Dramatic Alien VTOL



"This spaceship takes off really slowly. It's a little awkward."

- Paul

A highlight of many movies, a point where the score, pacing and cinematography will often gang up and try to underscore the drama of the moment, is the Dramatic Alien VTOL where we see an alien spaceship, like a chariot of the gods ascending or descending from heaven, make a Vertical Take-Off or Landing. It will fill the screen as the music swells and slowly take time to hover so that the camera can take Reaction Shots of amazed onlookers. Sometimes there is some kind of added enviromental effect like water shaking, the wind blowing or radio signal static. You might not be able to make out the shape properly due to all the bright lights.

The usual style of a Flying Saucer - somewhat ironically, since the term is derived from description of an unidentified object that moved much like a flat skip rock does, i.e. skimmed horizontally.

The sense of awe is often added to by the craft being of a very unplane like design. It will be unfeasibly massive or perhaps a Spheroid Dropship. It will also possibly be the most expensive visual effects shot in the movie.

A bit of Fridge Logic turns this into a Justified Trope, as aliens without the sufficient advancement to teleport their ship all over the place can't expect every planet they land on to have a runway, and if they can afford single-stage interplanetary travel, they can afford to pour out more juice rather than bother with aerodynamics.

See also Take Me to Your Leader.

Very much related to Power Floats. Often results in Ominous Floating Spaceship.

Film

 * ET the Extraterrestrial's finally going home. The music swells, the bright lights of his egg shaped spacecraft bath him in an orange aura and after the ramp pulls in, it lifts off.
 * It happens in the original Stargate movie when Ra's ship descends on the pyramid. You see them use the pyramid as a landing pad which means the ship must be something that plants itself on a pyramid and uses something that big as a landing pad.
 * Spielberg did a lot to help make this trope. The climax of Close Encounters of the Third Kind has the ship come in first, just as the bright lights at first with the shadow of the Flying Saucer shape eventually becoming clearer as the three notes we've heard through the movie comes through the score. It lands and then the ramp opens and again a crack of light and then the shadows of the aliens themselves, stamping the image of The Greys, in their first appearance on film, in our heads.
 * Spielberg apparently loves this trope, it appears again in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. His buddy George Lucas borrows it for the scenes of the Star Destroyers lifting off in Attack of the Clones. And his buddy Ron Howard used it in Cocoon.
 * Also happens in Back to The Future II, although it was the flying time machine instead of an alien craft that time.
 * The Vulcan ship in Star Trek: First Contact descends in the middle of the night, its landing lights illuminating the awed faces of the humans.
 * A reverse example in the Russian film Hard To Be A God based on a novel by the Strugatsky Brothers, where a climactic battle on a planet of primitive Human Aliens is stopped by everyone dropping to their knees, watching a descending human spaceship, lights and everything.
 * The alien motherships in Independence Day are mistaken for dramatic when they shine giant energy beams over strategic buildings across the world.
 * The giant craft in District 9 subverts this with a permanent, stationary Dramatic Alien VTOL stuck in neutral over Johannesburg due to quarantine of the alien refugees aboard. Oddly, there are no human attempts to hang ladders off it or tow it away. But we do see documentary-style flashbacks to the ship's arrival.
 * Happens in Paul, with plenty of lampshading and some subversion. First is a scene with the characters gazing in amazement and wonder at bright lights flashing and spinning behind the trees, which turns out to be a helicopter carrying the Big Bad. Then when the real alien spaceship comes in, it's apparently so quick and discrete we don't see it actually arrive. But it makes up for it with its dramatic departure, with Paul remarking that it takes a long time to take off, making the final goodbye awkward, and he asks the pilots, "Can't this thing take off any faster?"
 * The ending of Super 8 when the alien ship departs into the night sky.
 * Inverted in the beginning of The Fifth Element. The Mondoshawan ship's arrival is very dramatic, but when it leaves it shoots rapidly up into the sky.

Live Action TV

 * In the episode Wormhole X-Treme in Stargate SG-1, the episode ends on this, with it forming the ending shot of the Show Within the Show as well and with two techies lampshading the fact that it would be the money shot and the most lavish technical effect, likely to get a SFX Emmy. The ascending spacecraft itself, is genuinely impressive (which is part of why the lampshading works so well) with a shape more like a castle than anything aerodynamic, and the exhaust blowing a wind across the sands of the set.
 * Also used in the episode "Thor's Chariot." SG-1 has just been captured by Jaffa on an Asgard protected planet and are being escorted to certain doom when a perfectly clear day suddenly becomes dark and stormy and, as everyone watches in awe (and fear, in the case of the Jaffa), an Asgard mothership appears and begins scooping the Jaffa up in seconds. Thus Thor not only shows off his incredibly powerful ship, but saves the day as well.
 * The pilot of ALF.
 * Dynasty spin-off The Colbys (of all things) attempted one of these, but it was total Narm.

Music

 * Invader by Judas Priest - "I saw a searing flash of light erupt and skyward go"

Western Animation
"Poochie (with Homer Simpson's voice): Itchy, Scratchy, I have something I have to say to you. (Poochie is about to open his mouth, but stops moving) Poochie: (with Roger Meyers Jr.'s voice): I have to go now. My planet needs me! (Poochie's cel is immediately pulled off the screen, followed by a title card saying "Note: Poochie died on his way back to his home planet") Bart Simpson: Wow! Poochie's from another planet! Krusty the Clown: Guess what kids?! Poochie's dead! (kids all start cheering)"
 * This is how they actually "kill off" Poochie in The Itchy and Scratchy Show.


 * An episode of South Park where an alien ship descends in the town, an obvious homage to Spielberg.