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Paul
"Paul" (2011), starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, follows two British science fiction fans on a road trip across the American Southwest who encounter a wisecracking, foul-mouthed alien named Paul who has escaped from a secret government facility, treating first contact as a comedic buddy-road-trip premise. Its affectionate parody of decades of science fiction and first contact film conventions, including direct references to "E.T.," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," and numerous other genre touchstones, reflected writers Pegg and Frost's genuine affection for the genre they were simultaneously spoofing. The film's alien character Paul, rendered through motion-capture performance and voiced by Seth Rogen, combined convincing visual effects with a deliberately crude, irreverent personality that subverted the more reverent or menacing alien characterizations typical of the genre's more serious entries. Its combination of its affectionate genre parody and its subversively irreverent alien protagonist has made "Paul" one of the most distinctly comedic entries in the first contact film tradition.
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Starman
"Starman" (1984), directed by John Carpenter and starring Jeff Bridges, follows a benevolent alien who takes the physical form of a widow's deceased husband after his craft is shot down over Wisconsin, then journeys with her across the country to reach a rendezvous point before government agents can capture him. Bridges's performance as the alien learning to inhabit and move within a human body, earning him an Academy Award nomination, gave the film's contact premise an unusually physical, almost dance-like quality distinct from more dialogue-driven alien characterizations in other contact films of the era. Its road-trip structure, carrying the central pair across a wide swath of the American landscape while being pursued by a suspicious government scientist, gave "Starman" a genre-blending identity as both a first contact film and a fugitive road movie simultaneously. Its combination of Bridges's Oscar-nominated physical performance and its distinctive road-movie contact structure has made "Starman" one of the most emotionally affecting and genre-blending first contact films of the 1980s.
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