If you care to, you can think about the idea of punk
as a virus which is the healthy one.
The film is philosophical but also really tongue-in-cheek.
How would you like audiences to react to the message of the film?
Well, I always like a bit of sugar to make the medicine go down,
if the medicine is the philosophy.
This is a teenage love story
and you can look at it just as that, just a fun slice of something,
but we have a lot of stuff underneath that, if you care to,
you can think about the idea of punk as a virus
which is the healthy one.
Enn talks about viruses actually helped us adapt as humans
and maybe even become human, starting as animals.
Adapting to viruses might have made us human,
so he thinks of punk as a kind of healthy virus.
The aliens' fear of the outside
is kind of my fear of nationalism and closing borders,
and love is one of the few things that can break down those doors.
Also the idea of first love, which we all realise
is perhaps our most intense but perhaps our least lasting.
Is first love always doomed?
99% of the time, which just makes it more powerful,
but then also parenthood ultimately.
These are young people but they actually become parents very quickly,
and the idea of bad parenting leading to every ill
is part of the story a lot too,
and we have that special ending that takes place in the future.
So the old and new come together,
because we don't need to just recreate punk,
we need to make our punk.
The next question's a bit weird,
but if an actual alien really came to Earth
then what lessons would they learn from us, if anything?
They learn about love.
They learn about the body, the pleasures of the body.
There's a speech where Enn, played by Alex Sharp, says,
'I don't know why you all want to just-,'
'Are you in some kind of suicide pact? You don't want to-,'
It's kind of an ultimate Brexit kind of thing.
Let's let no one in and just interbreed
until everyone has birth defects and, kind of, dies together.
So he's like, 'Wait a minute. What is-,'
'What about eating? What about loving?'
'What about music? What about rock and roll?'
'What about being human?'
And yes, we may have screwed this place up royally,
but we are alive, and what does it mean to be alive?
Does it mean to be frightened? And he says no.
So I think that's what the aliens have learned,
and Elle's character actually has a role in saving the aliens
from their insularity, from their fear of the outside.
The punk era was a really interesting time.
I know my mum is always telling me how great it was,
how liberating it was.
I wanted to know why you think that this will still resonate
with young people today?
For me, punk is questioning closed systems.
It's questioning received wisdom,
meaning, 'Well, that's the way it's always been done.'
That was the direct reaction to that kind of conservatism in the '70s.
At the same time, Thatcher was coming in and looking to recreate
some of the grand old England that wasn't quite there anymore,
but there was dialogue, and punk helped with that dialogue.
It was like, 'We're not going to stand for it
just because our parents did,'
so that's why a kind of punk is, I think, really necessary now.