Alien Nation is a 1988 American science fiction action film written by Rockne S. O'Bannon and directed by Graham Baker. The ensemble cast features James Caan, Mandy Patinkin, and Terence Stamp. Its initial popularity inaugurated the beginning of the Alien Nation media franchise. The film depicts the assimilation of the "Newcomers", an alien race settling in Los Angeles, much to the initial dismay of the local population. The plot integrates the neo-noir and buddy cop film genres with a science fiction theme, centering on the relationship between a veteran police investigator (Caan) and an extraterrestrial (Patinkin), the first Newcomer detective. The duo probe a criminal underworld while attempting to solve a homicide. Alien Nation explores murder, discrimination, and science fiction.
The film was a co-production between American Entertainment Partners and 20th Century Fox, which distributed it theatrically. Alien Nation was released in the United States on October 7, 1988, and grossed over $32 million worldwide, becoming a moderate financial success. The film was met with mixed critical reviews before its theatrical release, although it has since gained a cult following. The motion picture spawned a short-lived television series, five television films, a set of comic books, and a number of novels, all continuing the development of the setting and its fictional alien culture.
Plot In 1988, a spaceship bearing 300,000 enslaved aliens known as "Newcomers" lands in the Mojave Desert. By 1991, they have settled in Los Angeles and some of them have joined the Los Angeles Police Department. Detective Matthew Sykes's partner is killed in a shootout with several Newcomers who are robbing a store; they also kill the Newcomer store owner. Sykes's superior, Captain Warner, informs his squad they will work with the newly promoted Newcomer detective Sam Francisco. Sykes volunteers to investigate a homicide with Francisco, hoping to also advance his personal agenda. The two do not work well together, conflicting over language and cultural differences.
Francisco's detection of an abnormality during an autopsy related to the robbery leads Sykes and Francisco to a nightclub to question a Newcomer who is murdered by a Newcomer criminal ring. The men find themselves warming to each other during the investigation. They share personal and species-specific information and get drunk together.
Harcourt is launching a scheme to exploit the Newcomers by mass-producing Jabroka, a drug previously used to pacify Newcomers during their enslavement; it has no intoxicating effect on humans. The autopsy abnormality noticed by Francisco is revealed as a visual sign of the drug's influence. Harcourt murdered multiple early-stage partners to consolidate profits to himself. When Sykes and Francisco locate the drug lab, Francisco destroys the lab in a rage and explains that the mere existence of the drug would risk the precarious existence of every Newcomer on Earth.
Sykes and Francisco locate Harcourt, who is negotiating a timetable for the release of Jabroka. The detectives engage in a car chase with Harcourt and his henchman Kipling, ending in a head-on collision which injures all parties. Harcourt escapes on foot; when cornered by Sykes, he takes an apparent overdose of Jabroka and collapses, seemingly dead. After the destruction of the remaining Jabroka is destroyed, Francisco reacts in shock when Sykes relates Harcourt's apparent demise; he explains that an overdose would cause a Newcomer to mutate into a larger, more dangerous form.
Harcourt escapes from the coroner's vehicle. Sykes and Francisco catch up with him near a fishing pier. During his fight with Sykes, Harcourt is knocked into the water, and pulls Sykes into the water as well. Harcourt's body disintegrates due to direct contact with salt water. Francisco commandeers a police helicopter and rescues Sykes; his arm suffers salt water damage. When the pilot asks what was in the water with Sykes, Sykes dismisses the question using a pejorative term for Newcomers.
Sykes and Francisco, now friends and partners, attend Sykes's daughter's wedding together.
Cast
Production Origins and themes One out of twenty to twenty-five stories received each week by 20th Century Fox in 1988, Rockne S. O'Bannon's original screenplay for Alien Nation was submitted as a spec–script to producer Gale Anne Hurd. The agency representing the storyline asked the production staff to view it as quickly as possible due to it also being submitted to other film studios. Both Hurd and her director of development Ellen Collett had the same initial response, seeing the script as a real page-turner. According to Hurd, what really interested her about the film's story was the whole approach to the immigrant setting and the extrapolation of that to a science fiction setting. The genre of science fiction, in regards to representing aliens, tends to usually be in the form of one or two beings as shown on network series like Star Trek. Typically, large numbers of stand-ins were not common in film since Planet of the Apes twenty years earlier. Working with co-producer Richard Kobritz, Hurd secured funding from Fox Studios and began casting an experienced makeup team for the creation of the alien society.
Later, Hurd contacted cinematographer Adam Greenberg at his home in Israel to work on the production. Caught by surprise, Greenberg recalled, "I was vacationing on the Dead Sea in a kibbutz (it was 125 degrees) and I got a call from Gale. That was the last thing to expect there."
Though mostly an action movie, Alien Nation was somewhat of a throwback to other similar genre films such as Planet of the Apes and Silent Running. The alien Newcomers are relegated to a second-class status. Like other minorities, they live in their own neighborhoods, frequent their own clubs, and develop their own underground. Following the murder of a policeman, a human must partner up with an alien to solve the murder. Their uneasy alliance creates a social mistrust, dealing with issues such as prejudice and racism. By the end of the saga, the two completely different humanoids have combined their talents and overcome their social barriers to complete their task.
Makeup
Although several makeup effects companies were considered, 20th Century Fox chose Stan Winston Studios. Winston was not directly involved in the pre-production, but left the task to his top artists–Alec Gillis, Shane Mahan, John Rosengrant, Tom Woodruff, and Shannon Shea. Producer Gale Anne Hurd commented on creating the foundation for the makeup setting saying, "The primary problem was how to sell an alien race that was humanoid without making it look like people in rubber suits—and how to make it affordable. We knew there was going to be a lot of makeup application time and removal time—that was a given."
Mike Spatola was head of the painting crew for the mask design. Hairless by design, the coordinators felt the masks should have spotted marks where hair would be present on humans. Each alien headpiece had to be custom painted with a spotting pattern to match every backup secondary piece used for individual characters. Each of the actors who played aliens also had their hands painted in a spot pattern, as an original plan of supplying them with appliances for hand pieces was discarded.
After the generic alien concept was finalized, each of the effects coordinators worked with a specific actor. In trying to emphasize the uniqueness of the characters, Mahan commented, "We wanted the audience to be able to recognize the actors immediately. They were all so good, it would have been a shame to cover them up completely."
For the final dramatic scene involving Harcourt's demise, the rigged effects were handled in two stages. The first stage involved a dissolving head and body, while the second stage incorporated a flesh-less arm thrusting out of seawater. Rosengrant noted, "While the dissolving makeup had to look extreme, it also had to appear realistic within the limits of the alien anatomy Winston's crew had designed. We wanted to avoid the amorphous 'blob-of-blood' look you see in so many of these slasher and monster pictures. We wanted to be able to see Harcourt's bone structure rather than just the glob hanging off of it." For the visual appearance he added, "Of course, we did use methocel slime to make it wet and nasty-looking, but the basic understructure was rooted in anatomy." For Harcourt's facial disintegration, the coordinators came up with a foam rubber base makeup superimposed with a layer of gelatin appliances.
Set design and filming
Numerous interior and exterior locations used to suit the needs of the story were filmed in Los Angeles, California. Within a five-month shooting schedule, three weeks were spent shooting at studio locations. Production designer Jack Collis explained how the film integrates a minority group (the aliens) into the film, saying "The idea was to bring in this alien group, assimilate them into our society, and get them a locale that would be a part of Los Angeles, ... It would look almost as if a group of Koreans or Vietnamese that had moved into the area. This group would have established their own community. They have their own language, their own signs." The film crew installed fictional alien language signs along Western Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard. Graffiti was also carefully planned out. The film crew did their own painting and even took a big blank concrete wall and inserted alien graffiti for a scene involving an early physical confrontation between the main characters. Collis even mused how at one point, store owners liked, and wouldn't want to take down, the alien graffiti used during filming on their properties.
As scripted by writer Rockne S. O'Bannon, Alien Nation was originally called, Future Tense. The film took some of its concept from the film In the Heat of the Night, with science fiction elements integrated in the plot. During production, the film had a working title called, Outer Heat, an amalgam of In the Heat of the Night and the 1960s science fiction TV series, The Outer Limits. Jack Collis emphasized that the film was not a "space epic" but more of an action film. He admitted, "We did build a spaceship, but it's a simple thing that you see on a TV monitor describing the landing of the aliens several years ago, before they became assimilated into our society. It gives us a background but not a lot of detail,..." Collis noted that the film was even "reminiscent of the work I did in Cocoon." An earlier draft of the film was actually written by director James Cameron in 1987, but his name however, was not credited in the final cut of the film. One conceit of the script was that immigrations officials ran out of names for the 300,000 aliens, and began to name them after familiar locations and famous people. The original name for Mandy Patinkin's character Sam Francisco was George Jetson, but three days before the start of shooting, Hanna-Barbera wouldn't allow the name to be used.