{"id":42366,"date":"2026-08-08T07:08:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T11:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=42366"},"modified":"2026-08-07T22:36:41","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T02:36:41","slug":"alien-nation-1988","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=42366","title":{"rendered":"“Alien Nation” (1988) starring James Caan & Mandy Patinkin \/ Z-View"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Alien Nation\u00a0 <\/i>(1988)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Director:\u00a0 Graham Baker<\/strong><\/p>\n

Screenplay: Rockne S. O’Bannon<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stars:\u00a0 James Caan, Mandy Patinkin, Terence Stamp, Kevyn Major Howard, Leslie Bevis, Peter Jason, Jeff Kober, Roger Aaron Brown \u00a0<\/strong>and Brian Thompson<\/strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tagline: Los Angeles, 1991. They have come to Earth to live among us. They’ve learned the language, taken jobs, and tried to fit in. But there’s something about them we don’t know.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Plot…<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Three years ago aliens landed.\u00a0 Since then these “Newcomers” have intigrated into society.\u00a0 In L.A.,\u00a0 Newcomer Sam Francisco has just been promoted to Detective.\u00a0 Francisco is teamed with veteran cop Matthew Sykes.\u00a0 It’s an uneasy alliance.<\/p>\n

Francisco and Sykes’ first case is to look into the murder of Newcomer Warren Hubley.\u00a0 Their investigation uncovers a conspiracy between wealthy politicans and influential newcomers.\u00a0 At the heart of the cabal’s scheme is a newcomer secret that changes everything.<\/p>\n

Prepare yourself… the aliens are here and all is not as it seems.<\/p>\n

Thoughts (beware of spoilers)\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sam Francisco’s name in the original script was George Jetson.\u00a0 That changed when Hanna-Barbera refused to license the rights.\u00a0 Sykes’ calling Sam “George” was a in-joke.<\/p>\n

James Cameron was credited as one of the writers in an Alien Nation<\/em> early draft, but his name doesn’t appear in the movie’s credits.<\/p>\n

Alien Nation<\/em> spawned a tv series that ran for one season.\u00a0 There were also five television movie spin-offs, comic books and novelizations.<\/p>\n

Brian “Cobra”<\/em> Thompson is the only actor to appear in both the feature film and the television series.<\/p>\n

I like the poster for the film.\u00a0 It doesn’t feature the movie’s stars.\u00a0 Instead we get a tagline that sets up everything and cool art that looks like it could be a crime thriller (with aliens).<\/p>\n

Alien Nation<\/em> is a fun film.<\/p>\n

Alien Nation\u00a0 <\/i>(1988)<\/strong> rates 4 of 5 stars.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alien Nation\u00a0 (1988) Director:\u00a0 Graham Baker Screenplay: Rockne S. O’Bannon Stars:\u00a0 James Caan, Mandy Patinkin, Terence Stamp, Kevyn Major Howard,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,51,54,65,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-crime","category-movies","category-trivia","category-z-view"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42366"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42418,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42366\/revisions\/42418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}