MovieChat Forums > Arrival (2016) Discussion > Why all the fog in alien spaceships?

Why all the fog in alien spaceships?


So what's with the aliens always living in a spaceship filled with dense fog in most movies? Aliens can't see sht in there so why do they even have eyes? It's because the incompetent movie makers are too chicken sht to show you their aliens in a clear unobstructed view. They have no other way to make their aliens seem intimidating and mysterious so they always have to hide it in a god damn fog. Stupid humans and their retarded movie tropes!

reply

It's the gasses of their atmosphere, which they require to survive. It is contained behind the transparent partition that separates them from the humans in their atmosphere.

reply

Isn't Fog a horror movie trope?

Which is why Star Trek & Star Wars use so little of it.

reply

Literally the most famous battle in Star Trek history took place inside a nebula that not only obscured them visually but also impaired their instruments, so don't go claiming that Star Trek is immune from that specific trope. If anything it's a great example of why "tropes" are hardly bad things when used properly. I wasn't bothered by the "fog" trope in Arrival at all, there's nothing wrong with a little mystery in terms of the visuals. And if anything I actually thought they showed the aliens *way more* than I thought they would. I thought they would go for even *more* mysterious, maybe even having the aliens basically being off screen.

p.s. I would argue that the "fog" trope is essentially present in Star Wars in the form of the "asteroid field" since it basically doubles as for and resembles nothing like what a real asteroid field looks like.

reply

Yeah, sorry I take back the Star Trek & Star Wars examples.
I remember that it was plenty of times in Star Trek episodes with the Borg and in Empire Strikes back.

What I mean't to say was that it seemed out of place imo.
Typical, the fog is associated with evil creatures.
These aliens were as friendly as E.T.
I'm a big fan of fog in films too but in my opinion it shouldn't have been used in Arrival.

I don't know why they employed used it, maybe to hide bad designs or cg.

reply

I think overall the whole "fog" motif is a pretty easy way to introduce a bit of mystery (which is why it's such an easy trope to use with "evil" creatures), but I like how it actually worked to subvert our expectations of the aliens, too. It was also a little bit of lampshading about other alien "invasion" movies, although this is hardly as obvious an example as when the Alien ships were preparing to leave and their crafts manouvered in to a horizontal position that made them look just like the ships from movies like Independence Day.

reply

In my case, it made me expect the Aliens to suddenly attack or reveal their real motif.

Yeah, I also got that impression when the spaceship became horizontal. lol

reply

I thought the fog stuff showed that the aliens lived in a dense atmosphere, moved through it in ways not possible for earthbound life forms, wee possibly from a gas planet rather than a rocky one, and had a language that seemed to be based on manipulating atmospheric currents. It was a wonderfully way to show that these life forms were completely and utterly... unearthly. That's what film needs to do, confer tons of information at a glance, while getting on with the story.

And if the visual shorthand also saves on the CGI budget, it's a win-win!

reply

Considering their ship was made from an enormous rock and they evolved feet... I doubt they came from a gas planet.

reply

there's fog because it looks cool... aesthetics matter, bro...

reply

Maybe they suffer from extreme dry skin, and a heavily dense fog environment keeps them looking youthful.
Who are you to judge alien beauty regimen?

reply

Perhaps the fog is transparent to what ever spectrum of light the aliens are adapted to seeing, we adapted to white light cause we evolved to see light from the sun in the spectrum the atmosphere least filters. Water vapor absorbs a lot of the infra red rays comming from the sun and the ozone layer filters a lof of Ultra violet light so we see Red Green and blue smake in the middle of the two. We'd need bigger eyes to see microwaves and we'd only be able to focus on objects bigger then one to ten centimeters if we did so the world would be fairly blurry. And forget radio waves we coulden't focus on objects smaller then a meter more or less. What I'm saying is the Aliens probably see right through the fog while we can't cause our air is different.

Also the aliens may not even be looking at photons but use some other sense we don't know about to see all the spatial dementions of the universe. Heck who needs line of sight if you can see in 4 or more spacial dementions which doesn't sound to far fetched if the aliens can already see into the future and past as if they are able to see in multiple time demensions as well as they are clearly trying to influence future events from our perspective.

Or most likely its Hollywood trying to make the aliens more creepy by obscuring shots of the alien.

reply

They had cranked their humidifier up WAY too much! :-)

reply

They invited Snoop Dog over while they visited earth, so you know, yeah.

reply