Martian Pareidolia

Rating: 6/10 (3 July 2017)

For many, Lucian's True History (2 C.E.) serves as the first notable narrative to mention extra-planetary travel, inter-planetary warfare, and alien life-forms. Some 2000 years on from this 'birth' of Science-Fiction, the concept of alien life is considered a real, though hypothetical, possibility. Understanding this potential, it seems that Science-Fiction directors have redoubled their efforts in rendering a 'realistic' and plausible aesthetic of alien life and have deployed cinema as a simulation for extra-terrestrial contact, most of which exploring violent outcomes.
However, despite the seemingly limitless capacity for imagination of extra-terrestrial life, in attempting to imagine the appearance and behavioural patterns of alien life, humanity demonstrates its own limiting egocentricity. For example, providing this with some explanation requires us to recall some of the most beloved instances of aliens in film history; E.T., the 'classic' alien from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), or even the spoof representation of aliens in Mars Attacks! (1996). Each of these aliens share a common anthropomorphism; all humanoid, possessing shared features with humans; bipedalism, facial structure, and posable appendages. What each of these aliens demonstrates is that, whilst the potential for creative imagination is limitless, it might well be beyond human capacity to 'create' sentient life without the template of humanity; how, after all, does one imagine something outside of the known parameters of Earth? Or engage the effect of different atmospheric composition on forming organisms? Even in the instances where directors and creative producers have designed aliens that appear not to resemble humans outwardly, such as the aliens in the recent Arrival (2016) or Life (2017), they possess something recognisably human. Villeneuve's Abbott and Costello are communicative, aware of their human nomenclature, and develop attachments to the scientists that encounter them, sharing language and their relationships. The Martian 'Calvin' in Life (2017), despite its aesthetic inhumanity, possess a quasi-humanoid face structure, undermining the efforts in creating a realistic alien.
From the moment that the alien is discovered, it is clear that Espinosa is attempting to do something differently. Scientist Hugh Derry (Ariyon Bakare) detects a micro-organism within a sample of Martian earth and experiments with varying temperatures and chemical compositions to recreate the conditions of the organism to re-animate it. This move is one that, initially, seems to understand the problems of Science-Fiction films prior; that life in other spheres would live differently, behave differently, and most likely not resemble humanity. However, it is when Hugh realises that the 'Martian' prefers an atmosphere closer to Protozoic Earth than contemporary Mars and we find ourselves engaging with a prehistoric alien, suspending our disbelief two-fold, that humanity's hubris surfaces. The Martian, or 'Calvin', develops rapidly from a single-cell organism into something of a hive-mind of all-eyes, all-muscle, all-brain, dispatching the crew of the station until only two remain (Gyllenhaal and Ferguson). Naturally, with each crew member that Calvin kills, it grows stronger through feeding on them until it grows into a formidable mass of ectoparasitoid that threatens the course of humanity by engineering an escape to Earth in a life-pod.
It is difficult to say what might be considered realistic and what is not when you're dealing with the current theoretical concept of extra-terrestrial life. However, all the scientific progress that Espinosa made with constructing Calvin as a scientific probability is reduced, firstly by its apparent invincibility - withstanding flamethrowers, the vacuum of space, and a decompressing docking tunnel - and secondly, by bestowing Calvin with a humanoid facial structure.
There is something indisputably alien about Calvin's face, yet, the exoskeletal structure representing a recognisable face, complete with brow and nasal bones, reveals the 'true face' of our fear about alien encounters - ourselves. Despite the varying degrees of fantasy involved with the Science-Fiction genre, whether we're faced with the 'dinosaur alien' in Life (2017), the quasi-crustacean face-hugger from Alien (1979) or the incongruously similar Paul, from the eponymous film (2011), there is something undeniably familiar in each of these ideas of 'little green men'. Even though Calvin appears to be a new breed of alien, when analysing Calvin's behaviour and attempting to ascertain what it is that can be considered 'alien', thoughts begin to turn to violence: Hugh's hand is pulverized, Rory is forced to swallow the alien and is destroyed from the inside out. Calvin appears also to be desperate for survival, grappling up David's legs during the docking breach, and feeding on the body of a dying man and embracing light sticks for warmth. However, there are none amongst these 'alien' characteristics which are not shared, however exaggerated, with the human race. When Calvin's 'human' facial structure opens up to reveal a biological monstrosity beneath, the ferocity of alien survival is united with the aesthetic of humanity to frame the human condition. The fear is that our scientific development will project us across the stars to galaxies where we will only discover an Other, brutal reflection of our own savagery in an episode of Martian pareidolia - seeing faces where they should not be.
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