"Once upon a time, aliens were easy. They wanted to kill us. Okay, kill us and take over our awesome, green, water-filled planet. (Think Independence Day or War of the Worlds.) Occasionally, as in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, they hijacked our minds and bodies instead of murdering us. Still, we humans were only ever a minor impediment - in many of the movies a wild, germ-ridden, victorious one."
"To the aliens, we didn't really matter as a species. We were small, weak, easily slaughtered, impractical to enslave. Their goal was the Earth, whose resources they would presumably extract for their own selfish use, either carting everything away into space or sticking around and using them up until the next Earth-like orb beckoned. It was just dumb luck that we evolved into intelligence now, in time to resist them, instead of 10,000 years too late."
"Those were simple aliens for simpler times. It felt natural to imagine that if aliens existed, and if they traveled halfway across the galaxy to reach us, it was only because they wanted what we possessed. Anyone could understand that with a single glimpse of a slimy, non-humanoid carapace. No backstory or character development necessary! Let's get to blowing shit up!"
Earlier science fiction presented aliens primarily as resource-driven invaders intent on killing or subjugating humanity to seize Earth’s resources. Such invaders often treated humans as insignificant obstacles rather than beings worth engaging. Alternative portrayals assign different motives: Predators hunt exceptional humans for sport, implying post-scarcity societies that pursue leisure; They Live features aliens who mimic and enjoy elite human privileges while manipulating the masses; Mars Attacks! satirizes invasion tropes. These variations assign specific cultural or economic rationales to extraterrestrial behavior, turning conquest narratives into commentary on consumption, class, and leisure.
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