I just watched The World's End and that obviously the most serious use of that trope. But it's just so insulting to the actual people who make and understand technology. I couldn't figure out how to make a modem so clearly no other human could.
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I hate the "aliens gave us all our tech" trope
- Thread starter PersonAndStuff
- Start date
I dislike when it's about ancient peoples not having the ability to produce the great things that they did. Feels disrespectful to the builders. We've got more tech and better education these days, but there have been clever people in all societies forever. Looking at you, Ancient Aliens.
I didn't know this was a trope but I might need to watch more sci-fi.
Independence Day was the only one that can to mind for me and they cut the scene that explained it (which funnily enough explained the mac-spaceship hacking scene).
Also I guess this one is my fault for not having seen World's End yet, but I hope that wasn't a big reveal. Going down my movie bucket list and it's coming up soon, looking forward to watching it.
Independence Day was the only one that can to mind for me and they cut the scene that explained it (which funnily enough explained the mac-spaceship hacking scene).
Also I guess this one is my fault for not having seen World's End yet, but I hope that wasn't a big reveal. Going down my movie bucket list and it's coming up soon, looking forward to watching it.
I also hate when it's like humanity used to be super advanced and then some calamity happens that turns us into cavemen and we have to start over from nothing as bumbling idiots in the mud.
This is one of my favorite ones.
It already kinda happened in recorded history with the fall of Rome.
Bungie wrote it like that. I think what 343 retconned is they made the Forerunner and Humanity two distinct species when Bungie intended them to be the one in the same.
I'm with you and thought this thread was going to be about Ancient Aliens. People who buy into that shit are just so stupid and feel so limited in their abilities that they can't imagine that ancient people were smarter and more talented than them.
Did this whole concept really exist before the Chariot of the Gods book?
I grew up in a creationist household that espoused a weird variant of this whole idea, where ancient inventions and innovations, including things like the Baghdad battery, were held up as "proof" that the earth was much younger than what scientists claim.
I grew up in a creationist household that espoused a weird variant of this whole idea, where ancient inventions and innovations, including things like the Baghdad battery, were held up as "proof" that the earth was much younger than what scientists claim.
There's plenty of cultures out there who don't don't give a fuck about Christ.
That's actually happened several times throughout human history. Maybe not as dramatic as going back to cavemen but civilizations have regressed several times it's never a linear arrow of progression.
Nah, I love it. It's insulting to the human race, but lets face it...we kinda have it coming, lol. We suck and every day we try our best to undo what those people before us literally died to build. Might as well retcon it so we sucked back then, we just cheated. So praise be our alien overlords.
That's not accurate either.
The story pieces - and there are and were conflicting and disparate ones - some dropped or revised, some hardened and preserved - made it initially ambiguous on screen - is Chief a Forerunner, a qualified replacement for them, or has the system and 343GS been mistaken/insane. By the time we wrote the Terminals in Halo 3, some of the ambiguity had hardened through H2 and other background story building. The Terminals remain somewhat opaque in the fashion of their storytelling, but the facts are no longer ambiguous and the species already appear to be distinct and rivals.
The human species being re-seeded by Forerunners though is present even in H1 - just left unspecified - but in H3 it's very plain.
The Terminals and some of the CG cutscenes touch on it, and the "Iris" ARG follows some of those threads before H3 even shipped. This shows a scene from Earth, post Halo array firing, and one of the re-seeded population curious about Forerunner automation continuing and completing the Librarian's plan - and she tinkered with human and Forerunner DNA to try and create a path for a "good" species to come along and Reclaim the mantle of stewardship of the Milky Way. But WE don't find Forerunner tech till long after we created technological civilizations ourselves. Our own inventiveness is considered vital by the Librarian who doesn't want to create a spoiled, stunted culture.
The trope though, of species using found relics and technology to either reverse engineer the principles, or in the Coevnant's case to do that AND treat them with religious reverence - is obviously lifted from the ebband flow of real history, from ancient Greece to the Dark Ages to the Rennaissance - which was an era of remastery of lost techniques in art and architecture and rediscovery of ancient but superior methods as well a period of pure invention.
Humanity also serves as a kind of Dark Ages metaphor - a lot of it for gameplay and aesthetic reasons - like the anachronistic weapon and vehicle tech contrasted with high energy FTL travel - then they find themselves outmatched technologically and have to rely on Halsey and others both inventing and demystifying found alien technology - in some cases proving better at that reverse engineering than the Covenant, but still dwarfed by the Forerunners.
Yes it's a trope, but it's also a thing that repeatedly happens in human history. And every culture on Earth benefits from aspects of it - and avenues of baffling gaps - like advanced meso-American cultures who built incredible paved, straight roads and glittering immense cities - but didn't utilize the wheel at any scale.
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The Fallout series annoys me so hard. I be thinking it was only 5 years since the bombs drop, turns out it be like an 100.
What the hell is everyone doing?
In the vaults, or surviving in the post-consumption phase of human society with scraps.
Having technology bestowed upon you doesn't mean anything if you don't have the intelligence to reformat it and use it for your own ends. The catalyst doesn't matter, so it is not an inherently insulting sci-fi premise to say "Instead of fucking around with the natural elements, we fucked around with cool alien shit instead."
Where it DOES get insulting however is when the trope is framed as ancient black/brown cultures having no chance of building large structures or shit without intergalactic intervention.
Like, the idea that the Egyptians were too stupid to build the pyramids without aliens is insulting. But the idea that some early homo sapien ancestor stumbled across something alien and that kick started everything? Eh.
Where it DOES get insulting however is when the trope is framed as ancient black/brown cultures having no chance of building large structures or shit without intergalactic intervention.
Like, the idea that the Egyptians were too stupid to build the pyramids without aliens is insulting. But the idea that some early homo sapien ancestor stumbled across something alien and that kick started everything? Eh.
Thanks for the insight. Interesting stuff.That's not accurate either.
The story pieces - and there are and were conflicting and disparate ones - some dropped or revised, some hardened and preserved - made it initially ambiguous on screen - is Chief a Forerunner, a qualified replacement for them, or has the system and 343GS been mistaken/insane. By the time we wrote the Terminals in Halo 3, some of the ambiguity had hardened through H2 and other background story building. The Terminals remain somewhat opaque in the fashion of their storytelling, but the facts are no longer ambiguous and the species already appear to be distinct and rivals.
The human species being re-seeded by Forerunners though is present even in H1 - just left unspecified - but in H3 it's very plain.
The Terminals and some of the CG cutscenes touch on it, and the "Iris" ARG follows some of those threads before H3 even shipped. This shows a scene from Earth, post Halo array firing, and one of the re-seeded population curious about Forerunner automation continuing and completing the Librarian's plan - and she tinkered with human and Forerunner DNA to try and create a path for a "good" species to come along and Reclaim the mantle of stewardship of the Milky Way. But WE don't find Forerunner tech till long after we created technological civilizations ourselves. Our own inventiveness is considered vital by the Librarian who doesn't want to create a spoiled, stunted culture.
The trope though, of species using found relics and technology to either reverse engineer the principles, or in the Coevnant's case to do that AND treat them with religious reverence - is obviously lifted from the ebband flow of real history, from ancient Greece to the Dark Ages to the Rennaissance - which was an era of remastery of lost techniques in art and architecture and rediscovery of ancient but superior methods as well a period of pure invention.
Humanity also serves as a kind of Dark Ages metaphor - a lot of it for gameplay and aesthetic reasons - like the anachronistic weapon and vehicle tech contrasted with high energy FTL travel - then they find themselves outmatched technologically and have to rely on Halsey and others both inventing and demystifying found alien technology - in some cases proving better at that reverse engineering than the Covenant, but still dwarfed by the Forerunners.
Yes it's a trope, but it's also a thing that repeatedly happens in human history. And every culture on Earth benefits from aspects of it - and avenues of baffling gaps - like advanced meso-American cultures who built incredible paved, straight roads and glittering immense cities - but didn't utilize the wheel at any scale.
How did you feel about Horizon: Zero Dawn's take on that?
I think they did a fine job is explaining why it was that way. Kudos to them
There was an episode of Enterprise where some Vulcans had crash landed on Earth in the 50s, well before official first contact. They did their best to blend into human society, but since they needed money to get by, one of them sold the idea for Velcro. I kind of liked that one. No noble intentions, just needed the cash.
Frankly more often the trope seems to be that aliens created us, not our technology exactly.
My sister in law fully believes all this. She thinks our advancements in technology were a result of the Roswell crash, rather than decades of clear progress from R&D.
Especially considering that ancient Egyptians just built them the same way white people built things: slavery.
If all our technological progress was based on an interstellar civilization's gift, they were quite stingy with the tech.
Good joke, but nowadays historians believe pyramid builders were paid workers and engineers.
Michael Bay's Transformers did it, too.
Although to be fair it was our WW2 era tech and onwards, but still
I used to love this shit when I was young. Being a student of science I obviously didn't believe it but it was fun to pretend-believe and read books like chariot of Gods and watch ancient Aliens.
I was even a part of online communities who believed it. And then one day in 2016, I just realized I was in the midst of racist, uneducated piles of human trash who legit believed it, and then it stopped being fun and I never wanna think or talk about this "concept" or those people again.
I was even a part of online communities who believed it. And then one day in 2016, I just realized I was in the midst of racist, uneducated piles of human trash who legit believed it, and then it stopped being fun and I never wanna think or talk about this "concept" or those people again.
The Edgar Wright movie?
I don't recall this being a prominent story point of World's End at all. The Network wasn't of the ancient alien variety in any sense.
A lot of it is just backhanded racism about how "uncivilised" cultures aren't capable enough to achieve technological advancement on their own. Hence why this type of shit is almost always attached to pyramids or megacities.
I also hate when alien technology is basically magic, and the only explanation for how that shit works is "they're an advanced alien species". Pissed me off in that movie Arrival, although it wasn't their technology so much as their "language".
I liked the way District 9 handled it, where most of the stranded aliens were dummy workers, because pretty much all the smart leader ones died before they even got to earth haha. Now you're left with people slowly trying to reverse engineer their tech, because not even the aliens know how that shit works.
I liked the way District 9 handled it, where most of the stranded aliens were dummy workers, because pretty much all the smart leader ones died before they even got to earth haha. Now you're left with people slowly trying to reverse engineer their tech, because not even the aliens know how that shit works.
