Review written by JM Strasser
SciFi film
I attended the showing of They Live 1988, a famous John Carpenter movie and the first entry on my calendar. I had only seen bits of this film before, and I was eager to experience it in a theater with other scifi junkies around me. I appreciate other movies by Carpenter; The Thing 1982, Village of the Damned 1995, and Firestarter 1984, but my favorite is Escape from New York 1981. I enjoyed the experience of seeing They Live, but I found problems that puzzled me. I looked up and read the original story, Eight O’Clock in the Morning, which had some issues, too. However, They Live didn’t seem to live up to the incredible storytelling I had found in Carpenter’s other works.
George Nada, the hero, sees the world as it is. Aliens around him are sending messages that enslave people. These beings give humans subliminal messages, auditory and visual– “consume– marry and breed– conform.” (It is often quoted as consume- breed- conform, interesting rewriting.)
I have three issues with the film and two with the original story (used to explain the movie). First; the unintended comedy of the fight scene in the film. My fellow moviegoers laughed. The scene was pretty long, and the noises the two men made seemed dubbed, which made it seem cartoonish. It would have been much better, at least for a serious scene, not to dub those sounds. Carpenter jokes, “It has a big fight in the middle that has nothing to do with anything!”*
Second;, I have some problems with the violence (an expression I shudder to use) in both the film and the original piece. Those fantastic scifi movies like The Terminator, The Matrix, The Fifth Element, and Robocop have what we lovers of the genre like to call action. Legion with Paul Bettany (a movie very close to scifi) is also a very violent action horror, but this movie had an ensemble cast and an intriguing storyline. I had enough background in these movies to feel I was fighting along with the characters.
They Live’s big scene where Nada stumbles into a bank, sees the aliens, and kills them, leaving the humans alone, is intense. I know what Nada is fighting because I see THEM with Nada, but his impulse to shoot them seems irrational; it’s too quick. He does come in fully loaded after encountering two hostile cops/aliens, so there is that.
In the original story, Nada encounters an alien at his girlfriend’s apartment and kills it. Then Nada goes to the alien’s apartment and finds human bones and huge fat slugs in tanks (the alien’s children), showing that these aliens are bad for humans and the danger will worsen. If that was the first encounter, I would have been very sympathetic to killing them all on sight, but this took place two-thirds of the way through the story. I also needed a reason to kill the alien at the girlfriend’s door. Are all aliens bad? George has killed aliens at this point, but I feel this scene shows a good reason besides the aliens propensity to try to arrest or just plain kill him. He needs more information.
Third, the actions of the characters. In the movie’s final scene, Nada dies by being shot, not from his heart-stopping at 8 a.m. (the cause of his death in the original story). The time limit idea would be more intriguing and bittersweet, making Nada a content hero, frustrating the aliens that he completed his quest even if they “got” him.
In the original story, George Nada suddenly understands everything when he emerges from a hypnotic trance. Why? I can think of some explanations, but they are not backed up or even mentioned.
As the story progresses, Nada receives an order over the phone to stop his heart at eight a.m. the next day, so he has those hours to do something about this enslavement problem, or so the reviews say. Still, Nada isn’t shown thinking or talking about this time problem.
On top of that, if Nada finds a way to not be influenced by the aliens and feels he has accomplished that, why does this order come to fruition? It is a great surprise ending, but why? Avoiding the alien influence enough to shut them down was not enough to save George. It is ironic and I just want to know why.
As I researched They Live, I began to see some aspects I was unaware of to properly judge and appreciate this film. One was the theme of the movie. John Carpenter said They Live was a “primal scream against Reaganomics.”* It is accurate that people in power tend to want to increase that power, which is no different today than it was back then, even if the parties in power are switched. However, the era had positive aspects; the whole country’s standard of living rose. This issue makes the movie relevant today.
Over commercialization, Carpenter said, “it’s all about wanting to buy something,”** This shows how much he disliked what he saw all around him. Still, it signifies a thriving free economy, and two parties are involved: consumers and the advertisers. Consumers are free to make their own choices, not blindly follow instructions. I think the movie’s message is that you must put on the sunglasses (how the aliens are revealed in the film) and figure it out yourself. Nobody can do it for you.
The price of freedom is others will do things you don’t like. They can continue within limits if they don’t make you do those things.
Next, it turns out the fight scene in They Live is lauded. The lead was a Canadian professional wrestler looking for movie roles, and his co-star Keith David, an impressively large and competent-looking man who seemed to know his way around a fight. Mr. David was in another of my beloved films, The Puppet Masters, where he got very aggressive. I am not surprised that there was some skill in the conception and execution of this scene. I have a feeling I don’t know too much about what actual fighting looks like, but duking it out was impressive.
The long length of the scene made me wonder if two strong men could do this for that long and not be seriously injured. After a few minutes, it began to look like a parody to me, but as I said, evidently, it wasn’t. I suspect the sounds were authentic but added with increased volume so you could hear it. The fact that movie production generally tends to class such things up could be why I thought it was a parody. I also don’t know how a real fight sounds.
An idea I missed in the movie is when Nada comes across some sunglasses (Carpenter had them left over from another movie), and he sees the creatures and the messages. I think this is a more logical explanation of why he knows what is happening than the hypnotic trance. Using the sunglasses, we see the aliens and their ‘messages’ in black & white. It gives a different impression, like viewing another dimension. I looked at the view through the sunglasses and thought of it in terms of cheap special effects, not with this enhanced idea.
An inconsistent aspect of the actor playing George Nada is his persona. In the original story, George Nada is an old man the reader assumes no one pays attention to until that fateful day. Nada is a good name for this Joe Blow, especially in the short story, but the movie changes him. Nada becomes a beefy young man who never has that persona or body of a person who fades into the background (though Carpenter tries). This explains why he can fight so dramatically but begs the question that no one noticed him until this happened. A similar issue for Total Recall 1990. My problems with the movie’s fight and bank scene could be an example of the 80’s fun using strong firepower to save the day. It makes me wonder if Carpenter intended to have some parody or a jab at society’s way of solving problems or just wanted to capture the 80s. I don’t know. Roddy Piper, the actor playing Nada and in his first movie role, was from a profession that makes physical moves in an over-the-top fashion. This may have been Carpenter’s intention and then why he hired Piper.
Is it a curse (or a joy) that I tend to pick apart writing? I think I would have been frustrated if I had seen the movie when it came out, but I wouldn’t have known the reasons for my displeasure. Knowing can alleviate stress, and I find it very interesting. In the original piece, because it was a short story, there isn’t much time for much fleshing out of character or storyline; there’s a setup and then the surprise death. Using that in the movie (instead of Nada being shot and killed) would have worked better to bring a touch of reality. You can win, but the villain will have some victories.
*Taken from an Interview with John Carpenter By Jordan Farley published August 13, 2021
** John Carpenter interview with Starlog 1988
©JM Strasser September 11, 2023 All Rights Reserved