FILM: Are all aliens evil?

Mark Burton (Madagascar) and Adam F. Goldberg ("Still Standing") are writing the adventure fantasy They Came from Upstairs, a story about a bunch of teenagers who have to defend their vacation home from aliens...that come from upstairs. Since the word "horror" isn't thrown into its description and Ashley Tisdale (High School Musical) is starring, these aliens probably won't be that terrifying. But it got me to thinking about how many films actually have friendly aliens.

Clearly, Mars Attacks! didn't. And by the poster, you can tell that Independence Day wasn't exactly chocked full of welcome mats. When I tried to Google "friendly alien film characters," all I got was: E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Cocoon, Contact, The Abyss, Starman, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. (I can only vouch for two of them being right.) And now that I think about it, they forgot Lilo and Stitch, My Step-Mother's an Alien, half of Transformers and Men in Black, and technically Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Oh yeah, Superman....

Okay fine, there are a lot of friendly aliens, but they're hard to remember with stuff like Alien vs. Predator, Species, and Pitch Black lingering in our memories. However, perhaps there are more movies on the way that'll do some positive P.R. for the little green guys. Director Kimberly Pierce (Boys Don't Cry) wants to adapt Arthur C. Clarke's novel Childhood's End. It's about aliens who come to Earth so they can end all of our wars, give us the secrets to living long healthy lives, and create the utopia we've all been dreaming of. Sounds a little too good to be true. What would you do if such aliens came to Earth offering such things? According to media sources (and probably the book), the aliens look like devils. What if devils offered you eternal happiness? I'm going to take a wild guess and say that the "completely nondenominational" U.S. would probably blow them up to high hell.