They Live

A drifter, credited mononymously as "Nada", arrives in Los Angeles. While out on the street, he sees a street preacher warning that “they” have recruited the rich and powerful to control humanity. Nada takes a job on a construction site and befriends fellow construction worker Frank, who leads him to a shanty town soup kitchen and its leader, Gilbert.

That night, a hacker takes over television broadcasts, claiming that scientists had discovered signals that were enslaving the population and keeping them in a dream-like state, and that the only way to stop it is to shut off the signal at its source. Those watching the broadcast complain of headaches. Nada secretly follows Gilbert and the street preacher into a nearby church, and discovers them meeting with a group that includes the hacker. He sees scientific equipment and cardboard boxes inside, and hears Gilbert worrying that the Hoffman lenses they made won’t be enough without "strong people" to help them. Nada is discovered by the blind preacher and escapes.

That night, the shantytown and church are destroyed in a police raid, and the hacker and preacher are beaten by riot police. The following day, Nada retrieves one of the boxes from the church and takes a pair of sunglasses from it, hiding the rest in a trash can. Nada discovers that the sunglasses make the world appear black and white, but also reveal subliminal messages in the media to obey, consume, reproduce, and conform. The glasses also reveal that many people are actually aliens with skull-like faces.

When Nada mocks an alien woman at a supermarket, she alerts other aliens via a wristwatch. Nada leaves, but is confronted by two alien cops. He kills them and steals their weapons. Nada enters a bank, where he sees that several of the employees and customers are aliens. After taunting them with the phrase "I have come here to chew bubble gum, and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubble gum", he then kills several aliens with a shotgun and escapes by taking Cable 54 employee Holly Thompson hostage. At Holly’s home, Nada tries to get her to try on the glasses, but she knocks him out of the window and down a hill, and then calls the police.

Nada retrieves the box of sunglasses from a garbage truck before Frank meets Nada to give him his paycheck. Nada tries to get Frank to put on a pair of the glasses, but Frank thinks Nada is a murderer and wants nothing to do with him to protect his family. Frank and Nada get into a long brawl, after which Frank is too tired to prevent Nada from putting the sunglasses on him. After seeing the aliens and a flying saucer, Frank agrees to go into hiding with Nada.

Frank and Nada find Gilbert, who leads them to a meeting of the anti-alien movement. At the meeting, they are given contact lenses to replace the sunglasses, and learn that the aliens are using global warming to make Earth more like their own planet, and are depleting the Earth’s resources for their own gain. They also learn that the aliens have been bribing humans to become collaborators, promoting them into positions of power. Holly arrives at the meeting, apologizing to Nada, with information on the source of the signal. However, the meeting is raided by police and the vast majority of those present are killed, with the survivors (including Frank, Nada, and Holly) scattering into the night as the police surround the area. Nada and Frank are cornered by police in an alley, but they accidentally activate an alien wristwatch, opening a portal that they escape through.

The portal takes them to the aliens' spaceport, where they discover a meeting of aliens and human collaborators, celebrating the elimination of the "terrorists". They are approached by a former drifter, now a collaborator, who gives them a tour of the facility. He leads them to the basement of Cable 54, the source of the signal, which is protected by armed guards. Nada and Frank find Holly and fight their way to the transmitter on the roof, but Holly kills Frank, revealing that she is a collaborator. Nada kills Holly and destroys the transmitter, but is fatally wounded by aliens in a helicopter. Nada gives the aliens the middle finger as he dies.

With the transmitter destroyed, humans all over the world discover the aliens hiding among them.

• Roddy Piper as John Nada
• Keith David as Frank Armitage
• Meg Foster as Holly Thompson
• Raymond St. Jacques as Street Preacher
• George Buck Flower as Drifter/Collaborator
• Peter Jason as Gilbert
• Sy Richardson as Black Revolutionary
• Susan Blanchard as Ingenue
• Norman Alden as Construction Foreman

The political elements of the film are derived from John Carpenter's growing distaste with the ever-increasing commercialization of 1980s popular culture and politics, particularly the influence of Reaganomics, the economic policies promoted by U.S. President Ronald Reagan.[2] He remarked, "The picture's premise is that the 'Reagan Revolution' is run by aliens from another galaxy. Free enterprisers from outer space have taken over the world, and are exploiting Earth as if it's a third world planet. As soon as they exhaust all our resources, they'll move on to another world... I began watching TV again. I quickly realized that everything we see is designed to sell us something. ... It's all about wanting us to buy something. The only thing they want to do is take our money." To this end, Carpenter thought of sunglasses as being the tool to seeing the truth, which "is seen in black and white. It's as if the aliens have colorized us. That means, of course, that Ted Turner is really a monster from outer space."[nb 2] The director commented on the alien threat in an interview: "They want to own all our businesses. A Universal executive asked me, 'Where's the threat in that? We all sell out every day.' I ended up using that line in the film." The aliens were deliberately made to look like ghouls, according to Carpenter, who said, "The creatures are corrupting us, so they, themselves, are corruptions of human beings."[3]

Carpenter has rejected neo-Nazi and white supremacist claims that the film "is an allegory for Jewish control of the world," instead noting the film "is about yuppies and unrestrained capitalism".[4][5][6]

Music for the film was composed by John Carpenter & Alan Howarth.[7]

The film opened on November 4, 1988, and debuted at #1 at the North American box office grossing $4.8 million during its opening weekend.[1][8] The film spent two weeks in the top ten.[9] The film's original release date, advertised in promotional material as October 21, 1988, was pushed back two weeks to avoid direct competition with Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (coincidentally, a sequel to a Carpenter film).

Rotten Tomatoes gave the film an approval rating of 86% based on 65 reviews; the average rating is 7.28/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "A politically subversive blend of horror and sci fi, They Live is an underrated genre film from John Carpenter."[10] Metacritic gave the film a weighted average rating of 52 out of 100, based on 10 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[11]

In his review for the Chicago Reader, Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote, "Carpenter's wit and storytelling craft make this fun and watchable, although the script takes a number of unfortunate shortcuts, and the possibilities inherent in the movie's central concept are explored only cursorily."[12] Jay Carr, writing for The Boston Globe, said "[O]nce Carpenter delivers his throwback-to-the-'50s visuals, complete with plump little B-movie flying saucers, and makes his point that the rich are fascist fiends, They Live starts running low on imagination and inventiveness", but felt that "as sci-fi horror comedy, They Live, with its wake-up call to the world, is in a class with Terminator and RoboCop, even though its hero doesn't sport bionic biceps".[13] AllMovie contributor Paul Brenner gave the film three and a half out of five stars.[14]

In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, "Since Mr. Carpenter seems to be trying to make a real point here, the flatness of They Live is doubly disappointing. So is its crazy inconsistency, since the film stops trying to abide even by its own game plan after a while."[15] Richard Harrington wrote in The Washington Post, "it's just John Carpenter as usual, trying to dig deep with a toy shovel. The plot for They Live is full of black holes, the acting is wretched, the effects are second-rate. In fact, the whole thing is so preposterous it makes V look like Masterpiece Theatre."[16] Rick Groen, in The Globe and Mail, wrote, "the movie never gets beyond the pop Orwell premise. The social commentary wipes clean with a dry towelette – it's not intrusive and not pedantic, just lighter-than-air."[17]

The 2012 documentary film The Pervert's Guide to Ideology, presented by the Slovene philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek, starts with an analysis of the film They Live. Žižek uses the main trope of the film, the wearing of the special sun-glasses reveals the truth of that which is perceived, to explain his definition of ideology. Žižek states:

They Live is definitely one of the forgotten masterpieces of the Hollywood Left. … The sunglasses function like a critique of ideology. They allow you to see the real message beneath all the propaganda, glitz, posters and so on. … When you put the sunglasses on you see the dictatorship in democracy, the invisible order which sustains your apparent freedom.[18]

In 2010, there was development on a remake of the film, with Carpenter in a producer role. In 2011, Matt Reeves signed on to direct and write the screenplay. The project also shifted away from being a remake of They Live to a re-adaptation of 8 O'Clock in the Morning, ditching the satirical and political elements.[29] Since then, there have been no new announcements.

Wikiquote has quotations related to: They Live

• They Live at John Carpenter's official movie site
• They Live at IMDb
• They Live at Rotten Tomatoes