Alien: Earth Review
The Alien franchise peaked back with the original first two films, Alien (1979), directed by Ridley Scott, and Aliens (1986), directed by James Cameron. Since then, the franchise has not been on a steady track and has struggled to return to the days of their glory. Last year, Alien: Romulus was released, and while it was a movie still with its issues, it was the closest we had come to a good Alien movie in a long while. The same can also be said for the Predator franchise, which suffered the same fate as the Alien franchise with weak entry after weak entry. As of late, it has entered a renaissance era with the release of Prey, Predator: Killer of Killers and the upcoming Predator: Badlands, all directed by Dan Trachtenberg. With Noah Hawley, known for his work on Fargo and Legion, attached to Alien: Earth, the latest entry in the Alien franchise, he’s here to ensure that Alien also enters its renaissance era.
Alien: Earth might be a television series, but Noah Hawley’s direction and writing elevate it to the level of prestige TV with its cinematography, editing and score, blurring the lines of what’s television and what’s cinema. While the show’s cinematic feeling may tend to blur the lines, Hawley ensures that he stays faithful to the medium, and in the six episodes that I watched, he expands this story over one-hour-long episodes, staying faithful to the medium.
This is a prequel set in 2120, two years before Alien (1979), and follows the space vessel Maginot, which crash-lands onto Earth after its entire crew is killed by the various specimens it holds. After a search and rescue team is sent to investigate, they soon make a discovery that puts them up against the largest threat that the planet has ever seen.
Noah Hawley doesn’t fall into the trap of using nostalgia to win over the fans of the franchise. Instead, he uses it as part of his storytelling and to honour the original movie, as the first episode opens up on a Weyland Yutani vessel that comes complete with the crew, the suspicious security officer, a cat and a sit-down around the breakfast table. Their journey also ends in misfortune and terror, but that’s where the show separates itself from everything that has come before.
There are similarities that can be found with this opening scene, and we discover in a later episode what events took place which led to the horrific deaths of the crew and the release of several of their specimens, which is without a doubt the best episode out of the six and could make for one of the best Alien “movies” if that idea were extracted for its own solo film. The Alien franchise repeatedly deals with the Xenomorph, and where a lot of its recent movies fail is that there are no secrets left to be told with the eight-foot-tall creature that H. R. Giger created the iconic, terrifying look for. We’ve also dealt with the various Xenomorph hybrids that we can come across, which sometimes worked (Alien: Romulus) and sometimes was an embarrassment to even think about (Alien Resurrection).
In Alien: Earth, we’re finally brought to, you guessed it, Earth, which had previously only been spoken about within the franchise’s rich cinematic history. Unlike our Earth, which various governments run across the world, it’s ruled by five conglomerate corporations, with the two that are focused on throughout this show being Weyland Yutani and Prodigy, a new corporation that’s run by the boy genius, Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin). The Yutani vessel, Maginot, was sent to retrieve several specimens, one of them unfortunately being the Xenomorph. Yutani (Sandra Yi Sencindiver) wants everything on the ship returned to her, while Boy Kavalier sends in Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant), a synthetic and a team of hybrids to discover what the crashed ship beholds, as it’s now his property. What they discover is anything but a welcome surprise.
Noah Hawley has a great understanding of the Alien franchise. His usage of the Xenomorph doesn’t put it front and centre, as there’s nothing excitingly new he can do with a creature that has been around for 40+ years, but he also understands it’s not something that can be thrown away and is a part of Alien’s DNA. Noah Hawley and the cinematographers allow us to see the Xenomorph through a new lens with these high-speed octane chases that take place through the confined spaces of the ship, creating a sense of anxiety and trapping the audience in a claustrophobic space.
The introduction of these new species is what allows for the show to feel fresh and unique with Noah Hawley’s take on the vast world. Alongside the Xenomorph is a parasitic eyeball and vampire termites that will have you looking at cats and even second-guessing your own water before drinking. The body horror is grotesque and leaves you curling in your seat as you watch a parasitic eyeball fight its way into a goat as it tries to enter its eye socket. These new specimens allow for never-before-seen dynamics with the Xenomorph and its interactions with other creatures.
What stands out here is that with the many characters it has, Noah Hawley doesn’t leave any of them behind, making his writing the strongest factor of this show. He takes risks towards the latter half of the first six episodes as we reach levels of absurdity that the Alien franchise has never touched, as we get to explore the Alien language through Wendy (Sydney Chandler). This first human-synthetic hybrid has a special connection with the Xenomorph.
Alien: Earth isn’t just another addition to the franchise that highlights its technical and cinematic showcase of what’s capable. It’s a touching story about mortality, family and the beauty and power which is the imagination of children. Next to Ripley, Wendy is the first character that engages with the audience and challenges our beliefs within their system. She’s beautifully written, and Sydney Chandler channels that innocence and curiosity that’s found within children but also highlights her capabilities as a synthetic hybrid and how, within all that childlike wonder, she also has a sense of maturity that even the adults within this show lack.
There’s not a single cast member who isn’t impressive. Samuel Blenkin plays the as*hole boy genius all too well, quickly entering himself into the hall of fame of characters we want to punch, and Babou Ceesay, who plays Morrow, a cyborg who was the security officer on the Maginot, blurs the line of hero and villain, with Ceesay delivering a performance that’s just as eerie as the specimens he’s after.
Boy Kavalier has given an opportunity for kids who are sick and dying to continue living their lives by getting their consciousness transferred into the body of a synthetic. So, while they may appear adult, they’re still children at heart. This might seem like a kind gesture, but this is only part of Kavalier’s plan to find the key to immortality. Noah Hawley asks the question of whether these hybrids are still children or just machines, as Morrow says later in the series, “When does a machine stop being a machine?” The Lost Boys (as the hybrids are calle,d thanks to the many Peter Pan references you’ll find throughout) are a conduit for Hawley to explore through the series the meaning of humanity and mortality.
Noah Hawley’s Alien: Earth ignores the canon of the previous instalments to tell its own unique story within the expansive universe. There are mannerisms that can be found from Ridley Scott and James Cameron, with some episodes favouring horror over action, or action over horror, or even the perfect mix of the two. Noah Hawley, while respecting what has come before, still manages to bring his take to the franchise, humanising the murderous machines known as Xenomorphs and using editing styles such as superimposition to provide moments of horror or moments that intensify the drama in the show.
From just the first six episodes, Noah Hawley has created a show that reminds audiences why Alien was successful all those years ago and is the best Alien project we’ve gotten since James Cameron’s Aliens. It’s horrific, thought-provoking, emotional and has some of the best characters and creatures the franchise has ever seen. What more could you ask for?
★★★★1/2
Streams on Disney+ from August 12th / Sydney Chandler, Timothy Olyphant, Alex Lawther, Essie Davis, Lily Newmark, Samuel Blenkin, Erana James, Adrian Edmundson / Creator: Noah Hawley / 18
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