They Live
DO NOT QUESTION AUTHORITY
The first time Nada (Roddy Piper) puts on the sunglasses, he doesn’t see the world—he sees the script. Billboards stop advertising vacations and start commanding “CONSUME.” Magazines drop their cover stories and scream, “OBEY.” Money reads “THIS IS YOUR GOD.” It’s not subtle, but then again, neither is capitalism.
They Live (1988) is John Carpenter’s most blunt-force social critique—and that’s saying something for a guy who made a movie where the government literally implants explosives in a man’s neck to force him into heroism. But where Escape from New York was a dystopian thrill ride, They Live is built on the creeping suspicion that the dystopia is already here, and you’ve just been too distracted by TV and deodorant ads to notice.
The plot is pulpy B-movie gold: a drifter finds a pair of magical sunglasses that reveal a hidden alien conspiracy to pacify and manipulate the human race through media, advertising, and consumer culture. But the execution is all grit and exhaustion. Carpenter shoots Los Angeles like a city hollowed out by cheap promises. Maybe nothing was required to make the city feel this way in the Reagan 80s. Roddy Piper—better known for his wrestling than his acting—gives John Nada the weary intensity of a man who has nothing to lose. His now-iconic line, which I knew as a kid but didn’t know that it came from this film: “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I’m all out of bubblegum,” might go down as one of the all time great cinematic line reads. The character is truly boiled down violence and bravado, an obvious yet great Carpenterian statement on what is required to take down a system that quietly strangles.
What’s strange and brilliant about They Live is that it plays like an action movie for a while—there’s a six-minute fistfight over whether to put on a pair of sunglasses, which sounds ridiculous but ends up being one of the best hand-to-hand sequences of the decade. Underneath the one-liners and alien shootouts is something angrier. Not the hot rage of revolution, but the slow-burn resentment of a working class that’s been lied to for decades. The alien invaders aren't snarling monsters; they're clean-cut businessmen and cops. It's Reaganomics in a rubber mask.
Carpenter never thought of this as a joke. Watch his interviews throughout his career: he takes his work seriously in spite of what all of the creatures and effects might have you believe. He was fed up—with commercialism, with conformity, with a system that treated working people like disposable batteries. So he made a movie where the revolution starts with vision. You don’t beat the system with guns (though there are plenty), but by seeing it clearly. The sunglasses might be the most literal metaphor in movie history, but they also might be the most accurate.
Because once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And after that, it’s just you, the street, and whatever courage you can scrape together.
They Live
Written by John Carpenter (as Frank Armitage); Directed by John Carpenter
1988
94 minutes
English
Recommended way to watch (at time of publication): Rentable on most major platforms
You’ll like this if you like: Robocop (1987), Videodrome (1983), Network (1976)