We always see alien invasion movies, and it’s almost always
the same: some guy is berating some subordinate about how he’s not fit for
command, or he’ll crack under pressure, and then the movie shows us that guy’s
character arc (and he usually either dies or becomes the hero). But what about
the aliens? Aren’t there cowards and incompetents among them? Do they have the
same dramatic scenes, but we never get to see them?
Man, I would love to see a movie like Aliens, where the alien queen is dressing down some alien guy for
not being aggressive enough, and if they’re going to drive humanity off their
planet, well, he’d better get it together, mister! And then we see an alien
chickening out on attacking humans, and other aliens go to give him a hard
time, and then they fight amongst themselves, but some alien in charge says:
“That’s just what the humans want us to do: fight amongst ourselves! The enemy
is out there, with five fingers, four limbs and a head: if you want to fight, go
fight them!”
We never get to see the pansy-assed aliens chickening out,
and I think it gives us an inaccurate picture of the threat we’re going to face
someday when they invade. Surely they’re scared like us, right? And maybe they have draft-dodgers too. And where there is anti-war sentiment, maybe that can be tapped as a way to divide them. And who knows: maybe we
can psych them out?
