Has anyone ever noticed that when it comes to fighting aliens we, as humans, are horribly outclassed in one way or another in the movies? They’re either stronger, quicker, more intelligent or have some quality that a writer wants to fit in that trumps human beings in a very decisive manner. Yet, there is always someone that figures out a weakness, or how to stand up to the aggressive aliens in some movies, and they do so in a manner that makes it known that as tough and nasty as they are, humans can get down and scrap in our own way, and are at times quite adept at leveling the playing field. Some of the best human vs. alien fights in movies are those that toss the rule book out the window, if there was one, to begin with, and focus on what it will take to give the human an advantage, or at least one lucky moment that’s needed to fight back. In some cases, the humans start to figure things out almost too late, but in others, it’s all about surviving and reminding the alien species that humanity might not have drawn the best cards when it came to anatomy, but we don’t always back down and we don’t always fight fair.
Here are some of the best alien vs. human fights in the movies.
5. Riddick vs. Bioraptro – Pitch Black
Riddick is just flat-out tough, there’s no other way about it, but he’s also intelligent since he knows how to learn on the fly and he can pick up and pinpoint an opponents’ weakness rather quickly if he happens to notice it. Figuring out that the bioraptors had a serious blindspot was one thing, but using his strength and his fighting ability to take on a creature that has already proven to be death on the wing is impressive, to say the least. Granted, he’s the only fighter in this movie, and if it had been a band of Furyans, as we learned Riddick was, later on, it’s likely that more of them would have survived, and the bioraptors might have given them a wide berth eventually.
4. Jay vs. Bug – Men in Black
So yes, this is kind of a silly fight since the bug is a little cartoonish, but it’s still a huge threat and with the ability to crawl into and then out of a human skin using some science fiction explanation that was featured in the book, it’s still terrifying. And after Kay went to ‘get his gun back’ and was swallowed up, Jay had to carry the fight for a while. Facing down a giant cockroach the size of a truck doesn’t sound like anyone’s idea of a good time, but Jay does this pretty easily when he finds out that the bug has a bit of a soft spot for other creatures that share a similar appearance, such as cockroaches. Plus, it helps that Kay was still alive and just looking for the trigger.
3. Lt. Col. Bill Cage vs. Mimics – Edge of Tomorrow
So yes, this was a team effort with Tom Cruise’s character and that of Emily Blunt’s, but he had to die enough times to get her attention and then convince her that he was going through an episode very much like hers in which he could predict just what would happen and how to prevent it. There are a few plot holes in this movie, okay more than a few, that would have prevented it from going this smoothly at all times, but the fight scenes were impressive since fighting something like the mimics does feel as though it would be an exercise in futility since just tracking their movements was dizzying.
2. Ellen Ripley vs. Queen – Aliens
And now we get to two of the absolute best fight scenes between aliens and humans, and one just happens to come in a movie titled ‘Aliens’, since we cannot, and I repeat, CANNOT, leave Ellen Ripley out of this. You might have thought I would show the scene on the Sulaco when she was in the loader and taking the queen on head to head, but this scene kind of sets the tone for that one and makes it clear that there was a standoff before the Sulaco scene happened, a moment when both females sized each other up and made it clear just who they were messing with. The fact that the queen stands her soldiers down when Ripley threatens an egg with her flamethrower was awesome enough, but that slight cock of the head that Ripley gives when an egg opens up close to her and Newt and that “Oh no you didn’t” look is the perfect moment before the bonfire of the face-huggers begins.
1. Dutch vs. Predator – Predator
Dutch was outmatched in this movie, without a doubt. How hard is it to say that any character that Arnold Schwarzenegger plays is outmatched? Even in Conan the Destroyer, when he went up against a guy nearly twice his size and then a god shortly after, he didn’t appear to be this in this much trouble. But the Predator tosses Dutch around like a rag doll and has no problems with the beefed-up fighter as the two of them square off, and even takes a pretty vicious blow with ease before delivering a beatdown that a lot of people might survive initially. But it takes quite a bit to bring this thing down, and even then it winds up blowing up a huge chunk of the forest when Dutch has it defeated. Needless to say, predators don’t go down easily, and they’ll gladly take their enemies with them.
Humans have to fight dirty a lot of the time when they fight aliens apparently, but when it’s survival there really aren’t any rules.
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