I’m a fan of the original Ridley Scott Alien movie and even the sequel, Aliens. After that, the Alien franchise produced dud after dud. Noah Hawley’s 8-episode has the same strengths and weaknesses of his other FX series: Legion and Fargo. The casts of these series are very good. The plots…tend to meander.
Alien: Earth begins with a crash of a space ship in a futuristic city. Of course, the Alien on-board, who has munched on many of the crew, now escapes on our planet. You would think that would be enough to keep the story going, but in typical Hawley fashion, we’re also encumbered with another plot:. Samuel Blenkin’s Boy Kavalier, Earth’s youngest trillionaire and chief creep of the first two episodes, funds the final steps in a quest for a type of immortality. Sydney Chandler’s Marcy, meanwhile, the first terminally ill child to transition into a synthetic body, takes on the name Wendy, Peter Pan’s friend that’s destined to grow up, unlike the lost boys.
So we have the murderous Alien, a synthetic humanoid with a human brain, and cyborgs all taking up screen time. I was unimpressed. GRADE: Incomplete, but trending towards C
I will probably pass on this one. Sometimes you can go to the well just too often.
Jerry, that’s my reaction, too. I’m ALIENed out.
This franchise is another cash cow that will probably outlive me. Hollywood rarely gives up on a name brand.
Fred, scary monsters are always an audience draw. But this iteration of ALIEN is not grabbing me.
Pass, for sure. I agree with you about Hawley and his plotting. Even FARGO meandered after season one.
Jeff, Hawley is a talented writer, but his TV series seem to drift away from the central plot.
The third Alien film was so awful it permanently soured me on any more trips to the well which is fine, the first one was fine but enough for me and I’m sick to death of zombie IP. Give me new movies and television shows. Just reading about the new Paramount regime’s for Star Trek made me ill.
This got a lot of great reviews from man-boy reviewers elsewhere but I could read between the lines and it definitely sounded overloaded and half-baked. The weird Peter Pan angle, in particular the female lead who is a little girl in an android woman’s body sounds especially dodgey. Thanks for taking the bullet for us here.
Byron, I don’t mind taking a bullet for my blog mates if it saves everyone some time and rescues them from a tedious program like ALIEN: EARTH. Yes, the weird Peter Pan angle is a Hawley trademark: let’s mix a murderous alien monster with an immortality/classic fairy tale. Yeah, that will work…