Science Fiction Film and the Battle for Resources

Most would agree that many science fiction films highlight a variety of environmental concerns, often drawing on environmental disaster as a source for conflict or a post-apocalyptic setting. Other science fiction films, however, center exclusively on natural resource exploitation. Tank Girl (1995) and Total Recall (1990), for example highlight how necessary natural resources are for human survival. In Tank Girl, the conflict in this post-apocalyptic world is over water. In Total Recall, a battle for oxygen is fought on a futuristic Martian landscape broken by mines. In these futuristic sci fi film, the battle is between humans of different classes rather than humans and extraterrestrial aliens.

When humanity fights against alien invasions, however, elements of Earth’s environment may become either a weapon or natural resources to exploit. In The War of the Worlds (1953 and 2005), for instance, Martian invaders seem indestructible until they are exposed to Earth’s viruses and bacteria and die immediately. And in Signs (2002), alien invaders “melt” when exposed to water, just like the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz (1939).  Films like these begin to illustrate to power of nature as an accidental defensive tool.

Alien invaders who seek to exploit human resources in science fiction films, on the other hand, broach a variety of environmental issues that draw on environmental history. Cowboys and Aliens(2011) centers on aliens’ attempts to mine Earth’s gold as fuel for their spaceships. Set in the late 19^th Century American West, the film brings to mind the General Mining Law of 1972, which stated,

all valuable mineral deposits in lands belonging to the United States, both surveyed and unsurveyed, are hereby declared to be free and open to exploration and purchase, and the lands in which they are found to occupation and purchase, by citizens of the United States and those who have declared their intention to become such, under regulations prescribed by law, and according to the local customs or rules of miners, in the several mining-districts, so far as the same are applicable and not inconsistent with the laws of the United States.

Because these aliens were not citizens of the United States, the film suggests, they do not have the right to this gold.  Although the battle in Cowboys and Aliens is  primarily over the lives of Absolution townspeople in the old West,  the fight for gold serves as the motivation for the aliens invasion.

Contemporary science fiction films may also reflect the ongoing influence of the doctrine of prior appropriation, water rights doctrine adopted by most western states, giving the first person to use water from a stream the first right to such water. If the first user does not consume all of the water, then the second and later users can appropriate water for their needs. The water right is not necessarily tied to land ownership. Battle: Los Angeles demonstrates the doctrine’s continuing influence. According to the film’s production notes, in Battle: Los Angeles, Earth is under attack from unknown forces. As people everywhere watch the world's great cities fall, Los Angeles represents the last stand for mankind in a battle no one expected. As original screenwriter Chris Bertolini explains, in Battle: Los Angeles, he sought to merge two of his favorite kinds of stories: “I wanted to take a story in which otherworldly beings are here on Earth, but tell it as a war story - a story about individuals, where you're seeing the battle from the POV of the guys on the ground,” he says. “I got into the idea that the story would follow a small group of guys and the audience would experience everything as they experience it.”

            When Scott Silver rewrote the script, however, he provided these aliens with a reason for their choice to invade Earth: water, the aliens’ source of energy. Although other planets could be mined for water, a television analyst in the film explains, Earth’s water supply was readily available in its large surface oceans. After its rewrite, then, Battle: Los Angeles becomes not only a battle for the human race and its planet, but a water war, a war for our most abundant and most coveted resource. All these films demonstrate the power of nature and its resources.