Was he an alien or not?

Of course he was an alien.



End of discussion.

I'd like to think so, yea

What the film was basically strongly hinting at, was the K-pax "people", for lack of a better term, were able to travel across the universe using something they called "Light travel", whereby they could take over a body/host, in this case, Robert Porter.

Kinda like invasion of the body snatchers, but instead of being physically duplicated etc, it's almost like they can transfer conciousness from their own bodies into another species' body.

He took over Roberts body because he was essentially a vegetable (I forget the proper medical term), due to the shock of his wife/daughter being raped

But, I'm still confused about the hypnosis scenes, it seemed to suggest that Robert and Prot "hung out", for lack of a better term, before the incident, so was Robert coexisting with Prot at that time, or did Prot take over another body to interact with Robert?

Another thing, Prot also said all beings are capable of healing themselves, but if robert was Prot's friend, why didn't he help him heal?

When you watch the movie or read the book, you're not really supposed to know for certain whether Prot was for real or not. It's one of those stories where the writer lets you make your own mind up.

However, after the main trilogy of K-PAX books, a 4th K-PAX book was released and is based on a different character that - like Prot - is an alien from the constellation Lyra, except this time the character resembles a super-intelligent chimp and actually demonstrates light travel - proving it real. Therefore, the mystery and doubt is very much ruined.

Thanks to that 4th book, it is certain that aliens 100% DO exist in the fictional world of the K-PAX stories and that they CAN travel at light-speed, and therefore K-PAX probably does exist and Prot is probably a real alien. By the 4th book doing this, it really ruined the trilogy. The lack of absolute certainty was the great thing about it. But I do kind of like knowing that Prot was almost definitely for real.

I'd say Yes. How else could a slaughterman from New Mexico know the star system so emphatically that only a small handful of scientists knew? Impossible.

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Duty Now For The Future

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Essentially it is supposed to be a story that tries to not tell you whether he is, or is not, an alien, you are supposed to make up your mind for yourself.

That said, if you purchase the DVD then be sure to watch the deleted scenes.
There are numerous additional scenes that were cut from the final movie that when taken overall with the full movie story, they strongly hint that he is in fact some type of an alien entity that can most likely inhabit human bodies.

The deleted additional scenes include:

- The hospital staff watch the security camera tapes for the time that Prot disappeared from his room and went up north for a few days, at the time he disappeared the tapes show an increase in light and then they show static for a second, presumably while he is teleporting away to the north, just like when he teleported home at the end.

- The doctor and staff search the entire hospital when Prot goes up north. He is not found anywhere.

- One scene in the theatrical movie Prot is tapping his pencil on a piece of paper on the desk in the hospital. What he is actually doing is creating a large star map of a large expanse of space. In the deleted scenes the astronomers look at this star map, initially think that it is just random dots, then they realize that it is the stars as seen from K-PAX. When they adjust for this, they realize that Prot has again shown highly detailed information regarding star positions and a black hole that no person on earth could ever see or know, or least of all hand-draw it from memory with that type of precision if they had not seen it themselves over many years of their lifetime.

The most likely reason why these scenes were cut from the theatrical release is because they remove most doubts that Prot is in fact an alien. So in order to make it more obscure and leave it up to the viewer, they cut those scenes.

FYI this is one of my favorite movies that I have seen many times, and Spacey is one of my favorite actors.

Yes, he was. Or he is. Whichever suits you. Read the novel. He REALLY was an alien. Controlling catatonic (hope I spelled it right) body of his friend Robert, to find someone to take care of him (Robert, not Prot).