Year:  1984 Country:  United States Studio:  Columbia Pictures Runtime:  1 hr. 55 min. Rated:  PG Directed by:  John Carpenter Written by:  Bruce A. Evans Written by:  Raynold Gideon Starring:  Jeff Bridges Starring:  Karen Allen Starring:  Charles Martin Smith Starring:  Richard Jaeckel Similar Films: 

E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

He’s the boring kind of alien.

I suppose it’s reasonable to assume that if an alien were to visit Earth in this guise of a human, it would have trouble mimicking human mannerisms. The resulting actions, likely, would be awkward. However, that assumption has been the bane of many science fiction films that apparently think “awkward” also means “flat,” “emotionless,” and “clueless.” The result is one of the most off-putting clichés in sci-fi cinema: the human-disguised alien with no personality. That and a lack of purpose are problems that Starman is unable to overcome.

In 1977, NASA sent out an invitation for extraterrestrial intelligence to visit. When aliens heed the welcome, though, the U.S. freaks out and shoots them down. An alien known only as Starman (Jeff Bridges) has survived the crash, assumed the physical appearance of the deceased husband of a woman named Jenny Hayden (Karen Allen), and convinced her to help him reach his extraction point in Arizona. Along the way, he witnesses humanity’s dueling capacities for kindness and violence, the latter of which is demonstrated most prominently by the government that is now hunting him down.

The point of this is to show us that humans tend to act violently toward that which they don’t understand. Normally that would be okay, but there is too little emotion attached to the events, and the emotion that is there feels forced. Though Starman is kind toward Jenny and regularly does things to help her out, there is never a sense that a friendship has developed between the two until the very end. They simply drive from place to place, getting in and out of sticky situations, and Starman observes the peculiarities of humankind while they do so. We, along with Jenny, come to sympathize with the alien, but there is no particular reason for us to care about him.

Perhaps the single biggest reason we don’t feel for Starman is that he comes across as both emotionless and uninteresting throughout nearly the entire film. His character seems to do nothing but jerk his head in bird-like motions and ask generic alien questions in broken, monotone lines. Occasionally he’ll heal a person or an animal. Even when he does this, he hardly appears to be so much as happy, more like he’s performing obligatory acts. As the main character of the film, Starman defies any attempt to relate to him. This is not the fault of Jeff Bridges, who is simply performing the role he was given. It is the fault of director John Carpenter, who didn’t realize how unapproachable it would make the character.

Throughout the film, the score tries to cue us to feel certain ways about the characters on screen. It succeeds only in informing us that the filmmakers did, indeed, intend for us to feel for the characters. Often the score evokes a feeling of emptiness or despair, usually when the events or dialogue has centered upon Starman’s persecution or the possibility that he will never go home. Even when the score and the plot are at their emotional heights, though, there is no way to connect with Starman or, in turn, Jenny, whose characterization is dependent upon her reaction to the alien. The score is competent in its own right, but this is not a film on which it can have much impact.

Starman is similar to E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. Both movies focus on kind aliens being befriended by humans who have to keep them hidden from the evil authorities while trying to get the extraterrestrial to the location at which its family is going to pick it up. However, in E.T., E.T. became our best friend. He was a clearly playful and childlike alien who was as interested in having fun as he was in getting home. In Starman, the title alien just wants to get home, and he happens to do some neat stuff along the way. Any possibility to perceive him as playful, saddened, or experiencing any other emotion is lost in his impenetrable mannerisms. Why would anyone waste Jeff Bridges’ talent on such a character?

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