, but an underwater species having appendages for swimming and grabbing things, and a "mouth", an bodily orifice to ingest foreign matter, doesn't seem far-fetched.
I think I would have been more frustrated if they never gave us a glimpse of what it was, although I had been starting to suspect that "it" wasn't biological at all before they showed us.
or if we did, that they came up with something a little more original than a glowing squid.
Totally agree, they should've left it a mystery. I imagined it would be bioluminescent micro organisms that could work together to meld the ice and create havoc. Like a group conscience or intelligence. Instead we got a lame squid monster that looked like the sentinels from The Matrix...
sharethe ending was the best part i thought, i hated the close up shots and the fake looking outdoor scenes
so many movies, so little time