Comparison of Sci-Fi Films: Avatar Vs. Skyline

Since the 1960s, science fiction movies were becoming a burgeoning demand in the film industry and continues to grow till today. The touchstone for scientific fiction, then, is that it describes an imaginary invention or discovery in the natural sciences. The most serious pieces of this fiction arise from speculation about what may happen if science makes an extraordinary discovery. The romance is an attempt to anticipate this discovery and its impact upon society, and to foresee how mankind may adjust to this new condition (Bailey, 1947). Science fiction is a subdivision of fantastic literature which employs science or rationalism to create an appearance of plausibility. (Brians, 1996). Science fiction is the argument with the universe (Mendelsohn, 1982). In general, science fiction is a genre of fiction about imaginative fantasy and science technologies.

The storyline of Avatar is about how human beings attack the aliens but vice versa of Skyline. In Avatar, human attacked the blue-skinned human-like aliens to mine for a valuable mineral, Unobtanium on Pandora as the Earth’s natural resources have been severely depleted. To explore Pandora, scientists used “Avatars” to infiltrate the indigenous people, the Na’vi of Pandora and advocate peaceful relations with them. Jake, the main character was given only 3 months to evacuate the Na’vi, however, he failed to do so and the human commenced attack to drive them away. Although the Na’vi had won the battle at last, humans are the one to initiate and declare war on the aliens, causing destructions and casualties of both sides. On the other hand, the storyline of skyline is about alien invasion on Earth, where humans are attacked and abducted. It all begins when Jarrod and his girlfriend Elaine flew to Los Angeles (LA) for Jarrod’s best friend, Terry birthday party. The next morning, blue rays descend from the sky, fascinating anyone who looks straight into them. Immobilized humans would walk towards the light source and are sucked into the machines. Counter attack by launching aircrafts failed to destroy the mother ship as well. Even Jarrod and Elaine are sucked into the mother ship. After that, the world was overruled by aliens. The reason why the aliens attacked human beings are left to be unknown as it was not stated in the movie itself.

The most important difference between Avatar and Skyline though, is the setting. The settings in Avatar covers mainly of on the planet Pandora, a treasure trove of both living and non-living natural resources and wildlife. Although the scenes and backgrounds in the movie were computer-generated, they are all in high definition with the use of animation software by professional designers and illustrators to make the scenes as look realistic. James Cameron, director of the movie Avatar said, “Ideally at the end of the day audience has no idea which they are looking at.” For instance, the floating “Hallelujah Mountains”, the “Hometree” where the Na’vi clans gathered for spiritual events, Iknimaya, Banshee Rookery and other places made up the whole settings and backgrounds in Pandora of the movie. However, the settings in the movie Skyline are mostly in the city, Los Angeles. The invasion of aliens happened when Jarrod, the main character arrived in LA. These robotic aliens descended from the sky, abducting any living human beings in LA, vacuuming up humans into the giant alien.

In conclusion, Avatar and Skyline differ in storyline, settings and ending. I really enjoyed watching both movies as their plots are very interesting and exciting with suitable and satisfying endings. The settings and animations of both movies are really great.

References

Langan, J. (2010). College Writing Skills, (8th edition) New York: McGraw Hill.

Bailey, J. O. (1947). Pilgrims Through Space and Time, New York

Brians, P. (1996, May 16). Posting to the mailing list SF-LIT, Retrieved from 27 September 2013, from About.com

http://scifi.about.com/od/scififantasy101/a/SCIFI_defs.htm

Mendelsohn, K. (1986). Trillion Year Spree: the History of Science Fiction. London

Perrin, R. (2012) Pocket Guide to APA Style (4th ed) Boston: Wadsworth.