They Live Among Us

Since we’re going over films that I haven’t seen before, but really should have, look no further than Alien Nation. I will admit that I’ve skipped this film in the past because of the long tail the franchise has had. I don’t have a problem with a deep and extensive franchise (just look at my love for Doctor WhoThe longest running sci-fi franchise (at least in terms of sheer seasons), Doctor Who has seen cancelations, relaunches, and reboots, but the core of the series remains the same: a madman in a box traveling through time and space.), but in the case of Alien Nation, it was a series that I only really noticed as a little kid, and my little kid brain said that it was old and uninteresting, so I never bothered with it.

This, of course, ignores the fact that before it was a television series, Alien Nation was a film, and a moderately successful one. It spawned not just the following television series (with different actors, of course, which ran for a season), and five television films to follow, but also a series of comics and novels as well. By all accounts is a decently successful franchise that just about any nerd at the time could latch onto. Oh, and the film was written by Rockne S. O'Bannon who, among various projects he’s worked on, created Farscape, which I also love.

So, realistically, there was no reason why my little kid brain should have hated Alien Nation… and yet it did. I’ve ignored the whole franchise for close to forty years now, but thanks to the power of random queues on streaming services, I was finally prompted to suck it up and watch the original film that spawned it all. And, yeah, it’s pretty good. I wouldn’t call it incredibly groundbreaking now, although that is because I waited forty years to watch it and a lot of sci-fi has come along since, building on concepts the film was tackling. But for a buddy cop action film featuring an alien in a lead role, along with a story about racism and hate, this film does a pretty solid job at tackling its subject.

Matthew Sykes (James Caan) is an L.A. detective working his beat in a city that now has to contend with “Newcomers”. These are aliens from a ship that crashed on Earth, former slaves who have been freed by landing on this new planet. Accepted into Earth culture by the U.N., the Newcomers (aka “Slags” by racist humans) have worked their way into society, finding their own niche within the city as they try to become normal citizens in this strange and different world. They love Earth, and the freedom it affords, but not all humans are so easily accepting of the aliens.

Unfortunately not all is right in the city. Sykes and his partner, Bill Tuggle (Roger Aaron Brown), get caught up in a shootout between a couple of Newcomer criminals and a Newcomer convenience store owner. In the process, Tuggle is shot and killed, while one of the Newcomers escapes. Coming into the work the next day, despite everyone telling him not to, Sykes decides to take on the newest detective in the precinct, Sam Francisco (Mandy Patinkin). Sykes reasons that with Sam (who he condescendingly calls “George”) by his side, he can get the other Newcomers to talk and he can track down his partner’s killers. But in the process he and Sam are going to find themselves deep in a conspiracy that goes far beyond shootings and petty theft.

Alien Nation has two goals in mind with its story, but I wouldn’t exactly call it groundbreaking in its handling of either matter. On the one hand it’s a buddy cop thriller which just so happens to feature an extraterrestrial as one of the two members of the duo. That is the most interesting part of the dynamic as, in all other respects, it’s a pretty stodgy police procedural. Sykes takes Sam on only so he can get what he needs from the alien, and Sam has to deal not just with a partner that is racist but also a whole precinct that would be perfectly happy if he stopped coming to work… or existing at all. It’s the usual racist cop bullshit, dressed up this time with an alien instead of a Black person, or a Latino, or (if we want to reference another work clearly playing on the same themes as Alien Nation, but worse) an Orc (from Bright).

The cop procedural storyline isn’t all that interesting on its own. Two cops go on the trail of a murderer, only to find that it ties into drugs, and the conspiracy is led by a rich and powerful individual. It’s a standard dime a dozen storyline, and if you swapped out the extraterrestrial cop for a crazy wildman cop you’d have Lethal Weapon. Hell, at one point Sam even goes a little crazy and takes on shades of the wildman cop persona, so you can sort of feel where the influences were coming from.

I’m sure the police procedural aspect was thrown into the film to get a studio interested. Trying to sell a film about Newcomers landing on Earth and finding resistance as they work their way into society isn’t exactly the kind of easy to digest, sexy plotline a studio exec would sign off on. But a police procedural in the vein of Lethal Weapon, that just so happens to have an alien in the buddy cop dynamic, that’s sexy enough for an exec to take notice. The racial allegory is stitched onto a more marketable idea, and we get this film.

Although honestly the film doesn’t really have much interesting to say about the racial dynamics in the film, either. Newcomers take the place of whatever minority you want to substitute them for, and because they exist, any other racial storyline is cast aside. Has racism vanished otherwise, and now all of humanity is united in hating Newcomers? That seems unrealistic, but the shallow view the film takes on hate leads you to think that would be the case. It’s not addressed outside of how people hate the Newcomers, so you’d think one form of racism replaced another, even if it isn’t realistic.

The most interesting aspect of the film is the world building. I like the thought that went into all the ideas to set the Newcomers apart and flesh out their backstory. Slaves controlled via a drug by another race (that we don’t see) who threw off their oppressors and crashed on Earth. They’re violently allergic to salt water. They get drunk on curdled milk. They seem to be composed, biologically, in such a way that humans and Newcomers could mate, but there are so many differences between them that they aren’t just humans with slightly different skin. The world building is fantastic, and while we don’t get a ton of it in the film, what we do get makes the world feel far more lived in and real.

I can absolutely see why this film spawned all the other works that are associated in the franchise. The film is very watchable, powered by two solid actors doing what they do, but there’s no denying that the basic story isn’t pretty standard for a cop procedural, outside of those worldbuilding elements. There’s a core idea here I really like, and it powers an otherwise basic (if not terrible) film. I wish the main story were more interesting because then this film would have absolutely been amazing but, for what it is, Alien Nation is watchable.

Now I think I actually have to look into the rest of the franchise. With any luck, the other works are even better than this first film.