Aliens Are Green and Time Travelers Are Naked

For a long time, we've all known that aliens are green, right? But who ever told us that? The entertainment industry, of course! It's what's been popularized all through these years with science-fiction shows and movies like Star Trek depicting aliens as green. Well, things may have changed a bit in how aliens are portrayed (there's more variety these days), but the idea of aliens being green has stuck and even the latest Star Trek directed by J.J. Abrams had a green alien girl making out with Captain Kirk as a nod to the original green girl (see photos at left) in the first series.

Keanu Reeves played a green alien in the updated version of The Day the Earth Stood Still. What? Reeves' character wasn't green in that movie? No, his character was so "green" that he was willing to get all humans destroyed just to save the Earth. His character was the ultimate "green" environmentalist! Just kidding.

Anyway, it's funny how some pop culture things like aliens get a definite look that we've all come to accept as "true" just because we often see them depicted in the same manner in television shows and movies. Apart from aliens, there's also time travelers who are now beginning to be popularly shown as naked after traveling through time. I think it all began with the Terminator series where they had Arnold Schwarzenegger naked just to show his bodybuilder body and perhaps to solve some problems in the storytelling.

A recent movie starring Eric Bana also depicted the time traveler as naked. It's called The Time Traveler's Wife and it's about how a wife copes with life with a time traveler for a husband. It's a love story and while the ending is predictable, it's really an interesting one when you realize just how much is possible if a husband can travel through time and visit you as an old or younger version who's not yet married.

There won't be any big spoilers here but it's interesting to note how the writer (the movie's originally a novel) just had to make Bana travel in time naked. Is this a trend now for movies with individual time travelers? It's funny that when Bana's character sires a daughter, the girl appears to be able to travel with her clothes on and is able to control the time and place of her destination.

So these days we now have green aliens and naked time travelers in movies. What are the other things that you think are starting to be popularized by the entertainment industry that may soon be regarded as the stereotypical "norm" in the coming years?