They're aliens. Get over it.

The BBQ Pit
41

Bad analogy. That Vito Corleone is in the Mafia is the only reasonable conclusion, based on both the events of the movie, and what we know about the real world. In the case of Signs, characters made wild assumptions about a set of bizarre events that suddenly appeared in the world, events that could have several different explanations.

How the Hell do you know what aliens look like? Are we using pop culture images for our assessments of scientific plausibility now? “Hovering ships created from advanced technology” is still another assumption on your part.

42

Now that I think of it, I could make up a fairly good science fiction explanation for anything seemingly illogical about the aliens in Signs. But it’s all left unexplained, which is fine since the movie isn’t actually about the aliens. If they were the central characters, I’d want a lot more explanation.

43

Just out of curiosity…if they weren’t aliens, then what were they?

44

Go. And, because every Signs thread needs this link in it, The movie "Signs" in four easy steps..

45

Well, obviously, if you hover over a rice paddy, at best, if you drop something, you’ll lose it in the water, and if you actually get out, you’ll sink up to your… well, I guess that depends on whether you’re E.T. sized or Close Encounters-sized, doesn’t it? Anyways, a big muddy mess.

As for orange orchards, it takes a considerable amount out of your impressive arrival if you get stuck in the branches.

46

Shyamalan’s films (with the exception of teh 6th sense, which remains logical all the way around) have two levels. The first level is the simple plot: The aliens attack (for no apparent reason) and are repulsed by water.

This is nonsensical, and is probably a homage to alien films from the 1950’s onward (ID4 being only a single example), where the aliens attack with low-to-no tech weapons and sucky tactics and are defeated by some unlikely and seemingly innocuous agent. We’ll still accept such non-logic in lesser action sci-fi/fantasy films.

The other level, and this is where Shymalan is especially talented, is in the emotions of his characters. The folks in the films really do act and react like real people would in such a nightmarish (and unlikely) situation. (This is doubly true for Unbreakable). This tension, in turn, is passed back to the audience, making the situations scary and enjoyable.

The problem comes with reconcilling the illogical first “plot” level with the realistic second “emotional” level. I can do it with no problem. Other folks can’t. I think that of Mel and co were wisecracking and jumping out of windows to find a fire truck, if it were dumb all around, Signs would be much less despised. It’s not about turning your brain off, so much as turning your left brain off. It’s a unique exercise in films, as far as I can tell.

47

Probably as far back as War of the Worlds, where the Martians perished because of Earth diseases to which they had no immunity. Of course, the 1950’s was the Golden Era of defeating aliens with unlikely household items such as fire extinguishers, but I think “water” would have annoyed most people back then. Hell, it was stupid on Alien Nation, and at least that was * salt * water.
I think aliens would be a lot more likely to succumb to lead when propelled by sufficient chemical energy, but what do I know? For some reason, that hardly ever works.

As for ID4, they could have made the virus thing a lot more reasonable if they put in a line or two of dialog about having studied the computer system from the captured alien ship for 40 years and the aliens being so arrogant that they didn’t even have a security system.

48

Actually, water was used in Day of the Triffids to kill the evil alien plants. And that was in 1962. As a matter of fact, I think that’s the earliest movie I know about where water kills the aliens. Can anyone top it?

49

The Wizard of Oz, of course. (And yes, the Witch isn’t an alien, but it’s equally improbable that she’d never encounter water.)

50

We don’t know that! Is it ever specifically stated that she isn’t an alien? Is it impossible that she is an alien? You’re just assuming she’s not an alien!

[sub]Oh, and The Wizard of Oz is disqualified since the witch isn’t an alien.[/sub]

51

I liked Signs. I don’t think the aliens are aliens. I think the movie can be perfectly explained in terms of supernatural, not science fictional, events. This explanation makes the movie even more enjoyable for me. Of course, no one is forced to agree with my explanation or my opinions, just as I’m not forced to agree with theirs. If you don’t like the idea that the aliens aren’t really aliens… well, I could tell you exactly how little I care, but I don’t know how to do mathematical notation in vB code.

Oh, and for the record, Shyamalan is far from the first person to conflate UFOs with religious experiences. It’s a big part of the entire UFO-crank subculture. Here’s a cite for all y’all who are unfamiliar with the farther reaches of irrational science. I think it’s pretty damned cool that someone finally made a movie out of this wierdness.

52

Baldwin, I am curious to hear you elaborate on why you think it was unreasonable for the viewer to assume that the creatures were aliens. As you pointed out, the author of a work is “God” with respect to the universe created in that work. Therefore, the fundamental tools we use to discover what is “true” in these universes should be based on psychology, not “scientific plausibility”. That is, we should look at what the author has communicated to us, together with the cultural context within which the author is producing the work. Then we should apply our understanding of what sort of intentions would generally be expressed by the features we see in this work.

The fact that the creatures have many features associated with aliens in popular culture is therefore very relevant if we want to infer Shyamalan’s intent. Do you accept that, from the the movie alone, we could at least conclude that Shyamalan wants the viewers to believe that they are aliens? The creatures were widely held to be aliens by viewers (as a google search for online discussions of the film shows), so if Shyamalan did not intend this, it would indicate a real failure on his part to get across whatever he did intend. Assuming some basic competance on Shyamalan’s part, you could only conclude that Shyamalan intended to deceive the viewer into believing that they were aliens, when they really were not, just as Shyamalan wanted to decieve the viewer into believing that Bruce Willis’s character was alive in most of Sixth Sense.

So, do you agree that the only conclusions one could draw from the movie is that either (1) they are aliens, or (2) we are supposed to think they are aliens? Did you have any evidence from the film for option (2), or were you just remaining agnostic because you didn’t see overwhelming evidence for either (1) or (2)?

53

Well, that was salt water, too. But I was under the impression that both the triffids and the fireballs that made everyone blind were man-made weapons deployed by the then-extant military superpowers.

Ergo (assuming I’m correct about the triffids), they weren’t aliens.

The Wicked Witch of the West? Why am I expected to believe that Oz is on this planet? She’s got a better chance of being an alien than the triffids.

54

Obviously, I can’t answer for Baldwin, but the whole point hinges on a different question… what’s an “alien”?

It’s certainly reasonable to assume that the creatures are aliens in the strict sense-- they are not native to this world; their origin is elsewhere, and clearly it is a fundamentally different environment; they are not equipped to survive long in our world.

Most posters who agree with the OP assume the Sci-Fi movie sort of alien invader from another planet. Spaceships, nefarious intent and a simplistic plan of conquest or exploitation.

I think Baldwin is responding to the assertion that the creatures must be the second type of alien, when the story only requires them to be the first type.

55

Heh, good point. If we aren’t jerkified, maybe we’re pets!

We’ll make great pets, we’ll make great pets…

56

I expect that you are interpreting Baldwin correctly. I am interpreting him in the same way. When I used the word “alien” in my argument, I was using it in your second sense. I don’t think that this argument is just a disagreement about semantics, at least not yet.

57

My, aren’t you the smug little shit.

I don’t think anything about my post suggested I was delivering some new and insightful view on the movie. I was just going with the flow of the thread. And if you don’t like shopworn bits about various silly parts of movies, you won’t like it around here much. God help you if someone mentions “parsecs” and “Kessell Run” in the same sentence…

When come back, remove stick from ass.

58

Tyrrell – sorry, I lost track of this thread for a while. Also, I’ve been unnecessarily harsh towards people who leapt to the “aliens” conclusion when they were watching Signs.

My point is this: if we were presented, in real life, with the series of observed phenomena seen in Signs (crop circles inexplicably appearing in vast numbers, half-seen figures, bright objects suspended over cities, etc.) it would be unreasonable to pick extraterrestrial visitors as the most likely explanation.

However, people watching Signs tend to make that very assumption, because of a pop-culture context that includes movies. Apparently Shyamalan himself has said that they’re aliens, so that’s that (except for the aforementioned ambiguity in the word “alien” itself). However, that’s knowledge not communicated by the film itself. The information we do have is so ambiguous and sketchy that, first, there’s no logical basis for assuming they’re aliens except for prior experience with movies, and second, if we do assume they’re aliens, it’s the very lack of detailed information that makes their actions merely inexplicable rather than intrinsically implausible.

This is why I’d like to corner Shyamalan and see if he had any backstory for the aliens in his mind, even if it wasn’t presented in the film. As I said, a semi-competent science fiction writer (yours truly) could come up with explanations for all the odd goings-on; it’s just not necessary to the story.

As somebody said, Shyamalan seems to be, in all his movies, using a unique combination of a B-movie plot with A-movie characterization: believable human beings trying to deal with the possibly absurd reality with which they’re presented. (The current movie The Village, discussed at great length in Cafe Society, goes beyond the B-movie to use a “twist” that could have come straight out of a Twilight Zone episode.)

It’s an interesting technique, and so far it works for me, but I’d like to see him collaborate with somebody who could give him a really smart, original plot to work with.

59

If you’re wedded to the space alien idea, I’ve always thought the most plausible explanation is that the ships came here looking for slaves. And the aliens we see are not the aliens who own and operate the ships, they’re another slave species. Perhaps specifically chosen for this mission because of their vulnerablity to water: since the enviroment is so dangerous for them, they’re more likely to return to their slave ships than try to escape into the wilds of Earth.

60

Baldwin, thanks for the reply.

Ah, this to me is a very different situation. The “logic” I use to deduce what is going on in a work of fiction is very different from what I use in real life. If I see a man who appears to levitate in real life, I will assume that it is a trick, but if I see the same thing in a work of fiction, I will not assume that.

I suppose where we disagree is that I believe that the pop-cultural context of the movie is a very sound basis for this assumption. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the cultural and psychological* context of the movie should be the basis for all of our beliefs about what is happening in it. For example, if we want to use reasoning based on scientific plausibility to understand what is happening, we must be able to show that the author would have felt sufficiently constrained by scientific plausibility while crafting the plot. Shyamalan might feel a differant amount of constraint than, say, J.R.R. Tolkien, and David Lynch might feel no such constraint at all.

  • By “psychological”, I mean our understanding of what Shyamalan’s state of mind was when he created these films.