Spoilers Alien: Earth Spoiler Thread

[Nikosandros]

The cat was no Jonesy!

 

[Larnievc]

Saw the first two episodes. Rock solid so far, I'm engaged and intrigued. The characters are interesting, the new aliens pretty cool and interesting...I'm in!

The big thing that struck me is....honestly Earth doesn't look too bad. When your used to the sterile existence of space travel in teh alien universe it can be easy to think that Earth is just a complete and total garbage heap by this point. But....the old girl seems to be holding up well 100 years later, actually looks pretty clean from the few scenes we have seen. Not Star trek levels of optimism but hey I'll take it.

I know it deviates from the RPG lore but Earth is supposed to be not too bad as they used terraforming tech to fix some of the earlier problems.

 

[Larnievc]

All the "hybrids" (i.e. child + terrifying robot body & brain) are literally renamed after Peter Pan characters, and we're literally shown scenes from Peter Pan and read (amazingly terrifying) excerpts of Peter Pan, which is just screaming "DO YOU GET IT?!?!?"

The cyborg with the hook hand, sorry I mean the blow torch.

 

[Swanosaurus]

Still not sure after the first two episodes. I like how it plays with the themes of the series - humans as prey creatures, and of course the whole "crew expandable" thing. I like how it plays into the series canon - I imagine WY won't get their hands on the aliens in the end, but quite accidentally, they have a freighter near the planet where the magenot found them, so they re-route the nostromo there and send no instructions to its synthetic.

Other stuff, I don't like that much. The alien itself feels weirdly unspectacular; sometimes it's a one-man army, at other times it takes its time to let the important characters get away ... anyway, it has never felt less scary somehow than in this series. I'm also not to keen on the on the nose Peter Pan references, and I don't get why the Lost Boys and the Cyborgs should have that degree of super-strength/durability, which fits neither with the depiction of Ash nor with that of Bishop or call.

I kind of like the other creatures, though that eye jellyfish thing seems a little to cheesy - what kind of alien ecology brings forth a creature that seems to specialise in posing as the eye of a creature with human-like eye?

Also, emotionally, some of it is just too inconsistent, like Hermit getting over the whole nearly having his face eaten by the alien so quickly, musing over a baseball and reconnecting with his dead sister, when everyone should be in absolute terror and fight for survival mode.

Also, why do they send in all of the Lost Boys? Why not Kirsh, Wendy and a few special forces? Why put all your precious eggs in one basket that might explode any minute?

 

[Larnievc]

Also, why do they send in all of the Lost Boys? Why not Kirsh, Wendy and a few special forces? Why put all your precious eggs in one basket that might explode any minute?

These are all good questions but it’s nice to watch something where there are some genuine questions that may well yet be answered in subsequent episodes.

 

[Swanosaurus]

These are all good questions but it’s nice to watch something where there are some genuine questions that may well yet be answered in subsequent episodes.

I think that particular question already has been kind of answered (the boy genius wants to see their reaction and actually doesn't care that much whether they live or die), it's just an answer that doesn't quite ring true to me.
Still, I do think you're right; most of the first two episodes seems pretty consistent in itself and with the general mythology of the series, and I think they'll come up with answers that make sense (as they have already answered the question of how WY obviously knew about the aliens before the events of the original movie).

 

[Swanosaurus]

Which makes me think: I'd love to see the big corporate f*-up that must have taken place between Alien and Aliens. I mean, even before Alien, people at WY knew about the creature and were ready to do a LOT to get their hands on it. Then the Nostromo is lost in space/blown up, WY has lost a megatons of assets and no Alien to show for it ... and someone must have just said: "Oh well, it's not worth pursuing this further. It's usefulness is highly speculative, anyway. Let's just forget about it." Or maybe there was a powershift at WY and the people behind the alien project got fridged. Anyway, for sixty years they do nothing, even though they know where to get their alien - nothing but send in a terraforming crew, which seems to have been done in honest cluelessness about what lurks on that planet.

Only when they find Ripley, someone (maybe even Burke himself) remembers to dig up the old files about that alien project and puts 2 and 2 together - "hey, that planet with the prospective bioweapon? We have colonists there. Maybe it's wort checking out after all ..."

I'm convinced that the whole bioweapons project simply got lost in between the red tape beween the two movies - it's the only logical explanation.

 

[wicked cool]

Awesome first 2 episodes and we have 1 more monster reveal. I am curious if the other aliens will play a bigger part in the show. And I want more flashbacks on how the crew captured all the aliens plus there were several chest buster victims?

 

[wicked cool]

What I don’t understand is why Wendy is so much more advanced than the rest ?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

What I don’t understand is why Wendy is so much more advanced than the rest ?

Here's my tentative thought on this- in the second episode, there is a conversation (with Boy Genius) where they refer to the fact that they have given her a supercomputer (he wants someone he can talk to, yada yada). It's not stated directly, but given what appears to be her defining and advanced abilities, I would say that-
a. She has more processing power (aka, a supercomputer? of some kind) than the others.
b. Based on the other scene, there are also guards in place that they lifted for her and haven't for the others (which is why she can go through security footage- but because she is so advanced, she already learned to hack the system).

Now, with that out of the way... my review!

Let me start with my overall review- I like it. I want to love it, but I haven't gotten there yet (full explanation below). But I definitely recommend it. Based on what I've seen, I think I might love it, but the first two episodes are very much "laying the groundwork" and setting the scene, and limited in scope (it's basically three areas- the Maginot, Neverland, and the Apartment Complex/Maginot). I assume it will be greatly expanded. If the whole series is just "aliens in an apartment complex," (which I assume is not the case) then I will be greatly disappointed.

I love Noah Hawley. I think that Legion is one of the inventive and underappreciated shows of the Prestige TV era. I think that Fargo is amazing, because it isn't a riff are a reboot of Fargo- it's really a riff on the Coen Brothers, and while different seasons have different strengths and weaknesses, I love them all. As soon as I heard he was doing A:E, I was all in.

So here's my very tentative thoughts, based just on the premiere (first two episodes).

I love the premise. I love the quick subversion of expectations (you start with the Maginot and the whole cast of characters which is so reminiscent of you know what, and ... welp, hope you didn't get attached to them).

I love the expansion of Alien lore that feels absolutely true to everything we've learned about this world... while also significantly broadening it. Too often, when lore is broadened it can feel like it's just retcons and things that don't make sense. Not here- it genuinely feels like we are learning more about corporate control, and Weyland Yutani, and the role of synths, while making the world feel so much bigger (five corporations, synths, cyborgs, and ... the new hybrids, etc.). The glimpses of future earth feel real and gritty, without grasping at tired urban noir Bladerunner tropes (but see below). The single alien feels incredibly dangerous, as it should be (and as repeatedly shown ... is). And the new aliens feel genuinely alien and frightening without overshadowing THE ALIEN.

Next, based on his work in Fargo and what I've seen here, I'd argue that Hawley isn't just riffing on Alien (although he obviously is!). He's riffing on Ridley Scott. Sure, he's using all of our Alien knowledge to engage us (and, of course, to subvert those expectations... again, love the Maginot setup). But you'd have to be dead, dumb, and blind to not notice that he's also riffing on that other Ridley Scott movie. From the opening crawl (Corporations are battling for control through ... Synths (non-humans), Cyborgs (humans with machine supplements), and Hybrids (synths with a human consciousness) to ... well, what, um Timothy Synthyphant (great hair!) is literally telling us (humans are food, bruh), this series looks like it's really going to be examining the themes of the other Ridley Scott movie in the Alien universe.

Which I am totally down for. In other words .... the conversation between Dr. Mom and Boy Genius- I think that is really a preview of the thematic weight of the series. Or, put another way, even if Wendy has all the memories of the Medic's sister, is she really his sister?

Or maybe not. Maybe it will just be more aliens chomping on stuff.


The biggest drawback? I'd have to say that while I think the visuals and editing have been perfectly fine, and sometimes excellent, nothing in the first two episodes strikes me as having that true flair that I associate with the projects of Noah Hawley. The closest was probably the Peter Pan visual for the transfer. My high expectations keep me from loving it, and I don't know if it can deliver on what it's laying down - it's going to be hard to continue striking a balance between horror, action, and exploration of consciousness and role of humanity - but I am optimistic and enjoyed the first two episodes.