In every sci-fi film ever

1. unguided hyperspace jumps

2. redirecting power from the thrusters to the shields

3. hexagons

4. rebels against the dystopian regime living underground, wearing armor made of garbage, grilling rats, etc.

5. minor character who's super into the stones/jazz/prince/whatever. just like someone who still listens to bach in 2013! but 500 years later!

6. suits with mandarin collars

7. robot or alien character ends up displaying/revealing more 'humanity' than the humans

8. strong female character

9. bad guys' spaceship will have unkempt loops of cable descending from ceiling; if they're a vile looking alien race, they'll also have puddles of water beneath these cables.

10. Space Romans

11. "...because all you of Earth are idiots!"

12. Humans are mere bugs to evil alien force

13. Scientist meddles with natural order and disaster ensues

14. All doors are automatic and make that whoosh noise whenever they open.

15. Hawkish army major despises aliens in a race hate way

16. mysterious/stoic badass who initially doesn't seem to acknowledge/trust/respect the protagonist

"hey... not bad, kid"

17. Barely explained violations of the laws of physics

18. Sexy alien

19. Future civilisations 100 percent heterosexual

20. Black crew member dies first

21. cocky young marine/astronaut who's revealed to be a coward as things gradually get worse

prone to lines like "Monsters? Just give ME a minute with 'em!", sexist wisecracks, and letting loose with a "WHOOOOHOOOOOO" during takeoff (towards a doomed mission)

22. Torrential rain

23. corporate weasel

24. Cars/motorbikes hover off the ground instead of using wheels.

25. White walls.

26. visual references to either the Wild West or Film Noir

27. Chinese merchants

28. Neon signs in Japanese, even though the film is set in a predominantly English speaking country.

flamethrowers as standard-issue gear

30. a diner

31. complete absence of institutional racism

32. Computers are controlled using some massively impractical interface involving hand gestures.

33. curved corridors

34. funny hair-dos

35. simple devices replaced with more complicated, energy-hungry devices

36. Shiny chrome android that can't pick anything up or do any kind of physical work, so it might as well have been a grey box on wheels.

37. Surveillance cameras everywhere.

38. escape pods

39. sleeping cubicles

38. All pop music a kitsch rehash of some genre from the 1950s thru 80s

41. Electronics surplus store owned by a shop keeper who seems to be actively trying to put people off from buying anything by being rude and unpleasant.

42. Robot that communicates with bleeps and bloops when it could just as easily have a proper voice.

43. Alien race that all dress like Earth Wind & Fire in the 70's.

^^^ wd watch a movie about an alien race that was Earth Wind & Fire tbh

44. Supposedly violent and dangerous street gang who look like a bunch of stage school kids going on a trip to the funfair.

45. aliens kill people in a rape-y way for some reason DO U SEE?

46. Bizarre future sport that's a cross between BMX, basketball, and paintballing.

47. Public videophone booths.

48. contract killer/drug smuggler with a heart of gold

49. The alien sidekick character has some bizarre allergy to water/orange juice/hummous, that turns out to be important at some critical point in the movie.

50. Small child who is a computer genius.

51. Audio surveillance bug that has a huge flashing light on it.

52. Bomb has bright red numbers counting down to detonation, and beeps every second.

53. Alien character corrects well known human scientist on some aspect of quantum physics.

54. this guy:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pvnRmfPyLCk/T6_oucuOS-I/AAAAAAAAHHk/-JpPCC7WepU/s320/That-Guy-Michael-Ironside-Free-Willy.jpg

55. Character named after sci-fi author most of the audience aren't familiar with.

Sentient onboard ship's computer with variegated moral compass

57. Thin weedy looking evil dude turns out to be super strong and easily beats the shit out of the hero and his muscular partner.

58. Stripperific female character turns out to be highly dangerous killdroid.

59. Tiny gun that can blow massive holes through concrete walls, demolish city blocks, etc..

^"NOW THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKIN' 'BOUT!"

60. Global mega corporations with names in the format '<Japanese name> <Hispanic name>'.

61. "...but then, what IS... reality? Is it for US to tell them what it really is?..."

62. biologist so impressed by alien capabilities that she urges her shell-shocked crewmates not to kill it

63. Prominently displayed logo of company that has since gone out of business.

64. All important character names begin with Qua- sound.

65. All important character names end with coughing-up-a-hairball sound.

66. Alien speaks with exaggerated Russian accent.

67. Place names have a number randomly tagged onto the end, ie, "Welcome to the city of Manchester 5!".

68. Name of future city is just the name of a real life present day city with 'New' in front of it, ie, 'New Boston', 'New Berlin', 'New New York'.

69. pod head + wiggly appendages + spindly exoskeleton = horrific, unknowable alienness

70. tall, elegant alien slowly tilts head to the side, radiating compassion

palms gradually extend outwards, a gesture of pure peace and goodwill

71. more blinking lights than is conceivably necessary

72. some kind of monk

73. 'spice'

74. Sound waves can travel through a vacuum.

75. Space ships fly and manoeuvre through space as though they were aircraft.

76. various races of cartoonishly 'weird'/monstrous looking aliens tend to hang out together in bars, as if they're only 'alien' vis a vis humans but not to each other

77. White plastic everywhere - spacesuits, spaceships, spaceplates, spacephones, spacedoors, spacetoilets

78. Conflict of logic results in malfunctioning A.I.

79. post-apocalyptic villains who dress like the hell's angels crossed with sigue sigue sputnik

80. someone's wearing an eyepatch

81. "don't you see...[insert detailed explanation of how the aliens are just like us, whether because warlike or peaceful]...they're just like us."

82. Movie is clearly some classic book, just IN SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE
http://www.containsmoderateperil.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/treasure-island-in-outer-space-01.png

83. ancient religion whose teaching are pretty unclear beyond awesome telepathic or telekinetic powers

84. wise-cracking robot

85. "Based on the short story by Phillip K Dick"

86. In a time travel movie, a character who can't believe that Ronald Reagan was/is/is going to be President.

87. Character staring blankly into space, is plugged into some kind of computer network.

85. city of the future resembles 20th century community college campus designed in the brutalist style

88. ^^^

89. British accents (especially for villains)

90. Holographic terminals

85b. Movie adds several dozen plot points to PKD story to avoid being 11 minutes long

91. Mega-weapons that can blow up planets/suns/galaxies/etc.

85b. Movie adds several dozen plot points to PKD story to avoid being 11 minutes long

Ha.

92. Sleep chamber/cryogenics.

93. Air lock opening, whooshing someone and assorted space appliances to their space doom.

^^^ that reminds me

94. Fog spurting out from doors and/or rooms for no good reason.

Like, should freon gas or whatever really be injected into the air people are breathing in order for the auto-doors to open? That doesn't happen when I go into the supermarket. Seems unsafe...

95. interfacing with universe-inside-the-global-computer-network involves hurtling through black space/neon light ripped off from tron/early rave videos/starfox. (this may have peaked around 1999.)

96. "good day, citizen."

"good day, officer motorcyclehelmet."

"aren't you a 53b-class drone? it's highly irregular to be out of your pod-center without authorizing documentation."

"important mission for the unit director, officer. i'm, uh, personally retrieving utility data from individual buildings because the, uh, docutube system is.......jammed."

"i'm going to call this in, citizen. wait right here."

*flees*

"halt, citizen!"

97. "We only have x minutes before the oxygen runs out!"

98. Some bullshit MacGuffin.

99. world that resembles ours in every detail is revealed to be a technologically-induced dream

100a. Race/class issues displaced onto robots.

100b. Race/class issues displaced onto aliens.

These two are mutually exclusive, cuz the plot would break or something.

Similarly:

101a. Alien falls in love with human.
101b. Robot falls in love with human.

9b. Bad aliens' spaceship interior is lit by a nasty color like red or or green or yellow and be super dark. Also, have random sparks.

102. Computers are naturally combustible.

103. Teenagers with multi-coloured hair and dressed like 90s ravers.

104. sweeping a halogen light over someone can diagnose any illness

105a. Big super-bright/white-walled military planning rooms with clear panels w/ star charts and maps and shit.

105b. Space Generals that have distinctive face tattoos or markings and are ambiguously ethnic.

106. 99% of world lives in steamy shanty-town watching CRT Televisions.

http://deltaquadrant.webs.com/images/chakotay.gif
"Suck it, Janeway! I've been promoted to Space General!"

107. Deserted ship.
107a. "Let's see if we can pull up the ship's log."
107b. "Where did they all go?"
107c. "They're all dead."

108. hyper-intelligent aliens particularly struck by "complex" earthly art

xp LOL I was thinking exactly of a mix between Chakotay and General Organa from Star Wars (who btw was the Viceroy of Alderaan and an opponent of deregulation during the days of the Old Republic, according to some nerdy SW wiki I used to look up his name).

109. Extreme and awkward contextualization of phenomena which should be everyday/mundane, i.e. you or me tossing off an explanation of the internet/cell phones/microwaves when we first come into contact with one for the sake of some audience in the 1930s.

This is genuinely in every sci-fi movie ever.

110. 'Artificial gravity' on spaceships.

111. techno-circa-1990 soundtrack as music of the future

Man, this is turning into a really complicated sci-fi film.

PS, I'm one of those old pedants who hates the term "sci-fi."

it's my goal to one day make a movie that combines all of these

admittedly it might have to be a mini-series

112. Temporal anomalies, Spatial anomalies, other Dimensional anomalies

113. cynicism of economic/material overriding questions of 'man's place in universe'

109. Extreme and awkward contextualization of phenomena which should be everyday/mundane, i.e. you or me tossing off an explanation of the internet/cell phones/microwaves when we first come into contact with one for the sake of some audience in the 1930s.

This is genuinely in every sci-fi movie ever.

― Magic Miike (R Baez)

LOL totally...

"Ah, the automatic transmission - a complicated series of gears, gearshafts and sensors, controlling the clutch through electrohydraulic action. Sometimes continuously variable, sometimes set to specific RPMs of the engine's cylinders - a wonder of modern technology!"

"Uh yeah, they've been around for at least half a century now, I know about them. Could you please STFU and drive now?"

someone wrote a little microstory once about going on an airplane written just like that, in a sci-fi style, where every aspect of embarking was
explained in ultra-specific terms

See also: Obi-wan explaining all about the Lightsaber even though it was a weapon that had existed for hundreds of years and everyone knew about.

32. Computers are controlled using some massively impractical interface involving hand gestures.

http://bite-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Lazy-Kinect1-540x281.jpg

someone wrote a little microstory once about going on an airplane written just like that, in a sci-fi style, where every aspect of embarking was
explained in ultra-specific terms

The Don DeLillo Principle.

114. if music is prohibited among the general population then it will be a definite thing that high-ranking officials will have shelves upon shelves of archaic music-storing media lining the walls of their offices or personal living quarters.

"ah, yes, david7. you see we in the high command are allowed certain, shall we say, 'privileges.' that thing you are holding in your hands, we call that a 'here come the warm jets.' do you now understand why your kind cannot be allowed these freedoms?"

115. ultra-high-tech forms of music and data storage mediums, like cubes or really tiny disks or thin clear strips of plastic/crystal.

116. New drugs. Exponentially more addictive and deadly than the ones from that blissful carefree era known as the late 20th/early 21st century.

116b. New drugs given mandatorily keeping population pacified.

(…Also, this is a thinly veiled reference to Television)

Man, this is turning into a really complicated sci-fi film.

or Red Dwarf.

117. Made up swearword to allow characters to swear frequently without actually swearing.

117. Made up swearword to allow characters to swear frequently without actually swearing.

YES

118. The heroes of the story are humans, or look precisely like humans.

119. Bad Guy Control Centre is on a narrow walkway over an abyss and has no handrails.
120. Bad Guy Commander likes to give long speeches to his captured enemies while not paying any attention to what they're doing.

(These two might also be Every Action Film Ever but hey.)

121. highly esteemed british stage actors
122. competent cost-effective canadian TV actors

123. Bad guys craft designed by Mutoid Waste Company.

124. Something happens that pisses off fans of the original TV series/novel/movie/miniseries

19. Future civilisations 100 percent heterosexual

125. Except for the effeminate leader of the bad guys

126. Megacities with names like New Angeles or San Tokyo

127. The secret to defeating evil is...love

128. People in spaceships listening to classical music

129. No matter when or where it's set, past or present, inevitably someone will say "what the *hell* is that?" or "My GOD!" or maybe even "Jesus Christ...."

130. Alien physiology very accommodating to the human frame.

131. Non-Earth place names use Dutch spelling.

it's my goal to one day make a movie that combines all of these

― let's go do some crimes (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Monday, 7 January 2013 06:33 (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

admittedly it might have to be a mini-series

― let's go do some crimes (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Monday, 7 January 2013 06:33 (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sorry strongo, they made Babylon 5 15 years back.

i forgot to put "good" in there

132. Surly Asian gangsters.

133. Weird LED sunglasses.

134. Secret decoded message turns out to be message sent by person reading it from the future

135. Planets with one consistent climate and environment covering their entire surfaces.

136. Terraforming

136a. Loomingly gothic and industrial terraforming equipment.

137. A character cites three historical examples, two of which are from real history, followed by a made-up one from our hypothetical future.

138. corded telephones

139a. Bafflingly ADHD-inducing GUI on large upright touchscreen computer terminal.
139b. Monochrome wireframe vector graphics on tiny CRT.

140. android/robot racism

137. A character cites three historical examples, two of which are from real history, followed by a made-up one from our hypothetical future.

― abanana, Monday, 7 January 2013 03:49 (5 hours ago) Permalink

^good one!

Classic example is the original Star Trek ep "Court Martial" where Kirk is on trial. His lawyer's closing statement goes on about human laws and rights throughout the ages: the Code of Hammurabi, the Magna Carta, the US constitution, the Martian declaration of independence and the "Statutes of Alpha 3"

141. Ancient Astronauts

142. Robots/aliens abandoning their own kind for the love of a human

ok someone's already listed that

95. interfacing with universe-inside-the-global-computer-network involves hurtling through black space/neon light ripped off from tron/early rave videos/starfox. (this may have peaked around 1999.)

― let's go do some crimes (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Sunday, January 6, 2013 6:31 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my favorite example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQeQvhp9ftg

143. In the book the main character is a middle-aged scientist, in the movie based on the book main character is a smart frat boy.

144. Commonplace tech used daily in the movie's era still referred to by overly elaborate and unwieldy multi-word name, as if humans somehow lost the ability for contractions in the interim

145. Space battles failing to utilise all available directions, as if it's actually a sea battle.

146. Evil plans of evil futuristic corporations that make no business sense whatsoever (thinking of Moon here specifically).

147. Invading alien army use ground infantry.

148. Invading aliens are actually after Earth's water supply.

149. Even though everything takes place in the year 2093, people still wear Ugg boots and use computer interfaces akin to the monitor display on a Acorn BBC Micro.

150. Protagonist is posting to a message board which is just text - no avatars or… oh wait.

151. Tense war room huddle around space map

152. Disgusting food served on long space trip

153. Human utopia is obviously worse than robot/alien dystopia

154. Progressive society in which racism and sexism have disappeared still strangely tolerant of using derogatory abuse for non-humans

155. Shocking discovery of dead aliens

156. Computer hacker takes mere seconds to break into highly secure system

157. Aliens all look the same and, no matter how advanced they are, have not yet got round to the concept of wearing clothes

156b. Access hinges around ridiculously obvious password written on a piece of paper in desk drawer.

158. Earth is called 'Terra' now.

159. All alien planets have one-world governments

160. The more a spaceship resembles an abandoned rustbelt steel mill, the more likely things are to get ugly. This applies double if spaceship is crewed mainly by earthy blue collar types.

161a. (pre 2008) A black president
161b. (pre 2016) A female president
161c. (post 2016) A sensible republican president

160. awkward attempt at creating a controversial situation that mimics IRL current events, cf waterboarding an alien or forcing amphibious creature that are imprisoned to wear orange jumpsuits and hoods.

see also:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZHG3pi9EDA

161. Alien races are culturally and religiously monolithic.
161b. Exceptions include conflicts between two classes that are opposite, such as the Let That Be Your Last Battlefield episode of the original Star Trek series

Didn't read the whole list, but ... doors that open with a scan of the eye/hand/thumbprint? Unhappy people with shaved heads? Interactive computers that respond to voice commands? Constant dull rumbling and the sound of water dripping in the background? The sound of things dramatically charging up (guns, machines, cars, etc.)?

162-167

168. the city/planet has weather controlled by one central computer, which goes haywire somehow (this is mainly in every 80s anime sci-fi)

169. pleather

corinthian pleather

170. Streamlined designs on spaceships that will never enter a planet's atmosphere.

A lot of 162-167 sound like the present!

171. Buildings with big fans on the top that are turning too slowly to be useful for anything.

A lot of 162-167 sound like the present!

The future is now!

172. under-lighting through grated floors

people brushing their teeth

oh wait, that's just battlestar galactica

173. character played by someone who was on Mad About You

Remnants of some long-dead precursor/progenitor galaxy-spanning alien who left tech and possibly a mystery behind for Our Hero to crack and whose imminent return after 20,000 - 10 million years will be in about 5 minutes.

This also qualifies for every sci-fi game ever.

174. Bad guy/science officer has British accent.

175

176. Oddly sterile living spaces.

177. projectile weapons

178. actors doing stuff in front of greenscreens

179. Aliens look just like us, except crinkle-cut

180. Jaded ship's doctor.

181. boots built into trousers

182. one character is a smoker

183. its the distant future or past but everyone speaks American English

184. vin diesel's robotic monotone performance kind of works for this movie
http://i.imgur.com/udP9f.png

185. shabby moth-eaten knitwear

186. Goo

187. Space cows

188. Animals from other planets just being named like our animals with the planet stuck on the front, e.g. "Rigellian Hippo"

189. clones are people too, turns out (hint: it's YOU).

190. Hella Orientalism.

191. Noone sees anything odd or inappropriate about naming a passenger carrying spacecraft 'Titanic'.

192. utility data

193. Perfect tidal forces everywhere

194. Humans

195. Orbits shows as perfectly circular.

196. A complete lack of relativistic effects when traveling at or near light speed. Like, after the Enterprise's very first mission, everyone they ever knew on Earth should already have been dead for centuries.

Planet of the Apes tho.

197. Goddamn dirty apes

198. Female voice over the PA Speakers: Three. Two. One. Goodbye.
199. Weapons that need to be charged for a certain number of seconds or minutes. LEDs light up when it's ready for use.
200. A camera flash charging sound; usually directly before laz0r discharge or when some smallish spaceship or flying car is about to launch.

201. Twist ending where the protagonist finds out he's a robot, or a clone, or some bullshit like that.

199b. Ridiculously designed battleship which has to lower shields to fire weapons.

202. Unexpected effects caused by time travel

If the weapons could fire through the shields, those would be pretty bad shields.

203. People are seamlessly able to fly spacecraft they've never seen or imagined before with no prior training

Surely they can make one-directional shields in teh future.

204. we've arrived on the planet..... it seems to be completely populated by women!

205. Newly discovered life form intuitively interfaces with human technology to communicate with humans

if they could make one directional shields in the future, some wise guy would just flip the polarity on the weapons.
also:

206. reversing polarities makes a gadget do the opposite and saves the day.

207. "It's quiet...TOO quiet." *see also "In every mystery/thriller/war film ever"*

208. Hairstyles that are remarkably similar to everyday hairstyles when the movie was made.

Ricardo Montalbán should be in every sci-fi movie ever

209. All in one bodysuits are fashion order of the day

210. asteroid fields/magnetic storms/quasar radiation shit and being forced to hide in them despite the danger

211. The planet we're standing on is actually a gigantic alien.

209a. Or modern business suits with weird metallic ties.

212. Despite incredibly advanced science and technology, some alien races still believe in prophecies about The Chosen One who is destined to either save or destroy them.

^ !! yes!

213. No garbage anywhere, or ... GARBAGE EVERYWHERE!

214. Every planet ventured to, no matter how remote, has oddly the same exact gravitational force as Earth's.

^^^ This is why I think "Mission of Gravity" could be a great movie, animated or CGI.

Plot: after thousands of years of travel, the surviving 1% of the ships crew (not killed in stasis from high-speed collisions with particles, radiation, equipment malfunction; etc) finally land on the destination planet and collapse upon disembarking due to poor health and high gravity. They are unable to move. They slowly starve to death.

215. Ships' artificial gravity works at right angles to the direction of thrust rather than with it, as would make far more sense.

if i'm getting what you mean i think that's a corollary of 216. despite there being no ground by which they need to orient themselves, large spaceships manoeuvre through space pretty much like boats, small spaceships like planes.

217. museums of the 20th century w CRT TVs, parts from automobiles, and copies of Playboy

217a. Characters watching grainy early C20th classic movies.

218. Holograms always kinda suck -- blue or green tint and sorta bendy and static-y.

219. impractical hats

220. Some hippies trippin in the desert riding a bike or a wind-powered vehicle designed to look like the spaceship

221. Completely implausible alien design that wouldn't fit into its own planets ecosystem at all. ie aliens with tentacles coming out of their face for no ecological reason whatsoever

222. Someone is having a game of chess (possibly with a future/space twist).

223. "Oh, my true form would be too strange for your human eyes. What you see now is mere illusion... I can take any form. Perhaps you might prefer ~this~ one. Or maybe ~this~... is more to your liking...?"

loved when South Park parodied that one in their Walmart episode, with that man they had embodying 'the Heart of Walmart' simply changing hats

BEMBTE

85. city of the future resembles 20th century community college campus designed in the brutalist style

― slugbuggy, Sunday, January 6, 2013 1:11 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

love love love this one, keep idly kicking it around as a pretense for a dissertation after watching "Warrior of the Lost World," shot largely in Rome's suburban Corviale housing complex which was still under construction at the time. (Plus some scattered office buildings and stuff.) Would love to know more of the story behind that. When they got permission, were the authorities like, "sure, we'd love to see our bright new social-democratic mega-project represented as a dystopian nightmare-scape occupied by faceless uniformed techno-fascists! And Donald Pleasance!"

Wasn't "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes"- the fourth one, I think- shot in a section of Century City, LA that looked like that?

137. A character cites three historical examples, two of which are from real history, followed by a made-up one from our hypothetical future.

― abanana, Monday, 7 January 2013 03:49 (5 hours ago) Permalink

^good one!

Classic example is the original Star Trek ep "Court Martial" where Kirk is on trial. His lawyer's closing statement goes on about human laws and rights throughout the ages: the Code of Hammurabi, the Magna Carta, the US constitution, the Martian declaration of independence and the "Statutes of Alpha 3"

"The Savage Curtain. " It was Colonel Green, and Kahless the Klingon, not Attila.

First episode of TOS I ever remember seeing.

Oh, good find on Conquest of the Planet of the Apes! UC Irvine campus, apparently.

http://ucisca.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/s01585_007.jpg

And didn't Logan's Run use the Dallas city hall as the above-ground world?

http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/texas/dallas/cityhall/angledistant.jpg

224. Atmospheric report deems planet's air conveniently Earth-like, breathable.

137. A character cites three historical examples, two of which are from real history, followed by a made-up one from our hypothetical future.

― abanana, Monday, 7 January 2013 03:49 (5 hours ago) Permalink

^good one!

Classic example is the original Star Trek ep "Court Martial" where Kirk is on trial. His lawyer's closing statement goes on about human laws and rights throughout the ages: the Code of Hammurabi, the Magna Carta, the US constitution, the Martian declaration of independence and the "Statutes of Alpha 3"

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FamousFamousFictional

225. Helmets and the taking off of them

Thought this thread revival was for this twitter:
https://twitter.com/HardSciFiMovies

(the SF film equivalent of Make a Song Title More Reasonable )

Classic example is the original Star Trek ep "Court Martial" where Kirk is on trial. His lawyer's closing statement goes on about human laws and rights throughout the ages: the Code of Hammurabi, the Magna Carta, the US constitution, the Martian declaration of independence and the "Statutes of Alpha 3"

Watching wing commander, came here to post "unguided hyperspace jumps" and it's the first post in the thread! What a terrible movie.

* heroes sentenced to work in hellish outer-space mines
* planet-overthrowing rebellion consists, as far as we can see, of eight (8) people in random mad-max getup living in one (1) cave
* life-sucking/parasitic/zombie creature that scientists gradually realize is composed of pure energy

A+

lol

Maybe also the triumph of humans vs said protean energy entity (HAL?) vis a vis man’s “humanity,” emotion, instincts, perseverance

Right. Also

Strategic location of and destruction of alien power supply unveils these pretentious, often toga-wearing interstellar intellectuals to be in fact some kind of puny, looked-down-upon life form, some sort of street pigeons of space.

Earlier tonight overheard my girlfriend, an addictive consumer of junk sci fi, angrily exclaim from the next room:

“Come ON! Why is it always a HIVE mind??”

You want maybe a Hadoop Mind?

226 alien looking exactly like a human except with e.g. blue or orange skin

227 puzzle, code, language or devastating situation barely solvable using current Earth technology within 1-24 hours

232. As plot is stalling out, supporting scientist character pops in to report that they've finished running some tests on the creature, comatose survivor, mysterious signal, or strange energy pulse they picked up from the spaceship earlier. They don't quite know what to make of it, but the heroes had better come take a look.
232a. The comatose survivor has finally woken up and is acting very strangely...

233. Breathless back-of-envelope calculations of how quickly a creature that multiplies at this rate could spread to cover the planet.

234 Female 'other' (alien, robot, whatever) turns out to be evil.

235. a robot/android that was created without the capacity for experiencing emotions experiences curiosity and confusion about human emotions, and progressively sadness and despair over the fact that he/she will never know what it is to experience emotions, being an emotionless robot/android, you see.