The Tourist is a web-animated OSC short film and the seventeenth short of the fourth 48 Hour OSC Film Festival.
The apathetic Sunscreen doesn't believe aliens have crash-landed onto Earth... until one crashes at his place, who requests her as their tour guide.
Not to be confused with the 2010 movie of the same name.
Contains the following tropes:
- Aerith and Bob: The first two characters have the Punny Names of Michael Phone and Brock Lee but everyone else after them follows the standard Object Show naming scheme (Sunscreen, Moonflower, Detective Hat, etc.).
- Aliens Steal Cable: Back on their home planet, Moonflower religiously watches Earth rom-coms on the holograms which inspire them to visit the planet to find love. This gets taken literally during their planet-scale invasion, where their kind frenziedly ransack all the electronics from the stores like it's Black Friday.
- Bait-and-Switch Comment: After brutally killing Detective Hat to save her beloved, Moonflower reaffirms their love for Sunscreen with sweet words though the latter and the audience were expecting something entirely different.Moonflower: [Whispers sensually in Sunscreen's ear] You Will Be Spared.Sunscreen: I love you too— Wait, WHAT?![Smash Cuts to Moonflower's kind invading and burning down the Earth]
- Chroma Key: Brock Lee complains how the green screen makes him, a green broccoli, completely see-through against the backdrop on TV.Brock Lee: [Face Palm] You guys really should have used a different colour screen.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Detective Hat suffers an agonizing fate of being slowly dissolved in a puddle of acid vomit whilst desperately screaming for help.
- Cyclops: Popsicle, the kid who discovered the alien crash site, only has one eye that doesn't seem to be caused by the bite in their head (Too far apart from the eye placement).
- Department of Redundancy Department: During their first meeting, Moonflower asks Sunscreen if he is an "Earth object from Earth".
- Dissonant Serenity: Sunscreen is completely okay with the earth being plunged into chaos by aliens and basically betrayed all objectkind to have a Happily Married life with Moonflower (who led said Alien Invasion) as she's too hopelessly in love with them to even care and wouldn't have it any other way.Moonflower: Where should we go for out honeymoon?Sunscreen: [Blissful] How about the moon, honey?[Both Fantastically Indifferent to the burning, apocalyptic world and everyone screaming outside]
- Falling-in-Love Montage: The montage of Sunscreen taking Moonflower around town and getting into all sorts of hijinks is apparently one since they ended up so lovely-dovey back at home.
- Fantastically Indifferent: Sunscreen is so anti-social and apathetic towards life that upon seeing a real-life alien, she doesn't blink an eye, even when a newspaper hits him in the face during so, and flatly tells them no solicitors allowed in her house. Unfortunately for everyone else, once Sunscreen really got to know Moonflower, this also means he allowed their species to invade Earth and didn't stop them at all during the five-year Time Skip since she has no real attachments towards her home planet after overcoming the initial shock.
- Foreshadowing:
- When reporter Michael Phone asks ufologist Brock Lee how one might prepare for impending doom against an alien, the scientist shrugs admitting he's no expert. Sure enough, nobody has any idea how to stop Moonflower's species from invading the Earth and are entirely at their mercy.
- Moonflower describes her desire to eat Sunscreen's casserole as to "decompose its contents" and later pukes on the portrait artist. This foreshadows their ability to spew out acid vomit which came in handy when putting down Detective Hat.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: If you paused to look at Sunscreen's "No Solicitors" sign, there's an additional warning in cursive reading "If you ignore this message, I am legally allowed to hit you with 40 bricks at once and take your wallet".
- Gratuitous Katana: Detective Hat pulls out a katana out of nowhere solely on the Rule of Cool to fight Sunscreen to the death who also inexplicably has a katana of her own.
- Here We Go Again!: As Moonflower and Sunscreen are planning for their honeymoon, someone knocks at their door which turns out to be another alien, a starfish one different from the latter's species, asking if they can crash at their place.
- If It's You, It's Okay: Given how Sunscreen is completely apathetic at best and disdainful at worst towards everything and everyone, Moonflower must have been a special someone to fall so hard for that she is onboard with them conquering Earth so he can continue dating and eventually marrying them.
- Invisible Anatomy: Another one of Moonflower's Bizarre Alien Biology is their floating hands and feet detached from their body.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Detective Hat is a snobbish, nerdy investigator wannabe who wants to take Moonflower away to the CIA and is more than willing to kill Sunscreen when she "betrays the town" for an alien. However, Detective Hat proved she's 100% correct that Moonflower is a dangerous threat to the planet when they remorselessly gave her a slow, painful death then led their kind in invading Earth and making it an irreversibly apocalyptic hellhole.
- Killed Offscreen: Portrait artist Beret gets puked on by Moonflower upon seeing their awful sketch rendition of them and Sunscreen. Unfortunately for him, we later find out alien vomit is highly corrosive so Beret perishes shortly thereafter.
- Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Brock Lee is supposedly an expert in extraterrestrial studies but all he can conclude after doing extensive research is "aliens = bad" with nonsensical math equations and has zero idea on what to do when they invade.
- Leitmotif: Detective Hat is accompanied by "Beethoven's Fifth in C Minor
" whenever she appears onscreen. - Literal-Minded: Sunscreen introduces herself with pronouns to which Moonflower promptly calls him "Sunscreen He-slash-She" because they thought it was her last name. However, Moonflower catches on the next time around.
- Meaningful Name: Moonflower's name not only references the type of morning glory they're modeled after but also how they are a Plant Alien from outer space.
- Non-Human Non-Binary: Sunscreen goes by "He/She" pronouns and is a sunscreen lotion bottle while Moonflower is not only an object but also an alien and uses "they/them" pronouns.
- Offscreen Romance: There was zero indication between Sunscreen and Moonflower that their tour was a romantic one but they somehow became Sickening Sweethearts, cuddling on the couch out of nowhere. The livechat's confusion says it all:Commentor: WHY ARE THEY IN LOVE QWHAWHTTHA?!?!?
- Plant Aliens: Moonflower is part of an alien race where everyone is an anthropomorphic morning glory flower with antenna and floating limbs.
- The Power of Love: Moonflower firmly believes "love and beauty will always prevail" if the hundreds of Earth rom-coms had taught them anything. This is deconstructed as even though they found their true love and soulmate in Sunscreen, Moonflower still carried on with their plan of conquering and destroying Earth with the only change being to spare Sunscreen from this entire ordeal.
- Punny Name: Michael Phone and Brock Lee are respectively a microphone and a broccoli stalk, enough said.
- Shout-Out:
- Moonflower's ability to projectile vomit acid is inspired by Rocky's from Battle for Dream Island as well as Xenomorphs given their alien roots.
- The short takes some animation cues from Smiling Friends with the fast-paced nature and nonsensical humor.
- Wedding Finale: Parodied. The world is in shambles with everything on fire thanks to the aliens invading it and yet Sunscreen and Moonflower have a lovely wedding ceremony in the middle of it all. Overall, this is the second wedding ceremony in the film festival after A Florist's Folly.
- You Are a Credit to Your Race: Moonflower falls deeply in love with Sunscreen due to her kindness towards them in the face of an uncaring, anti-alien Earth. Hence, it's the reason why the latter is the only one spared from the former's race of destroying the planet and terrorising objectkind.