This week we exploded Sci-Fi in class. The screening for this week was Aliens (1986) directed by James Cameron, which to me was more of action than anything else. The only thing that made it Sci-Fi was probably it took place in outer space and the protagonist, Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver, was asleep for more than 50 over years. Oh and of course, the existence of Aliens.

The filmed had very strong military themes. The fact that they had the whole hierarchy of military ranks and they address each other by their ranks instead of appointment (which is how it is normally in real life), points in the direction that it is very much a war film. The way the characters prepped for their mission to exterminate the aliens, and not forgetting the weak leader who let the team into their deaths who was soon overshadowed and taken over by a Corporal (the next in command), all just seemed to familiar to that of a war film, with just the twitch of changing the opposing force to extraterrestrial beings.

However, Hollywood being Hollywood, we see various plot lines over arching each other, the story of mum and daughter, man and woman, and of course the final battle between both queen alien and the “robot” Ripley as she maneuvers a hydraulic unit to fight against the queen alien. Personally, I thought that scene was redundant, and it made the film a little draggy.

During the second half of the week with our practical session, we had a in-class debate if Aliens was a Sci-Fi film or not. We had an interesting discussion with different genre tropes tossed into the mixed to show that Aliens is more than just a Sci-Fi film, but it was countered with someone saying that Sci-Fi takes different elements of various genres and putting it into a “futuristic” context with science and technology themes to bring it into a Sci-Fi world. I thought that was quite a strong statement, and it somewhat neutralised the other debate team’s argument in every aspect. In Singapore we have this term, “win liao lor”, and that’s pretty much how the other debate team felt, putting up the white flag, and argued that genre was just created by the studios to sell films as a marketing strategy and it actually doesn’t exist.

The saying about Sci-Fi taking different elements from other genres and putting into a Sci-Fi dimension could basically work for other genres too. Like horror, we could just take a romantic love story, but instead of a man and woman love, we could have ghost and woman relationship and all sorts of creepy stuff in the way to make it a horror film. It is well known that artistes and writers are known to be thieves, “stealing” ideas from one another and making it their own, that’s where art inspires more art and I guess it’s an ever changing form.