Alien Nation (film)

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Alien Nation
Alien Nation Promotional Movie Poster
Directed by	Graham Baker
Produced by	Gale Anne Hurd Richard Kobritz
Written by	Rockne S. O'Bannon
Starring	James Caan Mandy Patinkin Terence Stamp Kevyn Major Howard Leslie Bevis Francis X. McCarthy Roger Aaron Brown
Music by	Curt Sobel
Cinematography	Adam Greenberg
Editing by	Kent Beyda
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date(s)	October 7, 1988
Running time	91 min.
Country	USA
Language	English
Budget	$16,000,000 (estimated)
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Alien Nation is a 1988 science fiction movie written by Rockne S. O'Bannon and directed by Graham Baker. It stars James Caan, Mandy Patinkin, Terence Stamp, and Kevyn Major Howard.

The movie's plot concept later became the basis for a television series of the same name, which premiered in 1989. A book series began in 1993. In the late 1990s, five television movies were made as a continuation of the television series.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The movie is set in 1991, three years after a flying saucer bearing enslaved aliens (the "Newcomers") has crash-landed in the Mojave Desert. Los Angeles becomes a new home for the aliens, who take, or in some cases are assigned, Earth-like names (such as "Rudyard Kipling"). Caan plays Los Angeles police detective Matthew Sykes, who loses his partner when they try to stop two Newcomers in what appears to be a robbery of a small Newcomer-owned store. The next day Sykes' commanding officer informs his squad that they will have to work with the newly promoted Newcomer detective, Sam Francisco, played by Patinkin, and if someone doesn't volunteer to work with him the commanding officer shall choose someone. Sykes volunteers to work with Francisco, feeling that as he investigates crimes involving Newcomers he will find opportunities to also investigate his partner's death, which he is officially forbidden to do.

Sykes tells Sam that the name given him by an immigration official is embarrassing, and calls his partner George. As the pair continue to be assigned cases which mainly deal with Newcomer criminals and victims and as the cases progress, Sykes is able to learn to appreciate his partner.

The main villain of the film is an ambitious Newcomer businessman who plans to sell a drug which was used to pacify the Newcomers when they were slaves.

[edit] Analysis

The Tenctonese/Newcomers have been bred to work in a wide variety of environments, readily adapting to different conditions. As a result, they rapidly assimilate American culture and even become viewed by some human characters in the film as an economic threat when they begin to very quickly advance through the education system and workforce. The film (and the subsequent television series even more so) is a metaphor for immigration, assimilation, suspicion of new arrivals and caste systems.