Do you know about any movies with really weird aliens? Most Sci-Fi movies I have seen doesn't have aliens that different from humans, if you know what I mean.

Non humanoid aliens are fairly rare in films; this is not the case in most modern literary sci-fi, but films have some catching up to do.

One notable nonhumanoid alien occured in the comedy film Dark Star- a beachball covered in fake vomit, it is a little difficult to imagine the biological details of such a creature.

Other non-humanoids-
the Martians in George Pal's War of the Worlds (and presumably in the Spielberg version- which I have not seen).

The Thing from Another World (apparently an intellectual carrot) and the Thing (a shapeshifting creature of indeterminate form)

the facehugger from Alien (but not the Xenomorph stage- rather too humanoid for my liking).

The Triffids- in the 1962 film they appear to be aliens which have landed in a spectacular blinding meteor storm; this is quite different to the book, in which they were genetic experiments by humans.

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Hrm. What about The Blob? I think we should limit this discussion to intelligent aliens, however, lest we be covered with Kraken and other Things from 50,000 Fathoms. (On the other hand, Godzilla seems a pretty smart guy...)

"How could it live, guys? How could it live if it was just full of air?"

Um, maybe the Martians from Quatermass and the Pit ("Jumping and leaping!") But they are barely glimpsed.

I've got it. Solaris. That alien enough for you?

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Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Not sure if it counts, since it's based off the book.

Volgons were too humanoid, but I have to admit that the idea of a living flyswatter (since they seemed to be "alive") is odd

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I believe the living flyswatters were genetically designed to eliminate original thought in the Vogons; not too sure about who was behind this act of social engineering, but the explanation (if there ever was one) was more or less edited out of the film.

Quite a few things were edited out of that film; perhaps too many.

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I know the reason for the flyswatters. It was still an interesting alien.

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"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right." -- Thomas Paine

Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor. -- Heinlein

Creationists make it sound as though a "theory" is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. -- Isaac Asimov

The Thing from Another World was humanoid. So was the 1984 John Carpenter version. Alan Dean Foster described it as a hulking humanoid monster in his novelization. He went out of his way to say it was the creatures primary form.

The bugs from Starship troopers were not humanoid but that brings us to the next copout when it comes to Aliens. Aliens that look like animals, plants or bugs.

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In Titan AE there were the Gaul, which are intelligent, flying, sort of pterodactyl-type creatures.

There were the various non-humanoid Phantoms in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.

If we include TV shows, Books, and Video Games:

In Slayers Try, Dark Star could technically be considered an alien because he is from a different planet. He was just wierd looking, with four wings, a long neck, like 8-insect-like legs, and a face coming out of his mouth. The Lord of Nightmares doesn't come from a planet at all. She is absolutely formless, a black, hyperintelligent sea of chaos.

In Trigun, the Plants, which I am not sure if they are technically aliens (they are never clear on that). They can take humanoid form, but generally they are just glowing balls.

In the Oh My Goddess manga, there are Schrodinger's whales, which are intelligent whales with sort of tentacle things for manipulating objects. They are capable of travelling to any time, place, or parallel dimension, but because of this they rarely met and their race almost went extinct. There are also the Midgard Serpent, Fenrir, and the Lord of Terror. Since they are from the Goddesss' home planet they are technically all aliens. The Lord of Terror is sort of a computer virus that infects people. Fenrir and the Midgard Serpent are the same as in Norse mythology. There is also Garm, the devil dog from Norse mythology, who is from yet another world in the Manga.

Then in Zoids there are the organoids. They are intelligent, human-sized zoids that look kind of like a cross betwee a t-rex and a dragon. There is also the Death Saurer, which is a giant T-rex like Zoid. They are metal-based life-forms, and are technically the only intelligent Zoids.

In the Metroid games you have Mother Brain, which is a giant, hyper-intelligent, extremely evil, brain. There is also Ridley, who is a dragon-like creature and Mother Brain's second in command. There are the X-parasites, which are capable of absorbing other creatures and taking their forms, mixing and matching forms, and increasing the abilities of the creatures they have absorbed. There are also the ing, which are similar but can also operate on their own. There is also Metroid Prime, which is a giant, life-sucking monster. There is no indication any of the other non-humanoids in the Metroid games are intelligent, but these ones definitely are.

There is the final boss from Contra, which is the size of a very large cave. The final fight actually takes place inside the creature.

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For non-humanoid aliens, the first thing that comes to my mind is Alien, & the sequeles. Starship Troopers had some pretty nasty looking aliens too.

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Speaking of Starship Troopers, I noticed that one of the movie channels had Starship Troopers 2 on. Has anyone seen it? Is it any good?

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How about the aliens in that Vin Diesel movie?

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The aliens in Starship troopers where totally changed from the book version, they lost all their technology. Those "bugs" are supposed to build startships and be armed with guns, not so in the movie. The film makes clear that they don't take prisoners, in the book they indeed do and holds POW camps on their homeworld. They also managed to delete their allies, the book starts with a raid on these allies homeworld. Hardely the mindless savage monsters that the movie makes them out as.

Anyway, computer graphics have come a long way since "Tron" and "The last starfighter" so we can make beivable, non humanoid aliens today if we want to. I would however like to see some that aren't "monsters" at the same time but still have a vastely different psycology and culture but still clearly civilized. The aliens in "Statship trooper", the book version, would do excellent after a peace threaty had been obtained at some point.

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Pitch Black. ...Bat-like things

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I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhauser Gate. All those … moments will be lost … in time … like tears … in rain. Time … to die.

I didn't know the movie (Starship Troopers) was based on a book. Its sounds pretty good (the book), I'll have to check it out.

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I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhauser Gate. All those … moments will be lost … in time … like tears … in rain. Time … to die.

Well, the predators would certainly fall under that category. Their culture is completely alien to any that I am aware of that has ever existed on Earth.

If you want to see aliens that are really alien biologicall, but very similar to humans socially and psychologically, then Enemy Mine is an excellent choice.

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My Website: The Black Cat's Web Page

I can't imagine the bugs in the movie building much of anything, other than an ant colony type of 'city'. I just don't see how you could manipulate tools without the use of hands. I guess for an alien race to build a civilization similar to ours, they would have to be at least a little humanoid.

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I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhauser Gate. All those … moments will be lost … in time … like tears … in rain. Time … to die.

I think the predator would fall under the humanoid catagory (as ugly as it is). It walks upright and resembles the shape of a human (arms, legs, head....)

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I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhauser Gate. All those … moments will be lost … in time … like tears … in rain. Time … to die.

I actually bought a copy of the DVD (it was on sale, and I liked the first one so I thought I'd take a chance.)

Certainly not a great movie; effects were OK for a straight-to-video release. In this one, instead of a straight shoot-em-up, they had to contend with alien bugs that could take over a person's body (kind of like in Star Gate). Didn't seem to have as much humour as the first one though.

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Heck, if you want to consider TV shows (and made for TV movies), I'd go with Babylon 5... You have the Vorlons (kind of 'formless' but appear as religious figures when seen), the Shadows (giant invisible spiders), the Drach (I think that's what they're called; look slightly humanoid, but out of focus).

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I have to disagree here. The culture of the aliens in the predator movies are a very human like. The thing to remember is that we have spawned many cultures here on earth, it is probable that the predator aliens did as well. The difference is what kind of culture that came out on top, our similar cultures was overrun by other cultures a long time ago however and their remants are unable to take over, at least for the time being. A civilization crushing disaster may change this however. Also remember that the movie shows us their hunting parties, I am sure they have people with different behaviour back on their homeworld. The short lived Star Trek series Enterprise shows this very clearly when capten Archer are to be tried in a Klingon court and his lawer says something like "You didn't think all Kligons where warriors did you?".

Don't draw conclusions about alien cultures after meeting just a few of them. Besides I remember a certain RPG game where earth are under alien occupation, turns out those aliens are their species version of Hitler and their cohorts living in exile after being defeated on the homeworld.

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