Aliens: The Real Enemy?

The other night we watched Battle: Los Angeles, which for all practical purposes is a modern war movie, but with the science fictiony twist of the enemy being extraterrestrials. Earlier in the summer we went to see Battleship, which was the same basic plot, but focused on the Navy, and Hawai'i (which I'm all for).

This seems to be the way all war movies are going to be from now on. Aliens are the new arch-enemy.

Of course, we have seen this all before in various forms since the 1950s, with War of the Worlds and The Day the Earth Stood Still. However, since Independence Day, it has been the case that mostly, if not exclusively, all war movies involve aliens as the opponent. The only exception would be historical war movies.

There must be some covert and unpublished order given to Hollywood that we cannot have any human enemies for a prospective war in a movie. Why? Perhaps because we are all supposed to be one big happy One World Order. To get us all in that frame of mind we must not think of any other nation or people as an enemy.

But also, perhaps, mostly is a fear of not being politically correct, internationally.

Pick any country to use as an enemy against the U.S. in a movie and I bet you will run into writers, directors, producers and actors who will worry about offending that nation. Why, to think that some other nation could actually perpetrate some evil plot against the U.S.—unless we are also guilty of something—is unthinkable. How dare we imply that some country might be a true enemy! That would be considered bigoted.

(As an aside, also notice how all spy movies involve U.S. spies in cahoots with other U.S. spies against—you guessed it—U.S. spies. Don't we actually spy against other nations?

Also, I would rather have peace than war. We should be getting out of as many conflicts as possible and just make sure our own borders are secure. Then we should be the disseminators of liberty via debate, proclamation and diplomacy—with the security of a strong and ready military.)

You see, aliens are safe. Regardless of the unlikely idea that they could get here in the first place (a whole ’nuther science issue), they make obvious and uncomplicated enemies. Since they don't represent any other nation, there is no fear of offending anyone.

Don’t get me wrong; I enjoy a good alien action plot occasionally. This is just an observation of our pop culture, and perhaps a recognition of an overarching “understanding” of the message we are supposed to get from all this lack of authentic war movie enemies, i.e., a country that really exists as a possible threat, such as China, Russia, North Korea or Iran, cannot possibly exist. 

You get the idea.