In 1817, mary shelley finished her horror novel Frankenstein (also translated as Frankenstein). This novel was officially published in 1818. In the novel, a scientist named Frankenstein created a monster from a patchwork of corpses. The monster was so miserable and out of control that he finally set himself on fire and died. Frankenstein is not only a Gothic horror novel, but also regarded as the first science fiction novel in the modern sense. One hundred years later, this novel has been adapted into movies again and again, especially the 1931 version of Frankenstein, which can be said to be the pioneer of American horror movies.
There are four versions of Frankenstein, namely, Edison’s Frankenstein (1910), Frankenstein (1931), Frankenstein (1970) and Frankenstein in mary shelley (1994). There are many movies named Frankenstein, far more than these four.
The story of Frankenstein spread later, and in many places "Frankenstein" was taken as the name of the monster. In fact, in the original novel, "Frankenstein" is the name of the scientist who created the monster. In addition, in many later films, the scientist revived the monster by electric shock, which was actually added to the film later. In the original novel, there is no mention of Frankenstein’s specific method to revive this monster. Even so, the spiritual core of Frankenstein has not changed from the novel to the film, which implies people’s fear of science and technology since the 19th century. The monster created by Frankenstein, a scientist, can be said to represent and condense the fear of human beings for the growing development of science and technology.
In the movie Frankenstein, Frankenstein, a scientist, revived the monster made up of corpses by electric shock.
Godzilla: Fear of technological power and the unknown world.
In 1954, Godzilla, the originator of Japanese monster movies, was born. This film is closely related to a nuclear accident that year. On March 1, 1954, the United States conducted a hydrogen bomb test under the bikini atoll in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean. At that time, hundreds of Japanese fishing boats were contaminated by radioactive nuclear, which caused a panic in Japan at that time. Moreover, in 1945, not far away, Japan suffered a nuclear attack from the United States, and two atomic bombs exploded in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. It can be said that no country in the world has such a deep-rooted fear of nuclear power as Japan. Just as Frankenstein’s monster represents people’s fear of science and technology, Godzilla’s monster image clearly represents Japan’s fear of nuclear power and nuclear attack. The original Godzilla was designed as a monster who wantonly destroyed the city, and its way of destroying the city was exactly the same as that of the atomic bomb. The three destructive ways of the atomic bomb-light radiation, thermal radiation and shock wave-are all known to Godzilla, a monster. Of course, such a setting does not conform to the law of conservation of energy. Godzilla, as a biological form, can’t spit out so much energy at a time if you eat more things.
The earliest film poster of Godzilla (1954), Godzilla destroyed the city in a way similar to the atomic bomb.
In the history of Japanese movies, films about Godzilla have been shot again and again, and each Godzilla has its own specific parameters such as size and weight. Moreover, Godzilla has been growing and upgrading, and even various monsters such as Kidola, Mosla and Raton have been derived, making the whole Godzilla universe. In these films, the relationship between Godzilla and human beings gradually changed from confrontation to cooperation, and even became the guardian of human civilization.
Poster of the Japanese film Godzilla: The Big Monster Attacks (2001), in which Godzilla fights to protect the monsters released by humans and aliens.
There are currently two Hollywood versions of Godzilla, one is Godzilla directed by roland emmerich (1998), and the other is Godzilla co-produced by Legendary Pictures and Warner (2014). Although the latter Godzilla is ambitious, it has a mediocre reputation, and its sequel Godzilla 2, The King of Monsters (2019), will be released at the end of May. Godzilla in Japanese movies is mostly a real costume performance, and the cities destroyed by Godzilla are mostly built with miniature models. There are many Japanese movies in this series, but in terms of visual effects, it is completely incomparable with the movies made by Hollywood with heavy CG special effects. Of course, for fans of Godzilla movies, they may think that Japanese Godzilla movies are the most authentic. The Japanese Dongbao Film Company, which created Godzilla, was very angry with roland emmerich’s version of Godzilla, and even refused to accept that Godzilla in this film was a member of the Godzilla family.
Roland emmerich’s version of Godzilla (1998)
From a biological point of view, all giant monsters like Godzilla can’t stand scrutiny. However, all living things on earth, whether normal evolution or gene mutation, must adapt to the gravity of the earth in terms of body shape. Do an easy-to-understand mathematical calculation to double the length of a creature, then its stress area (the size of its sole) will be four times and its weight will be eight times. That is to say, the stress area of living things increases in a square number, while the weight of living things increases in a square number. So ants’ legs can be so slender, and elephants’ legs must be thick enough to support the whole body. The thickness here is not only the absolute thickness, but also the proportion relative to the body shape. According to this theory, it is impossible for a monster like Godzilla to survive on the earth. With such a huge figure, I’m afraid my legs must be as thick as my body to stand. In the same way, we can know that a monster like King Kong is impossible to appear on the earth. Interestingly, the original novel Equatorial bwana devil of King Kong was written in the 19th century, when people didn’t know much about gorillas in the jungle. The author himself did not imagine a monster like King Kong based on gorillas, but he thought that gorillas in the jungle would really grow as big as King Kong.
In the Hollywood version of Godzilla in 2014, Muto, the monster who confronts Godzilla at the end of the film, has an unreasonable body design, and his slender limbs are unlikely to support the weight of a huge body.
In addition, according to the current understanding of the evolution of life, all creatures on the earth are homologous in the evolutionary tree, so all large animals with legs are four limbs, or four legs, or two legs with two wings. According to this theory, it is impossible for a creature with two wings and four legs, such as the flying horse or unicorn in Little Marbury, to appear on the earth. Four legs plus two wings make six limbs. Like the monster that crawled out of the ground in Kong: Skull Island (2017), it only has two legs and a tail, which is also impossible to appear on the earth.
The monster in Kong: Skull Island (2017), a creature with only two limbs and a tail, is unlikely to appear on the earth.
Fear is human instinct. According to Darwin’s theory of evolution, it is impossible for a species without fear to survive and reproduce in the biological world. I don’t know what fear is, but it has long been wiped out by natural enemies. Creating a monster that doesn’t exist may be the simplest and most direct way for people to express their fear. Long before the film was born, people had the cultural origin of creating monsters or monsters. For example, people who lived in the Middle Ages were afraid of hell, so they described it as a terrible world ruled by monsters.
The image of ghosts in medieval church murals
Although science has made the world more and more prosperous, fear, which is rooted in human instinct, still exists. Monster movies have become a new medium to express fear and vent anxiety in our time. Frankenstein conveys the fear of the rapid development of science and technology, Godzilla conveys the fear of nuclear power in Japan, Jurassic Park and Resident Evil convey the fear of biotechnology, and The Monster of Hanjiang River conveys the fear of American forces intervening in its own country. These fears have a clear object of fear. In addition, there is another kind of fear that comes from our fear of the unknown world. King Kong represents the fear of unknown areas deep in the jungle, Jaws and Extreme Cold represent the fear of the ocean and the deep-sea world, and Alien, Starfleet and Alien Awakening represent the fear of outer space. Fear is not terrible. "The only thing worth fearing in this world is fear itself". There is no shame in expressing fear. The first step to overcome fear is to express this fear first.
"Godzilla 2: The King of Monsters" poster, monsters can be regarded as the condensation and expression of human fear.
Aliens: Biological Instinct, Sexual Anxiety and Creator
"Big is strong", which is a kind of psychology that we can easily confuse. Monsters such as Godzilla, dinosaurs and King Kong correspond to the viewer’s psychology. In fact, in terms of combat effectiveness, Godzilla, dinosaurs and King Kong are probably far less than the micro-life form of bacteria or the quasi-life form of viruses. Monsters that don’t win by size and are equally fascinating are the first choice.
I first saw a movie like Alien many years ago. At that time, I didn’t understand at all why Americans like to engage in these sticky and disgusting things. In fact, if you think about it carefully, this kind of nausea is not directly disgusting with real things, but a kind of film culture and film routine. This kind of films often provoke people’s biological instinct and psychological level by creating a certain picture or form, thus creating a certain pleasure of watching movies. From the first Alien in 1979 to Alien Prequel 2: Contract in 2017, the Alien Universe is first of all a film series that has done enough articles on the instinctive level. Bloody, violent, biological plasma and mucus, sparse and sticky like childbirth, all follow the path of stimulating people’s instinct. Such a unique viewing experience, whether you like it or not, need not be avoided, and it is not worth boosting.
The earliest alien modeling in Alien (1979), the director specially found an actor with slender limbs to play the alien.
The earliest "Alien" trilogy, each director is famous, and each one has its own advantages in stimulating instinct. The first film directed by Scott is about space thriller, the second film directed by James Cameron is about action fighting, the third film directed by david fincher is about claustrophobia, and the fourth film directed by Pierre Genet is about black. Many years later, two "Aliens vs. Iron Soldiers" were knockoffs. Many years later, in 2012, the 75-year-old father Scott took the prequel of Alien, Alien Prequel: Prometheus, at will. In 2017, the 80-year-old father Scott took the second prequel of Alien, Alien Prequel 2: Contract, at will. These two films are still rooted in stimulating the instinctive nerves of the audience. For example, in the first film, there is an extremely exciting scene in which the heroine digs an alien by caesarean section, which is even more delicious than the scene in which the alien directly emerges from the human stomach.
Alien Prequel 2: Contract (2017) A movie poster with dark and ferocious style.
In terms of modeling, aliens can be said to be a collection of human dark imagination. Why do we have an instinctive fear of creatures like snakes? A guess is that this probably stems from the fact that mammals have suffered various injuries from reptiles during their evolution. Aliens are similar to the mixture of humanoid and snake in overall shape, especially the attack state on people is very similar to that of snakes. The reason why the mucus secreted by aliens makes us feel disgusting is probably the result of evolution, probably because many creatures that secrete mucus in nature are poisonous. As for the alien head, this strange shape actually contains the dual characteristics of male genitalia and female genitalia, full of sexual hints. This is not my own wishful over-reading, but the alien father, the great director ridley scott, said it himself in the documentary James Cameron’s Science Fiction Story. This view can explain more directly why aliens can not only attract our attention, but also make us have psychological and physiological reactions of disgust. It actually evokes our subconscious sexual consciousness and anxiety. As for the incubation process of aliens — — First, a face-prone monster jumps out of an egg to cover a person’s mouth, and then a small alien comes out of a person’s stomach. This process itself is similar to human reproduction, mating, excretion, childbirth and other behaviors, so it’s strange not to stimulate you.
Ridley scott was interviewed by Cameron in James Cameron’s Science Fiction Story and talked about the creation of the first Alien (1979) that year.
Although aliens are imaginative in modeling, they also have biological injuries. For example, in Alien 2, when the Alien Queen fights with the heroine, something like a tongue suddenly sticks out of her mouth, and a small mouth grows on the tip of the tongue, and the teeth of the small mouth click. From a biological point of view, such teeth are unlikely to last. Compare our human situation. Teeth are connected with bones, and muscles are attached to bones. The tooth shape of the alien is the other way around, not the muscle is attached to the tooth, but the tooth is attached to the muscle. First, such teeth are unlikely to grow out of thin air, and second, even if they grow out, they are helpless and easy to fall off. In addition, the rapid growth rate of aliens after drilling out of human stomach obviously violates the law of conservation of energy. Even if a person’s body is drained completely, it is impossible to provide so much energy to the alien to make it grow into such a big piece at once.
Aliens in Alien Prequel 2: Contract (2017)
In the latest "Alien Prequel: Prometheus" and "Alien Prequel 2: Contract", the director, Mr. Scott, said through the mouth of the dramatis personae that he didn’t believe that human beings evolved randomly, and there must be some kind of designer behind them, maybe God or aliens, anyway. With this, the prequels of these two Aliens can jump directly from the instinctive level to the philosophical level. Who Are We? Where do we come from? Where are we going? Are we the product of random evolution or the design creation of some advanced wisdom? This is the ultimate question about us human beings and one of the oldest philosophical questions.
Today, people with certain scientific literacy have some understanding of evolution. For example, our eyes, at first, may only be a protein molecule that can sense light, and then step by step, step by step, evolved into our eyes and the eyes of various animals. However, there are still two different possibilities to get here:
Maybe one, the eyes evolved randomly in a fog. According to the current statement, the evolution time of life is about 3.8 billion years, which is not short. All kinds of small probability events may occur and accumulate, and a monkey may knock out a Shakespeare in such a long time. The seemingly complicated life forms actually evolved in all kinds of chaos and disorder.
Possibly, before the protein molecule began to evolve into the eye by sensing sunlight, there was already a wise designer, and TA had already designed this thing that would eventually be shaped into the eye in advance. Similarly, this designer had designed the form of life in advance before life began to evolve.
These two possibilities are not actually contradictory. The second possibility is something that science cannot prove or falsify. Assuming that there is such a designer, he may get a score of 60 or 70 at most. Look at this terrible human body you designed: all the nerve circuits are squeezed in front of the retina, the neck is tired every day because of the big head, and the spine is obviously designed according to the result of lying down and walking upright, which makes it easy to strain the lumbar muscles and protrude the lumbar intervertebral disc … … In short, either we evolved in a muddle, or we were designed by idiots.
The Man Seeking the Creator in Alien Prequel: Prometheus and David, the Biochemical Man Created by Man (right)
The two prequels to Alien not only stimulate the instinct downward, but also touch the ultimate question of who we are, where we come from and where we are going, so they have a philosophical height. We may be the product of random and aimless evolution of nature, or we may be created. We may have been created by a loving and omnipotent God, or by a group of evil aliens, as described in Alien Prequel: Prometheus.
If we are the product of random evolution, then our existence is meaningless; If we were randomly created by a group of evil aliens, then our existence is even more meaningless, or only has a black meaning. However, if we think from a positive energy perspective, even if our existence is meaningless, even if the whole universe is really dark, our goal can still be the sea of stars!
