Face-Off: They Live vs. Society

This isn’t fair. John Carpenter cast Roddy Piper as his lead character, making him nearly impossible to beat. Piper plays drifter John Nada, who comes to Los Angeles looking for work and instead ends up blowing the lid off an alien conspiracy. He’s a tough guy who always has a one-liner at the ready and will do what he can to help others and stand up to oppression. He is stunningly proactive in that regard; within minutes of realizing something bad is going on, he’s toting a shotgun and striking back. By the way, if Nada tells you to do something you damn well better do it, because he is very insistent.

Nada is struggling. He’s homeless, he’s trying to find good work. Still, he believes in the promise of America and is sure that good things will happen if he plays by the rules. He starts to realize there’s something sinister within the system when he sees hacked TV signals that are being sent from a nearby church – a man speaks to the camera, warning that there is a ruling class that are keeping the regular people down. Within that church, Nada finds a box full of sunglasses, and when he puts on a pair they give him the ability to see the subliminal messages that the oppressive rulers have hidden on every sign, and to see members of this ruling class for what they truly are. From that point on, it is his goal to stop them.

The rulers are humanoid alien invaders that Nada describes as having a “formaldehyde face”. If you wear the sunglasses, you can see that they don’t look like people, they have strange skull faces. These aliens are everywhere – they are in leadership positions, they are the authorities, they are the rich and famous, they are television newscasters. One-on-one, they’re no more dangerous than the average human, but there are a lot of them out there, and they are in powerful positions. They’re also getting help from humans who are willing to sell out their own planet and species just to expand their bank accounts.

With a signal being sent through TV sets, the alien overlords are keeping the public in a level of consciousness that resembles sleep, controlling people’s minds. They want to destroy the middle class, make people poor, take away human rights, fuel racial inequality. Their goal is to keep people oblivious and fighting amongst each other while draining the Earth of its natural resources and destroying the environment. Once our planet is no longer of any use, they will move on to do the same to another planet.

There is a ragtag group of resistance fighters who have seen through the signal, and the aliens have told the public that they’re a dangerous bunch of Communists. They’re not that much help in the grand scheme of things because they’re no match for the might of the aliens. Nada is able to recruit a fellow construction worker to join him in his fight, although he has a hell of a time doing that. If the aliens are going to be stopped, it really all comes down to Nada.