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Toasted Pixel Presents: The Film History of Alien Invaders' Popular Fashions! Alternately, this feature could be titled: The Film History of Aliens Foiled by Sunglasses and Other Fashion Statements! Yes, aliens have been invading Earth for countless years. We humans are still around, however, because the aliens have constantly been thwarted in their domination attempts. More often than not, the aliens have been revealed or defeated by sunglasses. Other times, by different wardrobe failures. Below, we have collected a history of alien invasions, complete with details on how expensive designer clothes have been able to save humanity time and time again.

The Movie: Signs (2002) The Premise: If your wife gets horribly killed in a car accident, and hostile aliens kill millions of people worldwide, then everyone's sacrifices are all for a greater good. Which good would that be? Simple: to create religious signs that encourage Mel Gibson's priest character to get his faith back (so he can go on to make Passion of the Christ and the other most violent movies in history). Oh, and aliens are all nekkid. The Plot: (WARNING: Spoiler alert for people who want to see this sucky film) Aliens who master intergalactic travel come to earth and surround, well, Midwest cornfields in their spaceships, preparing to kill humanity for reasons never explained in the film. Although they have radio communication technology (which humanity can actually tap into with baby monitors), hidden alien scouts on earth also communicate with their motherships by making enormous patterns in cornfields. This is sort of like having covert, hidden Navy SEAL teams in pre-invasion Iraq signaling their American reconnaissance satellites by burning hundreds of acres of animal grazing lands in complex geometric patterns right next to Iraqi cities... hopefully no one will notice these signs. This, if nothing else, is foreshadowing for the horrendous failure the aliens are about to endure. The aliens' biggest flaw is revealed to be their fashion statement. These aliens have decided to invade the earth NAKED. This means they've decided to take on the American South barehanded, since they don't even have belts for gun holsters. The final nail in their coffin is the fact that WATER melts them like acid. So they've invaded a planet covered in water, where water falls from the sky, where water sweats from their victims, where water comes out of pipes in every home, and they won't even wear a rain hat. Signs was the worst mainstream alien invasion film in history.

The Movie: The Faculty (1998) The Premise: Continuing our Signs movie theme, the premise of this movie is that aliens walk around the American Midwest naked. Meanwhile, the good guys wear Tommy Hilfiger designer clothes. The Plot: This film, which made a deal with the clothing company Tommy Hilfiger, portrays the lives of a bunch of misfits; undesirable high school students who painfully discover they don't belong in any cool clique. These penniless, unattractive social outcasts like Josh Hartnett, Usher and Elijah Wood who walk around in Tommy designer clothes, discover that their teachers are actually possessed by alien invaders bent on dominating humanity. The terrifying cast of scary aliens include John Stewart, Salma Hayek, and Famke Janssen. (spoiler alert) Once the students begin to discover which people are actually aliens, the mother of all the aliens (Dead Like Me alumna Laura Harris) reveals herself by walking around naked (not the best disguise in a high school), chasing these misfits around school soaking wet before getting killed in a horrific gym class accident (gym bleachers close on her). John Stewart and a bunch of hot women. We need more alien invaders like these.

The Movie: Men in Black (1997) The Premise: Ray-Ban Sunglasses can protect you from brainwave-altering rays. "Why do you think they call them 'Ray-Ban?'" asks Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) rhetorically. The Men in Black, a secret government organization that defends Manhattan from alien invaders, can be recognized by the Ray-Ban Sunglasses they wear. The Plot: The Men in Black, who fight alien invaders, use Ray-Bans to protect themselves. Although aliens don't use brainwave-altering waves, the Men in Black flash memory-erasing rays on citizens who've seen aliens. This way, the Men in Black can go about fighting aliens without citizens knowing about the alien threat. Since pandemonium would result from citizens worried about alien invaders stealing jobs, these sunglasses have an important part in the fight. As the Men in Black are a NYC-based, American agency, this film is one of many that suggest that aliens, friendly and hostile alike, will only deal with the US government.

The Movie: Stargate (1994) The Premise: Our greatest threat in the galaxy is an alien race with military technology circa 1910. They love to overdress heavily for battle (complete with giant, glowing sunglasses in overbearing metal dog/snake head helmets), which helps us run circles around them before kicking their ass. The truth is, although a 200-pound alien outfit with glowing eyes may look cool, it won't help you see or fight. Which is why these aliens (who pick a fight with everyone) are in serious trouble. The Plot: Americans discover a giant ring device buried among ancient Egyptian ruins (luckily, everything found in Egypt belongs to America by default). Scientist James Spader helps the American government figure out how to activate the ring, which is a Stargate portal to another galaxy. In this other galaxy, James Spader and a small group of American soldier-explorers discover an alien race that enslaved humanity thousands of years ago (and haven't bothered to advance technologically since then). The aliens, deciding to fight this small group of Americans, pull out the big guns: long staff rifles about seven feet long, which fire slow bullets in a semi-automatic manner. And although the aliens wear about 200 pounds of metal body armor (which causes them to move about the battlefield standing straight up and walking at about a half-a-mile an hour), this armor provides zero defense against American bullets (we discover the extent of this uselessness in the series Stargate SG-1). Fortunately, James Spader is accompanied by merciless Kurt Russell, the American soldier who absolutely beats the crap out of countless aliens before cutting one in half and nuking another.

The Movie: They Live (1988) The Premise: WWF Wrestler Roddy Piper, if armed with radiation-emitting sunglasses, will beat the stuffing out of aliens and his black friend. The Plot: Horrendously ugly aliens come to earth to become CEO's, get rich, and pollute our planet until the atmosphere matches their planet's. These aliens use a transmitter to send signals to people's brains all over the world. The signals make the humans see the aliens as normal people, and they also hide the subliminal messages that the aliens put everywhere to keep humanity sleeping, consuming, and basically being slaves to the Man. Roddy Piper's unemployed character, while looking for a construction worker job, stumbles across headache-inducing, radiative sunglasses that allow him to see the aliens and messages for who and what they are. Equipped with this valuable knowledge, he responds by taking a shotgun and personally massacring a downtown full of aliens. Once Roddy is armed with sunglasses, a shotgun, and a mullet, the aliens don't have a chance of stopping him from destroying their precious transmitter. They Live has possibly one of the best fight scenes in cinematic history, between Roddy Piper and his construction worker buddy, that just keeps going on and on, as they fight for no reason actually.

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