Human Aliens / Film

• Barbarella: All the intelligent aliens that Barbarella meets on the uncharted Planet 16 look entirely human.
• In Captain Berlin Doctor Sind, his henchman, and his mutant are said to be from outer space while looking like normal people.
• All the alien races in The Chronicles of Riddick series. This gives the superficial illusion of Absent Aliens, but there are a few here and there revealed to be aliens. Such as the air elemental, who looks like a normal old lady Dame Judi Dench, but can turn into mist as she chooses. And there's some ambiguity concerning the Furyan race and its most famous member, the protagonist, Richard B. Riddick.
• Ella was an alien who took on human form in order to blend in among humans in Cowboys & Aliens.
• Godzilla:
  • The OG example of this trope in the series are the Showa era version of the Xiliens, also known as the People from Planet X, who appear outwardly human and don’t seem to have a hidden beastly form. This is averted in Godzilla: Final Wars, where their human appearance is merely a disguise for their true appearances, being grey and black eyeless humanoids.
  • The Kilaaks from Destroy All Monsters have two forms. Their first form looks almost exactly like a human, as long as the temperature is high enough. Should it fall below a critical point, the Kilaaks will show their true colours, taking on the form of metallic slug-like creatures.
  • Averted in the case of the Seatopians in Godzilla vs. Megalon, who are just as earthly as us, being a race of sophisticated humans who live deep Beneath the Earth.
• Klaatu from The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) is identical to a human being. It's been said that the filmmakers cast a British actor virtually unknown in the United States so audiences would have an easier time believing he was an alien than if he was a familiar face.
• The three aliens in Earth Girls Are Easy look human.. after all their fur has been shaved off and their primary-colored skins have been dyed different shades. (The leader of the aliens is played by a swarthy Jewish-American actor, while the other two are a light-skinned African-American and a pale Anglo-Canadian.)
• Most of the aliens in the Kingdom of Mongo in Flash Gordon.
• The squid-like Thermians in Galaxy Quest use appearance generators to look human. Somewhat justified: they based their entire society and technology on a human TV show, and they were trying to fit in with their human guests. Since they have no concept of deception, it isn't meant to let them pass for human or even to make the humans ease into the whole alien thing; it's just their version of Cosplay.
• Practically all alien races in the Godzilla movies. (Although sometimes this is just a disguise for space gorillas or cockroaches.)
• The immortals from Zeist in Highlander II: The Quickening.
• The History of Future Folk: People from the planet Hondo look exactly like humans and can interbreed with them. They are, however, immune to pepper spray and can make their hands glow blue to use various abilities as the plot demands.
• Centauri puts on a human face, the Xandoxan assassins take on human form, and the Rylans look basically human in The Last Starfighter.
• Leprechaun 4: In Space features an alien princess who teams up with the Leprechaun (only to reveal at the end she's been secretly working against him the whole time). She looks exactly like the sexy blonde human woman who's portraying her; her only real difference from us is that she has green blood.
• The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra used this trope with the "Marvans" as part of an Affectionate Parody of low-budget sci-fi horror movies from the 50s.
  Lattis: It's interesting how different people from different planets differ.
• Kryptonians in Man of Steel, as always, look perfectly human despite their alien biology.
• Thomas Jerome Newton in The Man Who Fell to Earth is actually a Rubber-Forehead Alien, but appears human (as human as David Bowie is capable of looking, at least) throughout most of the film through the use of contact lenses and stage makeup, as well as a few prosthetics for other parts of his body. Without his cosmetics, his bright golden skin and eyes with vertical, ovular pupils would give him away. Biologically his people are similar to humans, but among other things have longer life spans (Newton remains the same age while other characters in the movie go from college age to their late 50s) and are extremely sensitive to X-rays (even more so in the source novel, in which they prove blinding).
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Thor: Asgardians are physically indistinguishable from humans, but you can usually tell when you're talking to one. Their main difference is that Asgardians are far more durable than humans, even when Thor was de-powered he takes more damage than a regular man and was able to easily make a bunch of elite SHIELD agents look like mall rent-a-cops. The other races in the Thor films like the Jotuns, Dark Elves, and Light Elves are mostly Rubber-Forehead Aliens.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy: Xandarians are visually identical to humans (but apparently have differing DNA because they are able to identify Peter Quill as half-Terran by scanning him). The Collector and his brother, the Grandmaster, are also very human-looking, though they have rather bizarre fashion sense. Other Human Aliens of indeterminate species are mixed with Rubber-Forehead Aliens in various background shots, such as in Knowhere and many of the Ravagers that make up Yondu's crew. Although given Rocket calls Peter "humie", it would seem that "human" in the MCU is not limited to "Terran".
  • Zig-Zagged by the Kree in Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain Marvel: Some of them have blue skin, purple eyes, and occasionally Pointy Ears, while others are indistinguishable from humans, to the point where Carol Danvers, while amnesiac, believes she is Kree. Likewise, Mar-Vell is able to live on Earth as "Dr. Wendy Lawson" and only gets outed as Kree after she and Carol are shot down in a dogfight because Carol sees her bleed blue. Notably, unlike in the comics, where the human-looking Kree are officially classified as "Pink" and can only pass for Caucasian humans, Korath (Djimon Hounsou) resembles a man of Sub-Saharan African descent.
  • Justified in Eternals. Considering the nature of the Eternals's mission to live among humans and subtly guide their development, Arishem naturally made their physical appearances and general behavior indistinguishable from humans to allow them to effortlessly blend in with the human population.
• He-Man, Man-at-Arms, Teela, Blade and Evil-Lyn in Masters of the Universe.
  • Interestingly, the original ending would have revealed that they were from the future and the planet Eternia was settled by stranded space travellers from Earth.
• In Plan 9 from Outer Space, Eros, Tanna, and the Ruler of the Galaxy all look perfectly human.
• Queen of Outer Space. When our heroes realise they've crashlanded on Venus, they speculate on what form of intelligent life might inhabit it. Insectoid beings? Little Green Men with eyes on stalks? They're later captured by a society consisting entirely of hot babes in miniskirts and high heels.
• Race to Witch Mountain. The aliens look exactly like humans... but then there's the superpowers. When Dwayne Johnson's character points this out, they respond with "What's an alien supposed to look like?" He responds with his idea that they were supposed to resemble little green men.
• Dr. Frank N Furter, Riff Raff, Magenta, and the other Transylvanians from The Rocky Horror Picture Show look like normal (well, normal except for their sexual practices) human beings. Considering that the film is an Affectionate Parody of old B-Movie science fiction films, it's no surprise.
• Common when aliens turn up in Masked Luchador films such as Santo contra la invasión de los marcianos (Santo vs. The Martian Invasion, 1966). Typically, the alien invaders are fair-skinned and platinum blond haired, not unlike the "Nordic Aliens"/"Space Brothers" of UFO mythology.
• Star Wars, of course, features Human Aliens as the protagonists alongside Humanoid Aliens and Serkis Folk, with the occasional Rubber Forehead such as Twi'leks or Darth Maul. There's no sign of Earth, and what connections or differences exist between the totally-human-looking races of different worlds remain unknown. (One must wonder if there are other planets with, say, Wookiees that are completely unrelated to the ones of Chewie's homeworld of Kashyyyk...). The Expanded Universe explains that multiple races are evolutionarily connected to humans and are thus categorized as "near-human." These races include, but are not limited to, Twi'leks, Zabrak, Chiss, Miraluka, Sullustan, and the possibly-extinct Red Sith. Some of them are close enough to produce viable half-human offspring.
  • Most sources which dwell on the subject imply that Coruscant is the human homeworld, but no one knows for sure. The other humans are the result of sleeper ships launched before the founding of the Galactic Republic, or of Precursors moving them around as slaves. Some were separated long enough ago and/or ended up in sufficiently divergent environments that they evolved into what are known as "Near-Humans", basically different enough that they'd be considered new subspecies, but still close enough to interbreed with "normal" humans. After the founding of the Republic (most of whose members were the result of the sleeper ships) widespread colonization ensued using the hyperdrive.
  • Knights of the Old Republic implies that the human homeworld was actually Tatooine. The originals were the ancestors of the Sand People as well, who abandoned technology after a (technically) successful rebellion against the Rakatan that also led to the world being turned into a desert by orbital bombardment. Alternately, the Tuskens might be just another human or near-human race.
  • When C-3PO introduces himself, he always adds, "human-cyborg relations". It seems they are human after all. Then again, he's not a cyborg, and neither Darth Vader nor General Grievous, who really are cyborgs, need an interpreter to speak with humans.
  • A novel was planned that would have explained the humans as arriving through time and space from a troubled future Earth, but the project was scrapped before release. The Expanded Universe did include a couple of theories along the way, though.
• Shep Ramsay in Suburban Commando.
• Most of the aliens in Teenagers from Outer Space look human.
• The alien visitors to Earth in What Planet Are You From?? look completely human. Then again, they can shoot rays of light out of their nostrils, so obviously they aren't.
• In the Russian film Attraction, the alien that crash-lands in Moscow not only looks very much human but actually receives a blood transfusion (something that can be harmful between humans) from Yulia without any side effects. On the other hand, the aliens are The Ageless, which appears to have always been the case.
• In the Soviet two-part film Moscow — Cassiopeia, the aliens turn out to look almost identical to humans, with the difference being that they're completely bald until they hit puberty. They do have a Starfish Language though, which involves a series of whistles that appear to contain a lot of information. When one of the teens first sees the aliens, she has an eureka moment and proclaims that all intelligent life in the universe must be this trope. When another teen rightly points out that she can't possibly know that from the two examples, she gives him a look and tells him that he's ignoring the evidence right in front of him. Care to take a guess as to which of them is the better scientist?
• The Girl From Monday: Nobody, an alien traveler, appears to be a lovely young human woman. It's explained her species lacks a corporeal form however, so she took one on to blend in among humans. As with most examples, she's also white. Jack turns out to be one too.

---