Taken (2002)

Eric Close: John

Photos 

Quotes 

• [two simultaneous, different conversations] 

  John, Alien Visitor : I'll try to put this in terms that you commonly use. I'm a scientist. We were all scientists. We came here to learn about your world. Our idea was to find out everything: your history, your biology, everything. We came here to learn. We're not that different from you, genetically, biologically. But what you call evolution has changed us. We see things in you that we no longer recognize in ourselves.

  Dr. Chet Wakeman : What do we know? They're this energy that can manifest itself in different ways: as the beings we've seen, as their crafts, as our thoughts. There's no right or wrong about them.

  John, Alien Visitor : The whole concept of right and wrong was... alien to us. The idea that the things we were doing were cruel...

  Dr. Chet Wakeman : They have no concept of kindness or cruelty. No way of seeing beyond the 'oneness' of all that energy...

  John, Alien Visitor : ...to the separateness, the uniqueness, your ability to hate, to love, to feel. You have compassion, as well as cruelty. We-we lack both. Or that is, the traits lie dormant...

  Dr. Chet Wakeman : ...in their brains. Like the animal that lives far back inside all of us. But an experience of something basic can awaken that primitive thing.

  John, Alien Visitor : And that's what happened. Your grandmother, Sally. She took me in and showed me a great kindness.

  Mary Crawford : Something could've touched one of them, something small and simple, and awakened this sense of what was missing. Something gone and half-remembered.

  John, Alien Visitor : And so our greatest experiment began.

  Mary Crawford : Could they put it back, this thing that had been bred out of them for eons and eons?

  John, Alien Visitor : Your emotional core, your strength, your feeling, and our more evolved consciousness. Could we bring these two together? If we could do this, we would have the next...

  Mary Crawford : ...step in the evolution of life.

  John, Alien Visitor : [Looking at Allie]  The experiment was an unqualified success.