Neeum Zawan wrote:
>     Sure there was. The documentary scenes in the beginning suggested 
> terrorist attacks (derailed train was one of them, I think).

I interpreted those as being stuff blamed on the aliens that the aliens 
didn't do. Maybe I'm just more cynical.

>     And even if I grant your point, so what? There wasn't any support 
> for the aliens actually being harmless either. 

You're interpreting it from the point of view of "what if this was real?" 
I'm interpreting it from the point of view of "this is a hollywood movie, so 
what would the fictional portrayal include if ....?"

> For all I know, 

Sure. I'm just saying that given it's a movie, if there was a reason to 
believe it, they probably would have made it more clear. Again, I might just 
be more cynical.

>     No, them enjoying it and making fun of it showed that they were not 
> nice. The mere fact that they were killing the babies didn't suggest 
> that, though.

Granted.

>     Why is killing the alien babies (who were all illegal, BTW) wrong? 

Generally, killing babies is frowned upon, even for domestic non-food 
non-humans.

>     As I said earlier, I can't take it for granted that human rights 
> should extend to them. It needs to be established.

Certainly. I'm just looking at it from the POV of it being a movie, while 
you're looking at it from the POV of "what if this were actually real?" 
I.e., I'm assuming that the movie would tell you what's important, while 
you're assuming there might be information that would change your mind about 
the situation were it available.

> message only hits home once you realized that they shouldn't be treated 
> that way.

I think I realized that early on. I tend not to get sucked into this sort of 
movie so much that I miss the cinematography of it.

>     Still, I feel if they're going to have aliens that are more or less 
> like humans except for their appearance...what's the point? It would 
> have been more interesting if the aliens _did_ have fundamental 
> differences in behavior, and the story had been more about the lack of 
> willingness on the part of the humans to accomodate them.

It certainly could have been a better movie, yes. It would be wildly 
different, and actually science fiction if they did.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Understanding the structure of the universe
    via religion is like understanding the
     structure of computers via Tron.

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