“How did we get here, to this place, to this moment. If we could see the cosmic shape of every choice we’ve made would it look like a straight time line? A staircase? A Mobius strip? I came here because my choice was simple: life or die. I am an immigrant, a refugee, to survive I had to be reborn. To evolve I had to step into a new skin. Like Lazarus, I had to rise from the valley of shadows and become something more. Which brings us to the reason you are here. You came to answer the question the world’s been asking. "Who am I?”…and had to learn to become a human being.”
So says a Steve-Jobs-like Faraday (Chiwetel Ejiofor) to a capacity audience in the Royal Albert Hall in London. An enticing opener, which then cuts to 6 months earlier when an alien crashes into the desert of New Mexico. He makes his way to a gas station, naked in his newly formed human skin, looking for water, but not knowing the language. Things happen, he's arrested and then he mentions the name Justin Falls (Naomie Harris). Justin meanwhile has a lot on her plate and reluctantly comes to the police station. Faraday(his new name) knows about her abandoned quantum physics dissertation and tries to elicit her help in his broken English. He is a good mimic. She at first declines, but then rescues him from a highway robbery. Faraday convinces her to bring him to a remote place where he walks into a tornado and makes contact with Thomas Newton (Bill Nighy), his mentor and refugee sponsor to Earth.
