Alien Franchise (1979-?)

[The Curious Sofa]

Looks good, I just hope nobody utters the line “Get away from her you bitch!“

[colinr0380]

They mostly quote that in the second film... mostly.


.... and that's my review of Alien: Romulus.

[Yakushima]

Alien: Earth is abysmally bad.

[Mr Sausage]

Why?

[Roger Ryan]

Alien: Earth is abysmally bad.

What were you expecting from a franchise that has already given us Prometheus, Alien: Covenant, and Alien: Romulus? While I've only watched the first episode (pilot), it certainly wasn't worse than those three features. As would be expected from showrunner Noah Hawley, he doesn't miss an opportunity to callback to key shots, action pieces, etc. from the previous Alien films (much as he included too many Coen Brothers references in his otherwise quite strong Fargo TV series), but this series has ample room for Hawley to drag in Blade Runner and A.I. Artificial Intelligence concepts into the mix as well! Despite all the borrowing on display, I think the series has the potential to be an enjoyable combination of action, scares, and satire. We'll see.

[Big Ben]

Hard disagree about about Alien Earth. Alien Earth has the best reviews of any Alien project since Aliens(!) and as Roger has pointed out above I think it's going to have to do a lot of heavy lifting before it surpasses the absolute bong rips that Ridley Scott's two recent additions to the franchise unloaded onto the intellectual property.

I thought Romulus was passable, if only because Fede Álvarez managed to make an enjoyable popcorn flick and not some pseudo-babble involving Michael Fassbender and the dumbest scientists you've ever seen. Not exactly a miracle but given the circumstances it could have been a lot worse.

[Yakushima]

Why?

Different people may have different levels of tolerance for talentless, uninspired, poorly done shows, so I am not saying this series cannot be liked - although I hope that most people on this forum have higher standards. Alien: Earth is a painfully trite, derivative, and annoying work, with poor performances, dreadfully bad writing, and noxious editing. It is devoid of any new or interesting ideas, compelling characters, or artistic flourishes, and uses endless callbacks to the old Alien films to keep viewers' attention. This is even worse than the dreadful Alien: Romulus.
Admittedly, this is based on my watching the first episode - I called it quits after that.

[Matt]

painfully trite, derivative, and annoying work, with poor performances, dreadfully bad writing, and noxious editing. It is devoid of any new or interesting ideas, compelling characters, or artistic flourishes, and uses endless callbacks to the old Alien films to keep viewers' attention.

This is almost exactly how I would describe Alien: Romulus, except I liked David Jonsson's character and performance and the brief part where

Spoiler

the space station gets ground down by the planetary rings.

[domino harvey]

Considering the only thing I’ve seen about this is that there’s an Ice Age reference that people find unintentionally amusing, maybe people are positive on it due to meme potential?

[The Curious Sofa]

It got great reviews from critics I respect and I don't think they go by meme-potential. Maybe it's just that nothing will please everyone. There are some great actors involved and Hawley has proven itsef as an excellent TV writer, so I'll take the potentiallly hot take this this time round everything these people did was awful, with a pinch of salt. As with all series I won't watch it till the season is done, so I'll see then.

[Yakushima]

It got great reviews from critics I respect

Yes, I got fooled by those, too.

[colinr0380]

I have heard rumours that the series is doing a Peter Pan metaphor. Is that actually the case? If so, that may show the Disney influence (though Disney apparently already messed up the direct remake of Peter Pan a few years back by misunderstanding the story there and turning Wendy into an action heroine)

[Roger Ryan]

I have heard rumours that the series is doing a Peter Pan metaphor. Is that actually the case? If so, that may show the Disney influence (though Disney apparently already messed up the direct remake of Peter Pan a few years back by misunderstanding the story there and turning Wendy into an action heroine)

Yes, that's where the show is borrowing from A.I. Artificial Intelligence but going with Peter Pan instead of the Kubrick/Spielberg use of Pinocchio. The metaphor actually works quite nicely in the pilot, although I don't know that they should be stretching it much further as the series continues. And because Disney now owns the franchise, there was probably no trouble is licensing footage from Disney's 1953 animated feature.

[tenia]

The Peter Pan references are quite on-the-nose, at that.

[colinr0380]

If anyone wants some Alien fun over the upcoming spooky month the great "patologTV" gaming channel, which does commentary free playthroughs of games, usually on their hardest possible difficulties, is in the process of doing a "Nightmare, No Damage" playthough of 2014's Alien: Isolation. There are some janky bits to the game (mostly the look of the human characters. And once you see that they give the only female character the pink spacesuit on the flashback journey to the alien craft recreation of the equivalent scene from Alien, that aspect cannot be un-seen!), but this is one of those games where its more about the journey, and this kind of playthough allows for full savouring of the environmental and especially the sound design, with this being the first Alien game to really capture those moments of running full pelt through spaceship corridors with wailing sirens going off! And there is the great touch of the many and varied types of mini-games that have to be played on various door locks and computer consoles, evoking the clunky 8-bit era computer screens.

Plus this was also the game that got a lot of the cast from the Alien film to do some voice acting work too, which hopefully this playthough will be picking up as they go.

EDIT: On watching through this playthrough (and others over the years) without the directly impactful and highly stressful moment-to-moment situation of stealthing through rooms or warding off the alien taking precedence, I am more left with the sense of weirdly bureaucratic melancholy about it all. Where the audio and text logs are full of inter-personal drama and individual testimonies which are all that remains of 'normal' human activity, with it all about to be swept away as irrelevancies with the imminent destruction of the Sevastapol space station. As a disposable 'working Joe' myself, that is the aspect of the game that hits the hardest as a viewer of the action, rather than as the player inhabiting the shoes of the main character.

[Roger Ryan]

Now that the first season has finished on Hulu, I'll take this opportunity to say that I think that Alien: Earth is a moderate success, with my definition of success being the TV series managed to find some relatively new ideas to pursue rather than just recycle the standard Alien franchise tropes. The biggest problem that plagues the show (and affects every film in the series apart from the first one) is the one others have already complained about in this thread: why do these characters have to be so moronic? Alien: Earth actually comes up with an excuse for half the cast to behave in this fashion...

Spoiler

the consciousness of dying children have been implanted into synthetic adult bodies so they continue to behave and make decisions like children

... but I would have preferred all the characters just displayed higher IQs... you know, like those "space truckers" in the first film.

Still, there are a lot of fun creature designs and good art direction throughout. Despite some annoying plot holes, I found the first season to be the equal of Alien: Resurrection, meaning it's not as good as the first three films in the franchise but it's better than the most recent three.

[The Curious Sofa]

I was so looking forward to Alien: Earth, but the show is an crushing disappointment. The first two episodes were intriguing enough and impressive in terms of scale, but then it all went downhill. Episodes three and four, in particular, were a slog. The two good ideas are the various alien species and setting an Alien story in a Blade Runner-style world, but almost nothing else about it worked for me. The plotting and pacing are haphazard, and the idea of

Spoiler

transplanting children's consciousnesses into synth bodies never pays off in a satisfying way. This results in a heroine who reveals superpowers whenever convenient and is essentially invulnerable which means we don't fear for the lead character (unlike most of the others, she also never behaves like a child). She's becomes chummy with the xenomorph, speaking its language, which makes it an unthreatening foe. Having it stalk a Jurassic Park-style island makes the creature look like the man-in-a-suit it is.

Compare that with how carefully the aliens were shot in the first two films to make them appear otherworldly.

Most of the characters behave as stupidly as the crews in the Ridley Scott prequels, and I would put this show on the same level: pretty to look at, but dumb.

Spoiler

The standalone fifth episode, which received praise, is basically a re-run of Alien with more than one killer alien species. However, as there isn't time to develop the characters, I didn't feel invested in their fate.

I also disliked some of the stylistic choices, such as the jarring flash cuts and the use of a metal or grunge song at the end of each episode, a terrible 80s horror movie trope that doesn't fit this franchise.
I had problems with Alien: Romulus, but thanks to some cracking set pieces and brisk pacing, I find it a more satisfying entry than this one.


On a side note, I recently watched a fan edit of Alien³ called The Legacy Cut (you can request a download link from the website). I've never been in the camp who thought this was an underestimated masterpiece, it's really more of an interesting failure, but this version pulls together the best aspects of the TC and the Assembly Cut and it gave me a new appreciation for the film.

[Murdoch]

The ending songs were terrible.

I'm not a Noah Hawley fan and this continues that trend, I think proving that the only interesting thing about this franchise is the concept of the xenomorphs. Despite the attempts to explore artificial intelligence, it all feels like a drag. This entire first season would be best swapped out for the first Alien movie and Ex Machina.

I think the flaws have already been articulated above better than I'm willing to parse out. The only shining light is Timothy Olyphant, who is excellent as an android. I wish the show were just centered on him the entire time. Instead, we get some convoluted plot about children's consciousness being put into robots. I hate when shows create characters centered around their intelligence, such as "the boy genius" here, and make them an idiot. Perhaps his character is a jab at the insulated world of the financial elite, where idiots are showered with praise so much they're convinced they're geniuses. But that doesn't save a rather dull corporate espionage story whose only compelling moments come from it replicating the Nostromo plot.

[tenia]

Even Olyphant's character is often pictured as taking bad decisions after bad decisions, though.

Anyway, just as written above, the first 2 episodes were okay, but everything after took the already-visible flaws of these and made it their baselines. What a train wreck.
And placing this as a prequel also means we can not care about anything introduced in it, since it'll ultimately be discarded and have 0 impact in the mythology. It's just again new material creating questions nobody asked just to give useless answers. They should have made a sequel to Resurrection instead.

I'm also bothered at Alien Earth barely feeling like on Earth, and the threat is instead confined to a place that could very much be floating in space that it wouldn't change too much. Which IMO isn't what was advertised by a show called Alien freaking Earth.

[The Curious Sofa]

Yes, this being yet again a prequel is limiting because the existence of the xenomorph has to be under wraps till at least the events after Aliens/Alien³. So something I'd like to see from a series called Alien: Earth, which is a full on xeno-invasion, is out of bounds.

[Yakushima]

My impressions of the franchise:

Alien - a masterpiece.

Aliens/Alien³/Alien Resurrection - excellent writing/inspired filmmaking.

Prometheus - insufferably dumb writing/decent filmmaking.

Alien: Covenant - dumb writing/good filmmaking.

Alien: Romulus - atrocious writing/poor filmmaking.

Alien: Earth - atrocious writing/dreadful filmmaking.