First published on the public account "Detective"
ID: ttyingtan
Author: Huang Shiro
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The first season of "Alien Refugees" has a total of eight episodes. Like "Rick and Morty" (hereinafter referred to as "RM"), each episode is about 20 minutes.
But compared to RM's weekly broadcast format, this drama is very considerate to release the whole season at one time, allowing the audience to watch it in one breath.
This new drama with a big brain hole has achieved the succession of RM's various advantages.
First, the story mode is similar.
The stories of each episode are independent of each other, mainly funny, supplemented by clarifying the story, and sometimes adding some sensational elements.
In terms of style, the two works have also achieved a high degree of unity.
Naturally, there is no need to say much about the bizarre adult painting style, and all kinds of blood and chatter are also full of them, which are often large monologues and broken arms.
The inclusion of various pop culture easter eggs in the film is also an important label of RM, and "Alien Refugees" has also inherited it.
The high school where the two little aliens attend in the film is named after " James Earl Jones".
This old American actor was the voice actor of Lord Vader in "Star Wars" and Mufasa in "The Lion King", which can be regarded as a tribute to his predecessors.
In the second episode, there is also a section where the door is cut with an axe.
This is a parody of the classic horror film The Shining .
In addition, "Alien Refugees" also tries to stand on the shoulders of the previous work and introduce new ones.
In terms of conception, this drama is bigger and crazier than RM.
Like its title, this film tells the story of four aliens and an alien pet who are forced to pilot a spaceship due to the accidental destruction of their parent planet and are stranded on Earth.
For a long time, when science fiction works depict aliens, they are accustomed to examining and viewing aliens from a human perspective.
But this "Alien Refugees" does the opposite, dissecting human society through the eyes of aliens. The alien protagonists in the film are clearly divided into two camps according to their preference for the earth.
Two green-skinned aliens love Earth and are willing to integrate into human society.
Among them, the big green man is called Terry . He is relatively dull, but has a cheerful personality and is keen on drama.
The little green man is a girl, her name is Jesse , and she is underage.
She is innocent and kind, eager to be recognized and cared for, and curious about the earth.
The two blue-skinned aliens hated the earth, scorned human beings, and thought of leaving this foreign land all the time.
The big blue man is the absolute protagonist of the show - Corvo , this role is dubbed by producer Justin Rowland himself.
Corvo has an amazing IQ and can skillfully use various alien inventions; but at the same time, he is also vicious, and he only wants to repair the wrecked spaceship and escape from here.
The little blue man is named Jamlek . He is like a low-end replica of Corvo, with a high IQ and good at using various weapons. But the difference is that he longs to be accepted collectively, hoping to prove himself in the human school.
Therefore, in addition to the running-in between aliens and the earth, the friction between the two alien trends of thought is also a major highlight of the show.
In terms of plot, the play adopts a three-line narrative.
The three lines are occasionally interspersed, but are relatively independent and describe different cores. *The following content contains spoilers* >>> Jamlek & Jessie Line first talk about two alien children who study and study in human high school. Look at the daily life of American teenagers through the perspective of a bystander.
Once, the teacher assigned an assignment asking the girls in the class to take action to support the feminist movement.
When little green man Jesse asked the teacher what he should do, the teacher said that as long as it can break patriarchal rights, it supports women's rights.
So Jesse rushed to the school's men's football team and asked them to accept him and become a player on the team.
Jesse thought happily that the team would be furious because of this unreasonable request, and then they would be labeled as men's rights and reported, even if the homework was completed.
But things took a turn for the worse than she expected.
Because this football team has already accepted a dog as a kicker.
How can such a pioneer of equal rights with roots in Miaohong reject women?
A lost Jesse is back on the varsity baseball team, planning to repeat the same trick. But the baseball players were happier than the football team. The players also said that this time they finally don't have to be looked down upon by the football team.
Jesse, who had no choice, had to hold an anonymous all-boys party, hoping to meet the boys who would attend the party at that time.
Who knows, the all-boys party did attract a bunch of boys, but they all came to protest Jesse's behavior. Jesse looked bewildered, and before he could speak, he was chased and beaten by the boys for discriminating against women.
The story told in this episode is the epitome of political correctness currently prevailing in Europe and the United States. In a movie, if you don't arrange a few people of color, you will be labeled as racist.
Everyone in the play, regardless of teachers and students, is not someone who really understands equal rights, but in the name of the feminist movement, the truth is that they act in the same way.
What's even more frightening is that the scene in the play is set in high school, which is really chilling.
Has such an overkill behavior already prevailed among minors who have not yet formed a complete discrimination ability? >>>Corvo & Terry Line
Compared with children, the story line of the two alien adults is much more ironic.
The big blue Corvo and the big green Terry have always disagreed on the question of "whether humans are inclusive of them."
Once, in order to understand what humans think of them, the two deliberately used alien technology to steal information from the bodies of neighbors.
Sure enough, disgust far outweighed love.
So the two decided to prescribe the right medicine to solve the specific needs of the neighbors, and then gain goodwill.
In just a few days, the two became the most popular stars in the entire neighborhood, and following the advice of their neighbors, set about running for the chairmanship of the neighborhood committee.
The old chairman is an old grandmother. In the eyes of the two with super high-tech power, it is easy to defeat her.
After that, they used alien technology again, and in order to steal more in-depth information, they improved the artificial intelligence (AI) level of the secret stealing robot.
Unexpectedly, the AI level of the robot was adjusted too high, and it actually had an independent consciousness and merged into a large robot.
On the day of the election, the robot parachuted into the neighborhood committee in a suit, trying to compete with its creator for the position.
The two sides kept tempting voters based on the information they had obtained, and the residents' hobbies, gifts they wanted, and wishes they wanted to fulfill were all scrambled to finish.
But the fierce competition also made the scene gradually get out of control, and the two sides began to reveal the secrets that the neighbors did not want to be known by others.
Betrayal, cheating, sexual fetishes, calculations... The neighbors scuffled together.
At this time, the old chairman who had been silent all the time came to power and said his election manifesto:
In the end, the incident subsided and everyone pretended that nothing happened.
The whole story is, in form, a satire of the two-party election in the United States :
In order to vote for voters' favor, they will not hesitate to invade the privacy of voters and use it as a competitive bargaining chip.
On the core, the aliens who advocate the supremacy of technology finally understand:
Those cool technologies can only be the icing on the cake for life;
Compared with these, what people yearn for more is a comfortable life that is "rare and confused".
>>>Lilliputian Country Line
Compared with Corvo and Terry, although Jamlek and Jesse are still children, they are not less ostracized and looked down upon because of their alien status than adults.
However, the grumpy Jamlek's handling was extremely simple and rude, reckless of the consequences. He used the shrinking gun in his hand to shrink the humans who had bullied him and put them in the glass wall of the bedroom.
The number of people is increasing, and over time, the little people in the wall have developed a small world of their own. There is a market here—people exchange what they have in others for what they have in them;
There are dairy farmers here - an old grandfather raised a female mouse, squeezed out the mouse's milk every day, and took it to the market to sell;
There was even a religion - people worshipping Jesse, who feeds them every day.
All the necessary elements of the world are produced within this wall, and civilization has naturally emerged.
Once a sanitation worker in a middle school, he turned into a lord , and divided the world inside the wall into three distinct levels, upper, middle and lower, and became the undisputed king of villains in the country.
However, where there is centralization, there is resistance.
Under the tyrannical rule of the Lord, an insurgent army quietly rises, led by the ranger Tim , to launch an unrelenting anti-imperialist struggle.
The seventh episode of "Alien Refugees" took a whole episode to describe the decisive battle between the insurgent army and the lord.
In the end, Tim and the lieutenant attacked the Lord's palace together, but were surprised to find that the Lord had already made a hole in the wall and escaped.
The lieutenant was very happy that with this hole, everyone could be free.
She couldn't wait to tell everything to the soldiers who were fighting outside, but unexpectedly, a dagger stabbed at her.
This person is Tim.
It turned out that this hole made Tim realize that inside the wall he was a hero, but outside the wall, he would lose everything and start over.
With his lust for profit, he finally became the second lord.
In the end, Tim killed the deputy general Miekou, threw her out of the corpse wall, sealed the hole, and declared himself the new leader of Lilliput.
Different from the story lines of the two aliens, the Lilliputian line is slightly off topic, but it is recognized as exciting, and even a bit overwhelming.
The reason is precisely because this complexity of human nature can resonate with people more than the scrutiny of the earth by extraterrestrial civilizations.
The first season of "Alien Refugees" has ended, but long before the broadcast, the distribution platform hulu has booked 2 or 3 seasons and has high hopes for it.
And this ingenious multi-line narrative and profound social fable obviously lived up to thousands of expectations.
Shiro sincerely hopes that "Alien Refugees" will become another beautiful comic legend after "Rick and Morty".
Text / Huang Shiro
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