What is it about?
This article looks at a particular kind of monster that turns up again and again in science fiction and horror — one I call the "monster of fixity." Unlike the shape-shifting, boundary-blurring monsters we often associate with horror, these are rigid, armoured, unchanging figures with a strict code of honour or hierarchy. Think of the insectoid Martians buried under London in Quatermass and the Pit (1958–59), or the alien hunter in Predator (1987). I identify six recurring traits shared by these monsters, things like a phallic, armoured design, resistance to time and decay, and the way they sideline female characters (specifically tropes of femininity in favor of emblematic woman and heroic men), and show how these traits work together to reassert order, authority, and traditional hierarchies by the end of the story. Rather than threatening the status quo, these monsters end up shoring it up: they create a crisis that only a "strong man" hero figure can resolve, leaving existing power structures more entrenched than before.
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Why is it important?
Monsters in film are one of the ways culture processes anxiety, whether about war, empire, technology, or social change. This article argues that a specific strand of these stories does something politically significant, it takes moments of real instability, like imperial decline, technological upheaval, or shifting gender roles, and channels them into a reassuring fantasy where a hero restores order. That matters because this narrative pattern isn't confined to 1950s British television or 1980s action films, I trace the same structure through to recent releases like Predator: Badlands (2025), M3GAN (2022), and Titane (2021), suggesting it's a durable and resurgent cultural template, one that resonates uncomfortably with the rhetoric of contemporary "strongman" politics.
Perspectives
This text names a specific mode of monstrosity that I have been developing across various peer reviewed texts; and which has its origins in my PhD thesis. What draws me to this material is the way these films dress up conservative, even reactionary, ideas in the costume of radical spectacle, a giant armoured alien feels transgressive, but its narrative function is often the opposite. I wanted to give that pattern a name and a clear set of diagnostic features, partly so it can be recognised more easily when it resurfaces in new franchises. I'm also careful in the article to set this pattern against other traditions, Afrofuturist, postcolonial, feminist, and queer/trans readings of the monstrous, which use similar figures to imagine transformation and liberation rather than restoration of hierarchy. The "monster of fixity" isn't the only way monsters can work in genre fiction; it's a conservative use of a form that has much more radical potential elsewhere.
Dr Michael Eden
University of the Arts London
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Monsters and fixity, Science Fiction Film & Television, July 2026, Liverpool University Press,
DOI: 10.3828/sfftv.2026.12.
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