Who doesn’t love aliens in films? That’s meant to be a rhetorical question, because there should only be one answer to that question. Despite the recent Independence Day: Resurgence being a little mediocre and underwhelming the box office world is still fascinated with a potential man and alien meet up and the possibilities that it could lead to. Over the years we’ve seen everything from the straight up wipe out the planet type film like the Independence Day films, to more subtle invasion plots like Signs and lastly the one where it turns out the aliens were just trying to be friends all along, like most of the classic films E.T. and Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind.
And its those last two in particular that I wanted to reference because those films also represented some of the biggest films to come from Steven Spielberg and his production company Amblin Entertainment. There was a time when they were considered the ultimate studio for alien movies – both the friendly and invasion types. While Amblin’s approach to alien films was a little more family friendly than most of the films we get these days, they were still successful at building the fear and tension which often is removed from some of these more action oriented films. Spielberg did stellar work in 2005’s War of the Worlds – the last time the studio covered the alien movie genre – as it was able to capture the real fear of an alien threat without the need for big action heroics, even if the end was a little anti-climatic.
You can catch an incredible scene from it below:
And the good news is that Amblin is looking to get back into the genre with the production of a new film The Fall, based off a script by Pete Bridges. The story will apparently take place in the midst of an alien invasion and follows a freshly divorced couple who must survive a dangerous real-time journey on foot from downtown Atlanta to the suburbs, where their young children are home alone. To be honest, that sounds incredibly similar to the aforementioned War of The Worlds. Let’s hope that is where the similarity ends and that the script has a lot more exciting stuff waiting for us. The story certainly has an Amblin-esque take though, in not being too focused on the action oriented aspects of the conflict.
There is no word on whether Spielberg is choosing to direct this movie himself or simply just going to act as a producer and get someone else to step into the director’s chair. Either way, I’m excited for this film now and hopeful that it can keep the studios great track record of alien films going.
Last Updated: July 11, 2016
