The movie is “Alien Country,” the 1988 science-fiction mystery starring Mandy Patinkin and Marcel Caan as two mismatched police detectives, certainly one of whom occurs to be an alien from outer house. The movie takes position a number of years after the epoch-defining advent of a race of extraterrestrials into human society. The extraterrestrial beings aren’t invaders, however refugees, and so they input into an uneasy courting with the human inhabitants, a few of whom are extra delicate to their state of affairs than others.
What does any of this have to do with Seth MacFarlane’s stoner comedy “Ted”? Now not a lot at the floor. However in a GQ interview the place Seth MacFarlane mentioned one of the vital maximum noteworthy characters he is performed all through his occupation, he cites “Alien Country” as having a key affect at the introduction of “Ted.”
“There was once a movie referred to as ‘Alien Country’ with Mandy Patinkin,” recollects MacFarlane. “It in fact happened 5 years after the extraterrestrial beings had invaded … that was once oddly a power when it got here to ‘Ted.’ It is like, k, everyone knows the mystical fairy story tale of the item that comes to existence, what is the tale that takes position 30 years later?”
So it sort of feels that, whilst the subject material is rather other, MacFarlane was once impressed by means of the setup for “Alien Country” and how it performs at the target market’s familiarity with that form of movie trope. Just like the narrative of “Alien Country,” “Ted” does not reside at the magic of its sentient teddy undergo, as an alternative losing audience right into a tale that takes position lengthy after the characters on the planet have authorised it as a part of their fact.