A summer of extraterrestrial-themed movies

Memorial Day weekend marks the unofficial start of summer. And summer in the United States is traditionally when the biggest blockbuster films of the year appear in movie theaters. The increasing presence of UFO/extraterrestrial-themed movies will most certainly be apparent at the box office this summer, as many of the bigger pictures debuting feature this theme.

Extraterrestrial-themed movies will start the summer blockbuster season off in the month of June with such films as Super 8, Green Lantern, and Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

Super 8 is the cryptic project by J.J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg. The filmmakers have been tight-lipped about the plot, but the basic premise of the movie is that a group of young friends investigate strange things happening in their town following a train accident. Marketing for the film suggests that an extraterrestrial escapes from the crashed train. Abrams and Spielberg recently discussed the film with Empire Magazine, and when asked about the “monster” in the film, Abrams replied, “The greatest thing about working with Steven on this is that he knows every alien that has ever been put to film, and most of them that are coming to film.”

Super 8 is scheduled to be released on June 10, 2011.

Green Lantern is, of course, a big screen adaptation of the legendary DC Comics superhero. This film version of the comic features actor Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan/The Green Lantern, who receives a mysterious power ring from an extraterrestrial, making him the first human inducted into the Green Lantern Corps.

Green Lantern is scheduled for a June 17, 2011 release.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon is the third installment of director Michael Bay’s Transformers movies. As with the previous Transformers movies, the protagonists are sentient robots from the planet Cybertron called Autobots. After learning about a mysterious spacecraft on the moon, the Autobots have to race against their adversaries, another group of alien robots known as the Decepticons, to locate the spacecraft and learn its secrets.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon will be in theaters on June 29, 2011.

These three major Hollywood movies appearing in the month of June are just a sample of the extraterrestrial-themed movies being released this summer. Be sure to watch for the August/September issue of Open Minds magazine, which will look at the growing trend of UFO/extraterrestrial themed content emerging from Hollywood.