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I've noticed this on a couple of movies.  The ultimate horrible thing that can happen is that some alien/alternate universe/magical being/army will invade earth.  I've noticed on several of these movies that the movie makers obviously do not give humans enough credit for 1. our military defense systems, and 2. our innate capacity to make other species extinct.  A few examples:

The Tenth Kingdom - The main characters narrowly prevent the troll king from leading his army of about 10,000 trolls armed with battle-axes, swords, etc. as well as troll powder (small bag of powder thrown by hand at an enemy causes the enemy to pass out) from invading modern day New York.  This is the most far-fetched one I can think of because the trolls are tough but by no means immortal or special in anyway.  They might kill a handfull of the first people they stumble across but when it comes down battle axes versus M16's I am thinking the troll army is heading for a painful lesson in modern technology.

The Golden Compass - Admitadely I have not read the books so I don't know the rest of the story-line but I can see hints in the movie that their government/army will be trying to use the portal to invade other worlds (perhaps our own?).  Here its somewhat more sensible they have some magic and technology (rifles, dirigibles) but still hard to see this group effectively conquering any reasonable areas.

Plan 9 - Yes the classic, a few zombies, really, that's it, that's your plan?

So my question to you: What's your favorite movie where their is some pending invasion of earth by a group looking to get its butt kicked?

Signs...they come to the Earth which is covered with more water than land yet that is their Achilles Heal.  That friggin movie bugs me on so many levels.

Actually its quite the opposite.
The Magistirum want to stay as far away from those worlds as possible. Its not magic, it's 'dust'.

I think I should re-read those books.

Phantom Force - a small group of ancient warriors (guys who apparently couldn't get a job with the WWF) are going to take over the world.  I mean, there's about 6 of them.  A group of commandos manages to kill at least one or two of them.  I sort of thing the combined militaries of the entire world could maybe manage the other 4.  Heck, you could just dump a truckload of cement on them and they'd pretty much be stuck;  it's not like they're got super powers or anything.

The champion is The War Of The Worlds where these fighting machines come to Earth and get their butts kicked............... by germs.  :teddyr:

TARGET EARTH - Robots from Venus invade the Earth and are twarted by sound waves that crack their cathode ray tubed eyes.


(http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w234/tcrine_photos/target-earth-robot.jpg)

Not to mention kidnapping beings that can harm them by spitting, sweating or urinating on them.

Mars Attacks, where the Martians are essentially done in by....Slim Whitman! Although some take a pretty good beating from Jim Brown.


(http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f227/xXEmryXx/MarsAttacks2.jpg)


(http://i152.photobucket.com/albums/s169/zapvon/slimwhitmanjpg.jpg)

Took the words right outta' my mouth with that one, Trev.  The common cold killed em'.

Also of special notice is the old 60's era H.G. Wells classic First Men In The Moon, where the ant-like race of "Selenites" is wiped out by the same thing when the human explorers enter their hive deep inside the moon and contaminate them.

Then there's the Edward L. Cahn epic, Invisible Invaders from 1958.  An invisible race of aliens living on the moon inhabit the bodies of the dead, creating an army of zombies that march forth in an effort to conquer the word. 

Their downfall? Sound waves amplified at high frequency and volume. It effectively exorcises the aliens from the dead bodies and kills them.  Their mothership explodes when hit with these rays from a gun wielded by 50's B-Movie hero John Agar.

Fun stuff!

Godzilla vs. Monster Zero - The aliens from Planet X are defeated by a bumbling inventor's new personal alarm.

I agree with Trevor.

Aliens from another planet, with a totally different physiology from humans. In reality they should be impervious from germs and us from theirs. But speaking of The War Of The Worlds; I never watched the remake because the story line just didn't make sense. Tripods coming out of no-where was just one thing that didn't make sense. Then theirs the tripods themselves. In H.G. Wells original story which took place in a pre-WWI world where the military was pretty primitive, they would be devastating. But, against a modern army they wouldn't last long enough to die from germs. An F-16 with some PGM's would take them out in no time. Or just plant a bunch of IEDs in their path and detonate them as the tripods pass by. BOOM! And down come the tripods.

I missed the reason why the tripods were buried under the earth.  Did some alien race come and plant them there, but then decide to invade us later?  Why didn't they just do it then?

I dunno, I have to admit I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention.   :teddyr:

Viruses yes, because they have to dock with a cell, but not bacteria or fungi. They just eat and multiply and make toxins.

I never saw the whole movie, but from reading the reviews I don't think it was ever explained in the movie. My view was that instead of the setting the movie in modern times, it would have been more effective to use the original H.G. Wells timeframe which was pre-WWI. And, of course, having the aliens come from outer space.

I was thinking about this when reading information about the new Harry Potter movies. The story includes dark wizards invading the normal world.  Well, even with their powerful spells, the armies of the world still outnumber them.  And a solder can fire off several rounds while a wizard is casting a spell.

A fight might go something like this
Wizard lifts wand to cast spell. "Abra-cad...
Military figther using a gun *BANG**BANG*BANG*

Military fighter is the deadliest warrior.

Underestimating the primitive humans has been a staple (or perhaps a cliche) of science fiction literature for a long time. We could probably come up with a huge list of books and short stories in which an advanced alien race shows up, often in the process of expanding their empire, and finds humanity to be an anomaly in a galaxy of relatively docile, cautious and conscientious beings, who are slow to change and accept authority readily when it's imposed on them. And we proceed to shock and appall them with what humans are capable of, and their nice, stable alien order gets turned on its ear.

But as standard a plot as that is, those stories are usually a lot of fun to read. Harry Turtledove's Worldwar and Colonization series probably took the idea the furthest. It was also well done by Niven and Pournelle in Footfall.

For an older book that does a nice job with the theme, I'd recommend Pandora's Planet, by Christopher Anvil. I like that one because humans gladly join the invaders' empire, then totally wreck it just by doing what we do. The main idea there is that the aliens aren't as smart as us, but they developed space travel precisely because they weren't full of ideas. It gave them greater focus. When somebody came up with a good idea, everybody recognized it and supported it. Then they find a race that is just full of ideas, quite adept at pitching those ideas, good or bad, and constantly competing with each other. Humanity turned out to be the bad guys, destroying the perfect society of those poor, naive invaders from space.

In the original book, the aliens were rocketed to earth by some sort of cannon, and they actually constructed the tripods on site. 

Also, Tron: Legacy does this.  The bad guy in the film is planning to invade the "real world".  With one ship and maybe a couple thousand guys, at least that's all we see.

Another one is "the energy being" in Horror Express who kills many people by sucking their brains dry and then gets killed by....... an exploding train.  :teddyr:

Now there's a title I haven't heard in a while. And talk about irony...the mnster had all those nice brains for lunch and then had his dining experience ruined by a trainwreck. I tell ya' some monsters get all the luck...

 :teddyr: :teddyr:

Go to Submitted Reader Reviews and you'll find my review of it.  :smile:

 :teddyr: :teddyr:


Will do.

In the meantime, another monstrous menace that was cut down to size were the Neon Maniacs.  Horrible creatures that appeared unstoppable, until one of them was hit with water, only to melt away.   

Now you know why Hollywood is into making remakes. When the do come up with an original script its so dumb as to defy logic.

The same in the Day of the Triffids.  However, if I remember correctly, in that case of the Triffids it was salt water that was their undoing.

You are correct, sir! Salt water killed our dear Triffids and the day was saved as the path for another corny B-movie was cleared, and Hollywood made a mint off of em'!   :smile:

And the great Ted Moore BSC - South Africa's first Oscar winner - did the photography. :smile:

Saltwater?  Really?  The book ending is much better - characters just leave, pretty open ended...  But in the book people are the main bad guys not plants.  Reccomended by the way.

Hmm. never knew there was a book.  Plant life also got the best of the human race in perhaps one of the most ridiculous movies ever, The Navy vs. The Night Monsters, where we were invaded by a marching army of, if you can believe it, tree trunks!  Now here was a movie.

Also in the book the Triffids aren't Killer Veggies form Outer Space. They were created by humans for their tasty oil production. They escape from the Triffid farms when most of mankind goes blind from the meteor shower.

The book is great. It was adapted fairly faithfully first as a BBC radio serial, and then as a BBC tv mini-series.

And then  we have our good old friend, The Blob.  A nice little story about a glob of cosmic grape jelly that winds up on Earth, having lunch with the locals until he winds up getting frozen by a fire extinguisher.

As a fan of Horror Express, I must point out the creature only lived by transferring it's being from host body to host body. When it went over the cliff, no time or suitable host to transfer to.

Well, in all fairness IF they had some sort of incredibly advanced technology and power sources that were vastyl superior to our current tech they might have done it. I mean, imagine what military tech C2000 could have done to the worlds militaries of C1900.

Of course if they could get their computer world tech to work in the real world, the heoir needed to be "importing" their power technology, now.

Of course, on the opposite end of the spectrum we have that badass Ro-Man from ROBOT MONSTER. He's often mocked, but he did manage to wipe out Earth's entire civilization (except one annoying group) armed only with some stock footage and a bubble machine.

On the other hand, Ro-Man also had a weakness for LOVE.

Has anybody mentioned the Psychlos from Battlefield Earth, with an atmosphere that explodes when exposed to radiation?

Yeah...but... when Ro-Man turned into a total soliloquyin' wuss Great Guidance Ro-Man was able to destroy Ro-Man, the remaining humans, and the whole stinking planet with some lighting bolt finger zaps all the way from Planet Ro-Man. Why is this not in the plan?

And I must point out that the energy being is an alien which does get its butt kicked by something on earth: in this case, that train.

Beulah the Carrot Monster had a pretty p**spoor plan in IT CONQUERED THE WORLD: take over the whole planet with the aid of Lee Van Cleef, a handful mind-control bat creatures with a short shelf life, and a cave.

Defeated by Beverly Garland calling him 'ugly' and a few goofy army men rather easily knocking him over.

Stock footage and a bubble machine, lmao  :bouncegiggle:

Robot Monster, how could I forget this one? Another one of the Bronson Canyon budget aliens that was a real hoot-a gorilla with a diving helmet and boots and a Calcinator Ray.   Ya' just gotta' love the way he threatened eveybody by walking up and down the hill and shaking his fist after he delivered his threats.  This one graces my DVD collection.

A bit off the topic, but I like that opening shot of all the classic 50's era comic books laying in a pile. I wonder if those were real or just one-sheets drawn for the opening graphics. Whatever they were, I love the classic artwork.

You guys rock, there's tons of these I had never seen or even thought about.  I love the picture of the "robot" from the 50's flick.  Back then a guy in a cardboard box spraypainted silver with some old duct-work for arms could make a mint playing a "robot".
 
Interesting thing about the "War of the worlds". Even when NASA sent astronauts into outer space in the '60-70's when they returned they immediately put them into a giant isolation chamber with independent air-supply and watched them for a month or so for signs of death.  Keep in mind the astronauts typically just went straight up, maybe to the moon, and then came back.  They never encountered any biological specimens/aliens but NASA was scared to death they would come back with some variant space-disease that would wipe out the world so they held them in isolation for a while.  The surprising thing is that in alien movies (War of worlds-"WOW" is biggest offender) the aliens can't figure out how to do the same thing.  When the book WOW was written there was no way to effectively do biological seperation so this totally made sense. Throughout human history war is followed by disease as armies marched through different lands, ate different foods, slept with different prostitutes, and then went home to spread either black plague (middle ages), Cortez bringing small-pox to the new world, or 1913 Spanish Flu (WW1), etc.  Even though it is unlikely for disease to be able to transmit from human to alien because of different species it is possible that some  bacteria/micro-organism which has no impact on one or the other to be devastating.  If aliens did land on earth and they are intelligent enough to master long-distance space travel its a safe bet they will be intelligent enough to breathe their own air-supply and keep their suits on.

There's a theory ROBOT MONSTER is purposely a surreal mess because it is supposed to represent the fevered dream of a kid who's imagination is fueled by the horror and sci-fi comics like the ones seen in the titles.

That's one theory, at least!  :teddyr:

The Brain From Planet Arous and Godzilla: Final Wars comes to mind.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong (I haven't seen the film in about 20 years), but don't the Triffids (Day of the Triffids) die from contact with salt water? And weren't they situated around a sleepy little ocean-side town to begin with?  :bouncegiggle:

If you had a couple thousand guys and tried to conquer the world of 1900, you would lose HORRIBLY.  Hell, you couldn't even do it in 1632.  Biggest thing is your tech would start to break down and you wouldn't be able to maintain it.  You also would have no fuel sources. 

It's not quite the same thing anyway - there's nothing in the Tronverse that's going to beat out the US Air Force, for example.  They really don't have any tech that seems much better than ours (military wise), just different.

Speaking of which there is actually a quasi historical example of this when we see the fight of the Native Americans against the US Cavalry.  Although there was some modern weapons they obtained, they were still largely stone age tech and effectively fought for many, many years.  I think the problem is people tend to underestimate people and not understand that human beings tend to find things to use effectively when an impetus is given.  A modern army may seem unstoppable but when the choice is ...or death humans tend to start thinking on ways to avoid that outcome.  Historically, we also had a deeper understanding of things far sooner then thought though practical application was sometimes lacking.  I mean even Rome was on the verge of the steam age.  We tend to forget our forefathers were more imaginative then we give them credit for and far more advanced in some cases then we expect or think. 

While there is some conjecture, its is generally believed that the plague was spread by rats and infected fleas via trading ships that had picked them up in the Middle east and transported them to Europe.


Actually, it was the other way around. Earliest examples of small pox in the Old World is found in Egyptian mummies from 3000 years ago. Small pox was prevalent in Europe well before Chris and the boys sailed west.



You're probely right about this one. Its believed that the flu actually originated in the US and was transported by American soldiers heading to Europe to fight in WWI.

Don't follow this point as Cortez was a Spaniard bringing small pox to the New World as stated.  Spaniard infected Aztecs.  Rather then Cortez bringing small pox from the New World, which the comment would have corrected?  Sorry, not trying to be an ass.  Just seems the point is confused. 

Actually, there were three versions of H. G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" in 2005. There was the theatrical version starring Tom Cruise and directed by Stephen Spielberg. Then there were two versions that went straight to video. One starring C. Thomas Howell and directed by David Mitchell List, which was also set in the modern day. But, the second video version starring Anthony Piana and directed by Timothy Hines was set before World War I,, or the same time frame as the book. Of course, each of the films being regarded as being worst than the one before it.

actually i think the Xillians might have won had they been able to kidnap godzilla when they grabbed the rest of the monsters.
Thankfully he was trapped in the ice, and subsequently kills GINO

True enough on some points. What I'm getting at is that war is another form of human interaction and it is one of the relatively few where there are truly massive numbers of people traveling great distances (soldiers, refugees, etc.).  The small pox example is meant to be the other way around the Europeans already had small-pox and spread it to the relatively less exposed native Americans.  As for the plague you have to give at least a little credit to the crusades for bringing Europe and middle east into closer contact. 

Good point.  I saw this one recently (the Harry Potter first half of the final) and I just kept trying to figure out what the heck is wrong with this wizarding world.  They have this ominous ministry of magic but the seem to have no established means of keeping it from being overtaken pretty easily.  They have no real army or semblalance of a police force.  I guess they just figure whenever McUgly shows up some kid with a destiny will be the one to take him out.  From what I can gather from my wife (who has read the books) the govt. of England knows the ministry of magic exists and knows about the wizarding world (at least some about it) so as I'm watching this movie I find myself wondering how many regular civilians would have to die before the British (and probably all of NATO) army would get involved?  The wizards are constantly shown just running around killing people and destroying bridges etc. and everyone just kind of takes it.  Granted the wizards have some nasty tricks and can spew death from a wand (which we also know they can miss as you constantly see them "dodging" the spells) but you don't ever get a sense that there are very many of them so I agree that shear numbers would avail humans.

You're right. That was a mistake on my part. No offense taken. And it wasn't just small pox that was devastating. Kid diseases like measles also played havoc with native Americans.  

Very true, disease interaction has killed many.  Even Europeans had trouble with tropical diseases upon conquest of certain areas.  A fitting tribute perhaps to attempting to rule everything.  Nah, sadly I can't take a too negative slide on it no matter how I feel as the world we live in would not be without European conquest and exploration. 

Tron Legacy contained the most groan-inducing example:

Seems objects from the computer world or whereever wouldn't exist, in the sense of tranferring to our world. Meaning the villains would be devoid of any weaponry or technology. What would they conquer Earth with? Their fists?

If you accept the premise that the digital entities in tron legacy could create a system to turn a human being into a data being in the net and that they could then turn a data entity into a physically functioning human being then it's not hard to believe they could make their advanced energy weapons, power sources, engines, etc. work in the real world.

That was part of the movie premise. Now personally I think the plot in the tron 2.0 FPS computer game, where people in the real world wanted to use the computer world to conquer the real world thru massive computer manipulation was better, but they didn;t use that plot, sadly.

As I said, if they could make their power sources real, I'd be importing them into the real world to solve a lot of problems since they appeared to be clean, efficient, non polluting, etc.