Smart aliens -who've done this before- made multiple incursions across the globe; infiltrating levels of government and the like to ensure they wouldn't be detected, despite their obvious natures showing through. So by the time the masses figured out what was happening; it was too late and there was no way to know who to trust?
Okay, but these particular aliens couldn't do that. You know who not to trust: the people with the white eyes, the white outfits and driving the chromed out cars. Those are the people you kill.
What I don't understand is HOW the aliens managed to take over so many humans given the procedure for implantation is so delicate.
The whole concept of the aliens being nice and polite, not lying, just wanting to experience/sight-see and portraying them to be vaguely compassionate flies in the face of the fact they invaded a planet that didn't do anything to them, force themselves onto an entire species, and systematically hunt the stragglers. Either they are nice aliens or they are merciless, they can't be both and win against us.
The main alien is so upset when she sees the humans have ripped the souls out of their hosts and she calls THEM monsters? Really? What did you expect was going to happen? Why is she so surprised? You can't just invade a planet and not expect casualties.
As for killing the souls; I'd imagine in the start, people wanted their loved ones back first. If your spouse/kids/parents/siblings suddenly turned out to have been taken over by aliens, would you want to be the one blowing their brains out?
Then you kill the ones you don't know who have been taken over. If this were a more realistic movie we would have seen the humans attacking the aliens, but they never do. Even if these aliens had somehow managed to infiltrate the government there would still be massive prolonged urban battles in the streets. These aliens don't even wear armor, a couple of good snipers could take dozens of them out daily.
Let us not forget there are people out there willing to blow themselves up in the name of their religion. If these aliens had started setting up shop in buildings, the human resistance would bomb those buildings. And seeing how much of a pushover these aliens are it wouldn't be long until a well organized group of urban guerrillas who had already lost everyone they loved took the fight directly to the alien's doorstep.
And I don't say this as some radical extremist, I say this as a student of history. Too many of us would die trying to kill these aliens that they would never be living as peacefully as we saw in the film. Those nice clean outfits would be constantly stained with blood.
The premise of this movie only works if it takes place in some bizzaro world where all humans are spineless pacifists or where they welcome the aliens to take them over except for a small few. Or if it takes place 50 years after the big battle and they've rebuilt everything, but then what would be the point of "sight-seeing"? Did I mention their motive is extremely dull?
Don't try to cash in love, that check will always bounce.
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dobraye_utra
10 years ago
The aliens didn't start with the clothes and cars until the invasion was complete. And the eyes thing was only a movie gimmick so the audience woud know who were the aliens. In the movie, you'd have to shine a light in a suspect's eyes -to get a metallic reflection- to find out for sure.
And people didn't know where the souls were coming from. By the time the populace had noticed how everyone on the planet was now 'nice'; they were everywhere, not just holed up in isolated shops or whatever.
As for big conflict; maybe there was? One of the weak points of the film -compared to the book- is that it doesn't give enough time between the invasion start and the beginning of the story. (Ie, in the books, Mel learns of the invasion in her teens, but doesn't get 'hosted' until she's twenty) Maybe in the early stages, the souls-seekers did wear armour against bands of violent humans (who the majority probably don't think of as people; hence their lack of consideration for them) but as far as they're concerned; at the moment, the war is over. They outnumber us by like a billion to one. Heck; one queen/mother can turn herself into about a million new souls, so it's not like they'd have been outnumbered for long.
"Who doesn't want to be Johnny Gat?"
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C.S.Wood
10 years ago
The aliens didn't start with the clothes and cars until the invasion was complete. And the eyes thing was only a movie gimmick so the audience woud know who were the aliens. In the movie, you'd have to shine a light in a suspect's eyes -to get a metallic reflection- to find out for sure.
The movie didn't demonstrate any of this. I am guessing you are getting most of this from the book? Because it's the movies job to tell/show us this stuff and not force us to have to look things up.
And the silver eyes gimmick is kind of a big part of the movie, it was prominently featured in their ad campaign and is the very first thing the movie emphasizes so I can only assume the other non-alien humans can see them just as clearly as the movie displays them.
And people didn't know where the souls were coming from. By the time the populace had noticed how everyone on the planet was now 'nice'; they were everywhere, not just holed up in isolated shops or whatever.
Again, the movie doesn't mention this so we are left assume what happened. And as I mentioned, based on how passive the aliens are I don't see how they would have stood a chance against a well armed resistance cell. The only real thing the aliens have going for them is they can read your mind when they take you over, but even then they didn't appear to have any offensive weapons aside from knockout spray (which wearing a gas mask would have made useless).
As for big conflict; maybe there was? One of the weak points of the film -compared to the book- is that it doesn't give enough time between the invasion start and the beginning of the story. (Ie, in the books, Mel learns of the invasion in her teens, but doesn't get 'hosted' until she's twenty) Maybe in the early stages, the souls-seekers did wear armour against bands of violent humans (who the majority probably don't think of as people;
Maybe? So you actually read the book and it didn't mention that? This is exactly what I mean. William Hurt's voice over could have covered most of this. I'm having such a huge problem with this aspect of the story because the aliens are so "nice". They are not at all ruthless or threatening, and their method of implantation just doesn't jive with them taking over THE ENTIRE WORLD.
at the moment, the war is over. They outnumber us by like a billion to one. Heck; one queen/mother can turn herself into about a million new souls, so it's not like they'd have been outnumbered for long.
Again, not in the movie. I can only go by what the movie showed me, which was the souls coming down on their little metal container ships, the way-station of which was out in the open with no guards around so anyone could go bomb it.
And what about the store? Were there alarms on that place? Why would they need alarms if everyone is nice and honest? Couldn't the humans have just broken in at night and stolen everything they needed?
The reason why I'm putting so much thought into this is because it could have been a good movie if only they had put some more thought into it and ditched the "two bland guys in love with two bland girls trapped in one body" plotline. This story could have work and could have made sense but it didn't because they skimped on the details. I am talking specifically about the movie since I have no intention of reading the book.
I had already assumed this was an attempt to kickstart another franchise using Meyer's Twilight fanbase which means Niccol probably wasn't allowed to make too many big chances without her say so because based on what you've stated this movie needed to deviate from the book quite a bit to make sense on screen.
Don't try to cash in love, that check will always bounce.
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India_Ana
10 years ago
The book doesn't go into much detail of how the invasion happened. The story starts when Melanie is captured and Wanderer is inserted. Wanderer only just arrived, so she probably knew very little about the invasion as well.
www.thehost.wikia.com/wiki/The_Host_Wiki
[Edit]
If an alien invasion is what you wanted to see, this movie/book is not for you. One or both of the sequels may deal with the invasion in some way. SM was working on the second book in the series, but it seems to have stalled, and she's working on something else now.
[/Edit]
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tinyurl.com/FreeFlashFictionCourse
bthetwilightsaga.runboard.com/
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mpadpy
10 years ago
This is not really a scifi movie. Its a romantic movie. A scifi movie would have setups that explain the situation. Here they spend a lot of effort in kissing and triangles. They just use the scifi setup for a romance movie to interest geeks. But although it had some scifi elements in it, they could have saved the money and it would not have made any difference since anyone who went to see this as a scifi movie would have lost interest quite early. They even use regular guns and cars? But they took over humans easily? Who cares. The movie was not interesting enough for me to go deeper. But Predator was more scifi. Although they go for hunting experiences rather than life experiences. But it skipped on the raging teen hormones doing all the talking.
C
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C.S.Wood
10 years ago
This is not really a scifi movie. Its a romantic movie. A scifi movie would have setups that explain the situation.
I disagree. The ENTIRE setup hinges on the sci-fi angle; two separate entities trapped in the same body and two different men in love with each personality.
2/3s of the story takes place inside a mountain where the humans are hiding out from the evil aliens creating the environment where the romance can blossom. But if the story does not pay lip service to this setup the entire thing loses believability.
The aliens (should) exist as a constant threat to the romance, but they don't because they are not threatening, which begs the question of how they managed to come to power. The seekers even give up seeking humans towards the end because one of their own accidentally shot another seeker. They're so weak.
And that's not to say it needed to be an action film either, but failing to properly establish its fictional world and failing to make its villains villainous is, I think, one of the main reasons why the story didn't connect with audiences.
Watch the TV show Falling Skies. If the aliens in that show were in this movie (but purely in human form) I think it could have worked to an extent. The Seekers needed to be ruthless. They needed to inspire fear. That would have explained how they managed to take over.
Don't try to cash in love, that check will always bounce.
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dobraye_utra
10 years ago
I'd think a more 'sci-fi' movie would have had a bigger plot than the love-triangle/square this film did. Ie, the film didn't show the humans figuring out the way to stop the aliens in their tracks, so they could save the world; nor did it do the 'bleak ending' by showing them completely failing, like in the body snatcher films or whatever. It just told the story of Wanda falling for a human -and vice versa- whilst returning her host to her family.
I don't think the source material covered much of the invasion and fighting, since Stephenie Meyer doesn't exactly watch/read stuff like that. Her whole inspiration for this book came from driving through the desert.
"In High school I was Captain of the Machine-gun Team!" Nick Deezy
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C.S.Wood
10 years ago
I'd think a more 'sci-fi' movie would have had a bigger plot than the love-triangle/square this film did. Ie, the film didn't show the humans figuring out the way to stop the aliens in their tracks, so they could save the world; nor did it do the 'bleak ending' by showing them completely failing, like in the body snatcher films or whatever. It just told the story of Wanda falling for a human -and vice versa- whilst returning her host to her family.
But if the romantic angle was the story's main aim they could have accomplished it in a way that made more sense and less explaining while still using the alien body snatcher gimmick.
I really wanted to give the movie a chance, but its sci-fi aspect fails to be convincing and so I really didn't care about the romantic plot (and by extension, the characters).
This is just me spitballing, but it should have been that the aliens came down in a meteor shower (or something like that) and were able to infect most people like a virus and the souls grew inside of people and took them over, but a small percentage of humans either had a natural resistance to this process and could not be body-snatched while there were others who managed to escape the initial invasion somehow and so you have people with natural resistance and those few stragglers who, if caught, could be turned.
Simply explaining something to that effect in the monologue would have satisfied my need for the plot to make sense. Also making the aliens actually bad guys who are willing to kill and not pacifists would also have gone a long way at making me actually fear for the characters.
Don't try to cash in love, that check will always bounce.
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dobraye_utra
10 years ago
Which romance angle?
A meteor shower is an interesting idea, but the book is -somewhat- more detailed on the souls and their natures. Outside of a host, the souls can't survive for long; and without advanced scouts, there's nobody to implant them.
If there were humans immune to implanting, I'd imagine they'd have been eliminated early on, lest they find a way to make everyone immune.
The aliens didn't kill humans because you don't trash the car you're about to buy. They had a need for hosts; humans are the only ones going and they're kind of thin on the ground.
Steph's message (at least to a degree, in the book) was that the aliens aren't the bad guys: they're the 'slightly-better-than-us' guys. Humans were the bad guys; but now we're simply the endangered species.
"In High school I was Captain of the Machine-gun Team!" Nick Deezy
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C.S.Wood
10 years ago
A meteor shower is an interesting idea, but the book is -somewhat- more detailed on the souls and their natures. Outside of a host, the souls can't survive for long; and without advanced scouts, there's nobody to implant them.
But who are the "advanced scouts" and how did they go about implant souls in billions of people without the humans fighting back? And if the souls can't survive outside of a host then, again, who implanted the first souls into humans? That is the root question of my original post.
The aliens didn't kill humans because you don't trash the car you're about to buy. They had a need for hosts; humans are the only ones going and they're kind of thin on the ground.
Steph's message (at least to a degree, in the book) was that the aliens aren't the bad guys: they're the 'slightly-better-than-us' guys. Humans were the bad guys; but now we're simply the endangered species.
I understand the first part, but if the second paragraph is true then that's a huge mistake on her part UNLESS the humans really have it coming.
And these aliens were (in the movie at least) shown to be totally against violence. You can not take over the human race without violence, unless you have a magic device that can do it in less than a day or something. Otherwise the aliens either had to kill a lot of humans or visa versa.
And if the aliens simply blanketed the entire planet with knockout gas and then body snatched them, okay fine, but then how did the survivors escape that?
I just see a much more interesting story here besides what we were given. The Souls are traveling through space and in desperate need of hosts or else they will die. Not only are humans compatible, but they are ruining their planet and the souls have the tech to fix it, so they feel totally justified in taking over.
BUT, as they start to take us over, they are exposed to our emotions and THEY start to become just as violent and corrupt as us, making them no better than us. And in the midst of this you have the Mel/Wanda character who sympathizes with the humans and becomes a revolutionary.
Sure, James Cameron kinda made that movie already, but it's a story that works and the reasons why the aliens are attacking/invading makes sense. Did the aliens in The Host even have a solid motive or goal for invading us besides "because they felt like it"?
Don't try to cash in love, that check will always bounce.
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dobraye_utra
10 years ago
The book manages to explain all about how the souls first took over with a lot of exposition. The film, unfortunately dropped most of that to make it a manageable length.
Years before the invasion, humans were abducted to test their compatibility, etc. when the first wave began, they used other hosts from other worlds (I believe Wanda mentions in the film that they control more than this planet; we're not their first rodeo.) like the 'spiders' to abduct and implant the first of the humans. They picked people who would be heavily interactive, socially to start. Ie, people who have lots of visitors to their homes. Humans go in, souls leave.
There was no great violent action, because before humanity knew, the souls had taken the leading people everywhere. There was no immunity; a percentage of the 'wild' humans were the conspiracy nut jobs in tinfoil hats, so to speak. Those who saw the monsters before there actually were any.
They chose to come here for two main reasons: firstly, like us they are a plague that has to spread. (Like Smith said in the Matrix). If a queen soul chooses to propagate, she explodes into a million new souls; which is something Wanda could chose to do, if she wanted to die. And secondly; they saw us, doing unspeakable things to each other and decided to stop it.
"In High school I was Captain of the Machine-gun Team!" Nick Deezy
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C.S.Wood
10 years ago
Years before the invasion, humans were abducted to test their compatibility, etc. when the first wave began, they used other hosts from other worlds (I believe Wanda mentions in the film that they control more than this planet; we're not their first rodeo.) like the 'spiders' to abduct and implant the first of the humans. They picked people who would be heavily interactive, socially to start. Ie, people who have lots of visitors to their homes. Humans go in, souls leave.
And I assume the "white eyes" was a convention of the movie to let the audience know who was an alien, right? Which begs the question, how did the people in the book know who was and wasn't an alien then?
And still, we are talking about 7 billion people. The plan you describe would take years, if not decades to accomplish. And you're saying NO ONE caught on to this plan until it was too late? None of these aliens got into car accidents or were seriously injured where their bodies would be x-rayed or autopsied and the souls discovered?
Even being totally optimistic and assuming they took over someone like Kim Jong Un who'd have the power to then infect the entire North Korean population, the Seeker's morals totally conflict with Un's and the world would take notice. There are plenty of people who are being watched and someone would have to see something eventually. It just seems very preposterous.
That version of events as you describe would have a very low rate of success in the real world unless it happened incredibly fast, but I do think THAT would still make for a more interesting story than what we got if you could not tell who had been overtaken. It could be an interesting Stepford Wives kind of tale, but globally.
But once the cat was out of the bag it wouldn't be long before someone got hold of footage of the souls being implanted, uploaded it, and it going viral. And a lot of the remaining humans wouldn't just sit around waiting to be overtaken, they'd fight. The fact the survivors in the movie/book apparently have no intention of fighting back is one of the main unrealistic things that bugged me, especially when the Seekers are such wussies.
Don't try to cash in love, that check will always bounce.
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dobraye_utra
10 years ago
Yes, the eyes thing was just in the film; in the books, light had to be shone into their eyes to make them reflect like a cats' eye.
And the plan did take years; something the movie skips over quite a bit. In the film, Mel is seventeen. In the book, the world has started to notice by her mid teens; she goes on the run, meets Jared and lives with him for a few years before the events the film portrays. By the time of these events, Melanie is supposed to be twenty-one.
The way Melanie describes it to Wanda; humans only started to notice things were fishy when the news changed to happy-cheery stories, with no wars, and people started to 'turn themselves in' to be treated for issues and addictions, etc.
Nobody got footage because it's not like the souls were careless with their greatest secrets. They didn't announce themselves to the world at some point when they thought they could win or something. From what it implies in the books; nobody knew exactly what was happening to people; only that they were somehow not who they were. I'd imagine most people would think brain-washing before alien invasion.
The survivors aren't trying to fight because there's no way to win. They're outnumbered by nearly a billion to one. They have no effective means of waking humans if they capture a soul; since the souls are capable of reducing their hosts' mind to cottage cheese as a form of suicide. (It happens in the book) Not to mention that if they're captured, an implanted soul would immediately know all their secrets. Which is why those two guys in the movie ram themselves into that wall; to prevent being taken alive/repairable.
"In High school I was Captain of the Machine-gun Team!" Nick Deezy
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C.S.Wood
10 years ago
I realize I'm kinda late here, but okay, what you describe makes more sense then what we saw in the film, but I still don't get how the first souls were able to infect people. Even if we are going with this whole "giant spiders" thing, how did those giant spiders get here in the first place?
The survivors aren't trying to fight because there's no way to win. They're outnumbered by nearly a billion to one. They have no effective means of waking humans if they capture a soul; since the souls are capable of reducing their hosts' mind to cottage cheese as a form of suicide. (It happens in the book) Not to mention that if they're captured, an implanted soul would immediately know all their secrets. Which is why those two guys in the movie ram themselves into that wall; to prevent being taken alive/repairable.
This I see as unbelievable, especially given how passive the aliens are and how destructive humans can be. Are you telling me NOT ONE of the human survivors advocated fighting back? I'd rather kill as many of those aliens as I could then sit and hide while they take over our planet.
And if you have to shine a light in their eyes in order to confirm they are an alien, then all it would take is for the survivors to train themselves to pretend to be just like the aliens long enough to secure bomb making materials and place them in populated areas.
Not saying it would work or stop the aliens, but it seems totally defeatist to depict all the humans simply giving up because we're outnumbered. Especially the aliens in the movie adaption, who seem like real pushovers.
Don't try to cash in love, that check will always bounce.
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dobraye_utra
10 years ago
Alien abductions would be my first guess in the first wave. I mean if they can send ships here undetected, then grabbing people, implanting & returning them would be no problem.
As for fighting back, I'd imagine they tried just that. The trouble is, they'd outnumber us with no effort. Yes, the humans could pretend to be hosts, but remember, if they fail, they get implanted and then all their secrets go to the enemy. In the film, Wanda could access every memory Melanie had, so if any resistance member were captured, it would lead the souls directly to them.
And as for blowing up the enemy population centres, don't forget they have vastly superior medical tech than we do, not to mention killing all the aliens would leave Earth's population of humans at less than a hundred people. On a planetary scale that means we'd be doomed as a species.
Not to mention that not only do the souls control a half a dozen planets, but each queen can explode into a million babies. outnumbered is kind of an understatement.
"In High school I was Captain of the Machine-gun Team!" Nick Deezy
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MrJJay
10 years ago
The eyes are not for the audience. The guy puts light to their eyes at the end of the movie because it was dark he couldn't see their eyes,not to see inside their eyes.
Just FYI.
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