Aliens mistake a stuck-up, self-centred actor for Earth’s leader due to his popularity on social media. Placed on trail, he must prove the human race is humble and altruistic before Earth is destroyed to make way for a interstellar highway.

Here is an alternate version, which hopefully better illustrates the external goal.

Aliens mistake a stuck-up, self-centred actor for Earth's leader due to his popularity on social media. Placed on trail, he must prove the human race is humble and altruistic otherwise Earth will be destroyed to make way for a inter-stellar highway.

What Richiev said. The achievement of an external goal -- the "A" story -- can be a means to an end, the fulfillment of an internal goal -- the "B" story -- but loglines focus on the "A" story.

In a story, many times there are internal goals and External goals.

Your logline is focusing on the internal goal (Now he's forced to put others first) instead of the external goal. ("He must discover a secret death-ray and defeat the aliens" for instance)

I think loglines work better if you concentrate on the external goal (What he must actually must do to defeat the aliens) Instead of the internal goal (Become a more compassionate person)

Hope that helped, good luck with this!

That is great info. A soft incident may allow a little time to play with the fact we, as an audience, know something he doesn't. If I was to change the logline to something like:

Aliens mistake a stuck-up, self-centred actor for Earth's leader due to his popularity on social media. Putting him on trail as a representative of mankind, he must prove the human race is humble and altruistic or face mankind's demise.

Hopefully that adds a bit more to it, that these invaders are here to judge us worthy of existence, so illustrates the stakes and he must convince them of virtues he, at the starts of the movie, appears not to share.

One reason, I think the logline needs more specificity is because of the nature of the inciting incident.

Inciting incidents can be "soft" or "hard". In a "soft" inciting incident the main character has a choice of accepting the call to adventure -- or not. (As in "Philomena" where the journalist doesn't have to pursue the story of the woman looking for her adopted child. But he get's hooked on her story.)

Whereas in a "hard" inciting incident, the main character has no choice. The situation is forced upon him; he can't opt out. (As in "Captain Phillips")

In this logline, the inciting incident seems to be "hard". The character is designated as the "world leader" and he has no choice but to accept. So the question arises: what do the aliens want from him that makes it impossible for him to refuse the role they have cast him in?.

Thanks for the reply. I see where you are coming from in terms of maybe illustrating what the "Invaders" want from us, and him in general. I will have a think, and see if can make a couple of changes to the logline.

I like the premise, but I think "forced to put others first" is rather vague.

In Galaxy Quest the cast was being asked by the Thermians to save their race from extinction. They go along thinking it's just a gig, only to discover it's a real crisis.

In this story, the aliens are not asking, they are demanding...

...demanding what? What are the demands that the actor-turned-world-leader is forced to negotiate about? What must he do, what must he lead the human race to do... or else?

Thought about that when I had the idea, but I will hope to avoid that by not having him mistaken for a role or character he has played, but rather aliens have studied out Internet and he is "trending" the most, and not understanding our celebrity culture assume the most talked about person on the planet, must be a leader, or important ant person with authority. Thanks for your reply, appreciate the feedback

Thanks. Appreciate the feedback. Yep, it would be a comedy poking fun at our obsessed celebrity culture.

Sounds very similar to Galaxy Quest!
Can you pull it off without immediately inviting comparison with that great comedy.

Pretty sweet idea! I'm sensing a comedy with heart.
My only comment is, change "Aliens mistake a stuck-up, self centered actor as..." to "Aliens mistake a stuck-up, self-centered actor for." Adding a hyphen and changing "as" to "for" improves the grammar, but other than that, looks solid!