Having Xenomorphs on Earth before Alien sounds like a big mistake. Knowing how tough and resilient the beasts can be, coupled with the ferocious speed with which they spread, is a nightmare scenario. That’s exactly the premise of Alien: Earth, coming to screens in August, and it’s both the show’s biggest challenge and its most exciting selling point. After all, several Alien movies have threatened the grim reality of a future where Xenomorphs escaped to Earth. We’ve also seen it before, no matter how many people want to forget it.
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In Alien Vs. Predator, we see the Yautja seeding Xenomorphs in the temples and pyramids that made up early civilizations. That film also demonstrated that even the Yautja are easily overwhelmed by the monsters, resorting to their self-destruct device to wipe out the infestation. The mainline Alien movies established that the only way to defeat the Xenomorph if you’re a human is with a desperate struggle to force it into the airlock or trap it inside industrial equipment. It’s the desperation that stems from the basics of survival and the fear that they would quickly overtake the Earth if they made it to the planet.
It’s a chilling thought, but it’s not the only reason Alien fans should be excited for the upcoming series. We’ve seen plenty of additions, detours, and retcons in the franchise to this point, and more changes might well be the shot in the arm the Alien series needs. Before we get into why it’s so exciting, here’s the trailer:
1) The Alien Franchise’s Fear Factor is Intact
Despite the setting being on the planet Earth and not in the coldness of space, the series still leans on the same claustrophobic fear as the franchise’s most successful films. The desperate need to keep the beast locked away or destroy it before it can escape into the wild appears to be still be intact, and it’s heightened because you can’t just blow it out of the airlock.
It’s a situation similar to what happens in John Carpenter’s The Thing, though the Xenomorphs are far more aggressive than the “thing” that took down Kurt Russell’s entire team. None of these creatures can escape, or else Earth is doomed, so how will the team in the film decide to handle the situation? It’s a good spot to be with plenty of episodes to watch it play out.
2) Noah Hawley Has A Strong Track Record
Another reason to be confident in Alien: Earth is creator and showrunner Noah Hawley. The Fargo creator and Emmy Award winner has had his hands in plenty of different franchises over the years, including the trippy Marvel series Legion for FX. The series follows the mentally unwell son of Charles Xavier as he struggles with his mental health and the influence of the Shadow King. Hawley took elements from the source material, like Legion, Professor X, and Shadow King, and melded them into an original story that stood apart from any of the larger X-Men projects at the time. There was never any confusion over David Haller showing up in the next X-Men blockbuster.
But if you’ve slept on Fargo or felt a need to be partial to the original Coen Brothers’ film, give it a chance. Across five seasons, Hawley and company have created a great crime story full of memorable personalities each time out. Each season is a self-contained entry that shares themes and tone, but covers a new story. He’s proven he can blend great writing with reverence for the past in both series, which should give plenty of confidence heading into the premiere of Alien: Earth.
3) Alien: Earth Brings Fresh Ideas
It also sounds like the new series is going in some interesting new directions; particularly how the Xenomorph will interact with other aliens that have also escaped within the crashed ship. Are these other creatures just as deadly? Were they creations from experiments similar to the Xenomorph? These are important details that will hopefully get addressed somehow in the first season, maybe in a passing mention or through the experiences of the surviving crew on the crashed ship housing the creature samples.
Hawley and his team have also revealed the introduction of a new type of synthetic being, led by Sydney Chandler’s Wendy, who is the first robotic hybrid with the body of a bot and the consciousness of a human. Specifically, Wendy was a child who had her mind placed in the hybrid body.
4) Alien: Earth Can Answer Other Questions
Apart from any tweaks and additions to the overarching Xenomorph lore, some interesting possibilities could answer lingering questions from past entries. One such possibility is establishing an answer behind where the corporations here on Earth discovered the existence of the Xenomorphs. Is the crashed ship the source? Is this why the original Alien showed that Weyland-Yutani is aware of the creature and the company is willing to use the crew of the Nostromo as expendable couriers to get the creature back to Earth?
Hawley has confirmed the series will draw more from the original film than Scott’s prequels. That means we shouldn’t expect to see more of David and his work connected to creating the original Xenomorphs. But there’s also the question of whether Prometheus and David’s actions have even been transmitted to Earth after the expedition disappeared. David was in the driver’s seat at the end of Alien: Covenant, so it’s safe to say that he also controls the routes of communication. Anything to add to the world-building in the original Alien and its sequels is welcome, though.
5) The Alien Franchise Has Always Embraced Change
From the start, each addition to the Alien franchise made tweaks and added background to the Xenomorph and its origins. It started with the introduction of the Xenomorph Queen in James Cameron’s sequel, altering the initial idea that the creature reproduced through cocoons to create more eggs. This expanded in later movies with the introduction of hybrids with humans that were introduced in Alien: Resurrection and later expanded in Alien: Romulus. It is also hard to ignore the upending of the original origins of the Xenomorphs and Engineers in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant.
The entire series has come quite a long way from an egg on a derelict ship. There are different castes of Xenomorph, including warriors from Aliens that protect the aforementioned Queen. Alien 3 also introduced the idea of a Xenomorph newborn reflecting the attributes of its host, with a dog helping the monster return to life by the end of the film. There should be no fears here.
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