Escape from Planet Earth (otherwise known as ET Gave Us WiFi)

Escape from Planet Earth, 2014, Rainmaker Entertainment. Directed by Cal Brunker. Starring Brendan Fraser, Sarah Jessica Parker and Rob Corddry.

So I’m going to break some rules and talk about a film I’ve not seen and have no intention of watching anytime soon, Escape from Planet Earth. Apparently it’s okay, a bit of fun on a Saturday for you and various small people you have lying around, but there’s something about the trailer that annoyed me. It’s around 1.40 in:

If you can’t be bothered watching it (understandable) one scrappy alien says to the other scrappy alien, ‘Who do you think invented the internet? Cell phones? Social networking? We did! You think humans could build this stuff? I don’t think so!’

Since I first saw this trailer I couldn’t put my finger on why this line bothered me so much; not to the point of sleepless nights and cold sweats, but certainly to the point of eye rolling and consternated humming. ‘Human’s are too dumb to invent stuff, it must have been aliens’ isn’t a new joke by any stretch of the imagination, and it’s been used in Men in Black, Paul  and even Independence Day (remember how it made almost no sense that a computer virus could destroy an entire alien fleet? It turns out that in a deleted scene, all computers came from the alien ship that was found in Area 51, so take that, logic fans!) TVTropes call this ET Gave Us WiFi and in previous examples, it’s been a fun little aside and an acknowledgment that humankind isn’t the apex of civilisation in the universe. So why did it irritate me when a silly kid’s film did it?  

There’s something about Escape from Planet Earth that seems too cynical to pull this joke off with any real warmth or affection, and I think it might have something to do with the way it’s being told. It’s not just a funny throw away gag, it’s the entire plot and the reason why the aliens want to escape – they’re being forced to create things for human. So there’s part of the fun sucked out (slave labour isn’t normally a rich field for comedy) but the other part is the Neo-Luddism undertones of the film, declaring all technology must be alien made and therefore untrustworthy. Writer and director Cal Brunker picked the internet as something that human’s couldn’t have created because we’re too stupid to have conceived of it. Ignoring the fact that it’s common knowledge that it was created by Sir Tim Berners-Lee working with CERN, it’s interesting that the web was only invented 25 years ago, and yet it’s become such an integral part of modern human life it’s impossible to imagine a world without it. So impossible in fact, that it’s difficult to see how someone could be clever enough to invent the internet without using the internet. 

Tim Berners-Lee is like Prometheus, but instead of stealing fire from the gods, he made the fire

 using his own mind and gave it to the world for free. Apparently he makes a really nice cup of tea too. 

Rather than comprehend how a human being who probably bites the inside of his cheek every so often could achieve such a thing, it is easier to disassociate oneself from the marvel of the modern age and flippantly dismiss everyone who was involved in these inventions as extraterrestrial and weird. It’s as though the creators of the film thought, ‘I don’t know how to make and internet, you don’t know how to make an internet, even Steve from HR doesn’t know how to make an internet – it must be some bizarre alien space magic!’

But Steve can barely dress himself, so I wouldn’t trust him 

with coding the Super Info Highway just yet

The trouble with this attitude (and basing an entire film around it) is that it makes creating wonderful things seem unattainable for human minds. People like Berners-Lee are placed high up on pedestals, so far out of reach that for all we know, they may as well be aliens. But it’s important to remember that he didn’t wake up one morning and invent the web; it took years and years of hard work and creativity to just get to Oxford – more work and effort after that to get to CERN.  Berners-Lee is a remarkable human being, but a human being nonetheless. The same is true for all inventors throughout history, including the Egyptians who built the pyramids. Remember this guy?

Hey look! It's that guy who's a joke to his friends
 and a shame to his profession!

He’s famous because he said aliens built the pyramids. Not civil engineers, not royal architects, aliens. And this was broadcast on the History Channel too! 

 

My point is that turning human progress into something that is given to us for free by aliens is a troubling, because it dehumanises the wonderful inventors of the past and present and impedes potential inventors of the future by telling them that they can’t be like these guys, these guys were probably brought up in pods somewhere outside of San Francisco (even the Ancient Egyptians). Well I say nuts and boo to this and the cynical idea that all people are as thick and unimaginative as aliens man up there. We need our inventors to be as human as possible to show ourselves that maybe, with enough hard work, intelligence and creativity, we could create something wonderful too. Am I reading too much into Escape from Planet Earth? Probably, but I'm still not going to watch it.