The menagerie of creatures of Ridley Scott’s original Alien films has been expanded with carnivorous plants with tentacles, a nimble spider-like drone, and blood-sucking caterpillars. You would think this story has been told to death, making it too early for a remake. There has been no reboot — the action of the series Alien: Earth takes place on Earth two years before the cult first film. But is Disney, which has allowed an R rating in search of a new audience, turning the horror series into something suitable for family viewing? Pythia Pappas watched the first episodes and is ready to tell you whether the new series is worth watching.
The series set in the “Alien” universe took five years to reach viewers. During that time, Uruguayan director Fede Alvarez managed to announce, shoot, and release the feature-length horror film Alien: Romulus — a lively but simple remix of the franchise’s main attractions. The series comes from Noah Hawley, the creator behind hits like “Fargo” and “Legion” and a Golden Globe and Emmy award winner, but let’s get back to the plot.
The action of “Earth” takes place 16 years after the malicious synthetic David (Michael Fassbender) hijacked a ship with sleeping colonists in “Alien: Covenant,” and two years before Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) first encountered the xenomorph on the Nostromo in the original Alien. Still, Hawley decided not to build a neat bridge between Ridley Scott’s disparate films (Scott as the producer of “Prometheus”), but to tell his own story.
About a hundred years from now (in 2120, to be precise), all governments on Earth will be replaced by five trans-corporations: Lynch, Dynamic, Threshold, Prodigy, and Weyland-Yutani, which governs North and South America, as well as Mars and Saturn. Throughout this period, the race for immortality continues, leading to competition between three artificial life forms: synthetics, cyborgs, and hybrids. The first are robots with artificial intelligence; the second are enhanced humans; and the third are synthetic organisms with human consciousness. According to the plot, the universe will be ruled by the corporation whose technology takes root best (I’m talking about eternal life).
The plot centers on “eternal children” trapped in adult bodies. Hawley puts heavy-handed references to Peter Pan front and center. Barefoot Boy Kavalier is the boy who doesn’t want to grow up, a twisted version of Peter Pan himself. Wendy is Wendy Darling, the girl who has to grow up. Other hybrids, regardless of gender, bear the names of the Lost Boys from J.M. Barrie’s work: Tootles, Nibs, Slightly, Curly, and The Twins. And during the transfer of consciousness, the dying children watch scenes from the classic Disney film adaptation of the fairy tale on the ceiling screen.
Thematically, Hawley’s series is in some ways closer to another of Ridley Scott’s sci-fi film — “Blade Runner”. From the first two episodes (there are 8 planned in total), it is clear that the showrunner is interested in artificial intelligence, criticism of technocracy, and the differences between humans and AI. Scott, on the other hand, even in the philosophical prequels “Prometheus” and “Alien: Covenant,” was interested in creationism and Nietzscheanism. This difference in approach makes one think about the predetermination of fate embedded in the “code” of the main characters — a kind of natal chart of their fictional lives. While the analysis of birth charts for real celebrities has long been available on sites like Astrotheme, Astro-Charts, or new Pythia Astro, for fictional characters screenwriters have to describe their exact time of birth. But in the plot, Wendy’s curators argue about whether to give her hormone therapy to imitate puberty, but they give her the right to self-determination. Synthetic Kirsch admires how humanity has decided to stop being food and progress in the animal kingdom. The presumptuous Boy Kavalier is reminded that technological progress should improve the quality of life, not create immortal consumers.
That’s not to say Hawley is ignoring the franchise’s fans. The world design is inspired by the retrofuturism of the original Alien.
Familiar notes from Jerry Goldsmith’s music appear in the soundtrack from time to time. The xenomorph is once again portrayed by a stuntman in a suit, rather than computer graphics. The place of the unreliable synthetic Weyland-Yutani, which is not to be trusted, has been taken by the equally suspicious cyborg Morrow (Babou Ceesay). Soldiers with machine guns wander carelessly through dark corridors (a nod to James Cameron’s “Aliens”). Monsters hide in dark corners among pipes and cables. The invincible action heroine runs around with a machete, but don’t expect her to wear tank tops and use profanity like Ripley. At the time of writing, the initial episodes have received a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. If it proves successful, we can expect the series to be renewed for future seasons.
