John Lexington is a haunted military commander in The Enemy Is Coming, the new Australian sci-fi film from Shmengi Pictures. He enlisted at 18, led the team responsible for the secret bombing of his own home planet, and watched his crew tortured for it. He is the only surviving witness who remembers the full truth. He will give you the official story — never the real one.
John Lexington is a career military commander whose defining trait is simple: he survived something no one else did, and he has never told anyone what actually happened. He has served since the age of 18. He led the operation that bombed his own home planet under orders he was never allowed to question. He watched the crew who followed him into that mission get tortured for carrying it out. He walked out alive. In a universe where Terra Corp controls the official version of every event, a man who remembers the unofficial one is the most dangerous thing on the board.
Who is John Lexington?
John Lexington is a decorated commander whose entire adult identity was built inside a military structure he can no longer fully trust. Eighteen years old at enlistment. A natural leader by the accounts of everyone who served under him. A man with a reputation for calm under fire and almost nothing else on record.
What defines him:
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Command instinct — he reads a room and a battlefield the same way, fast and quietly
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Loyalty to people, not to policy — he stays for his crew, not for the corporation
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Controlled silence — he answers every question and reveals nothing
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Survivor's memory — he is the only one left who remembers the operation in full
He is not written as a hero or an antihero. He is written as the person left holding a decision no single human should have been asked to make. That places him alongside General Tom Harris in the film's study of what command costs the people who hold it.
What happened during the secret bombing of his home planet?
He led it. That is the fact the character never escapes.
The operation was classified before it began and buried after it ended. The team he commanded carried out the strike on the planet he was born on, and when the mission surfaced, they were the ones who paid — captured, interrogated, and tortured while the chain of command above them stayed clean. He was eventually released. Released, in his case, meant returned to duty with a file that says nothing and a memory that says everything.
Three consequences shape every scene he appears in:
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He believes he is responsible, whether or not he gave the order freely
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He believes his crew suffered in his place
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He believes telling the truth would cost more lives than the silence does
That third belief is the engine of the whole character — and it sits directly on top of the cover-up at the centre of the film, where an attack blamed on the Krytillians was never what the public was told it was.
Why does John Lexington stay in the military?
Because it is the only structure he knows how to exist inside, and because leaving would mean abandoning the people still under his command.
He is not staying out of belief. The uniform stopped being a conviction a long time ago — it is a job he is exceptionally good at and a set of people he refuses to walk away from. When the story pushes him toward the exit, he does not take it. Not once. That refusal reads as strength to the people around him and as a slow sentence to the audience watching him carry it.
It also creates the central tension of the story: the institution that broke him is the same one he is defending when the enemy arrives.
How is John Lexington portrayed on screen?
Through restraint. He is played as a man who has already had every reaction he was going to have, years ago, alone.
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He under-reacts. Bad news lands and his face does almost nothing. The audience learns to read his hands, his pauses, his exits.
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He speaks in procedure. Orders, status, logistics. When a conversation turns personal, he answers the version of the question he can survive.
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He is never shown grieving. No breakdown scene, no confession. The cost registers in what he avoids looking at.
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He is most exposed when he is competent. The calmer he gets under pressure, the more the audience understands how much practice he has had.
The result is a character the camera watches rather than explains. Everything he refuses to say stays in the room with him — the same restraint the team behind the film uses on Kara Banner and the executives of Terra Corp.
What makes him worth following as a character?
He is a competent man in an impossible position, which is rarer on screen than it sounds. Most military drama gives you either the true believer or the burnout. He is neither. He functions at a high level while carrying something that should have ended him, and the story never lets him put it down.
For viewers who gravitate toward slow-burn sci-fi — the kind where the tension is internal before it is external — this character is an entry point into a universe built on propaganda, corporate control, and buried orders. Start with the full story and character breakdown, then follow the production updates on the blog.
FAQ
Q: Who is John Lexington?
A: He is a military commander in The Enemy Is Coming, an Australian sci-fi film from Shmengi Pictures. He has served since he was 18, led the classified bombing of his own home planet, and survived the fallout that destroyed his crew. He is the only person left who remembers the operation in full detail.
Q: What is The Enemy Is Coming about?
A: Earth has run out of resources, and Terra Corp has taken control of the colonisation of other worlds. When a freighter destroys the Ellison mining colony, the blame lands on an alien race called the Krytillians — but the truth is buried under political manipulation. You can read the full premise on the movie page.
Q: Is he a hero or a villain?
A: Neither, deliberately. He carried out an order that caused mass harm, and he has spent every year since protecting the people around him from the consequences. The film does not resolve that for you. It asks you to hold both facts at once.
Q: Why doesn't he just tell the truth?
A: He believes disclosure costs more lives than silence does. He also believes the truth would destroy the reputation of the crew who were tortured for following him. Whether that reasoning is protective or self-serving is one of the questions the story keeps open.
Q: Who else is in the story?
A: Kara Banner, a 25-year-old survivor of the Ellison colony, and General Tom Harris, a jaded 60-year-old commander carrying his own knowledge of Terra Corp's atrocities. Both are profiled on the movie page.
Q: Where can I follow the film?
A: The production is active on Instagram, YouTube, and IMDb. For press, investment, or fan enquiries, use the contact page.
Commander. Survivor. Haunted. John Lexington works as a character because the film keeps his worst knowledge just out of reach while showing you exactly what it costs him to hold it — a man defined less by what he did than by what he refuses to say about it. When the enemy arrives, those secrets become either his weapon or his undoing. Join the fight and follow The Enemy Is Coming to find out which.