There’s another new trailer! Look, I’m not going to pretend at professional distance here: I am extremely excited about next month’s new TV series, Alien: Earth. And each new trailer gives me more reason to be. But this isn’t because I think the Alien franchise is some surefire hit generator—goodness gracious it isn’t—but because it’s from Noah Hawley, and I suspect it’s going to be really, really weird.
Noah Hawley is perhaps best known for his TV reinterpretation of the Coen Bros. movie Fargo, but the reason I’m so thrilled he’s behind Alien: Earth is because of his 2017-19 show, Legion.
It’s hard to convey Legion’s brilliance in words, given so much of this unique take on the world of superpowers existed in the most astonishingly vivid visual flourishes. It was also the most extraordinary take on what was, after all, an X-Men story, despite never uttering those words, nor even alluding to the wider franchise. The story of David Haller (Dan Stevens), the schizophrenic son of Charles Xavier (although he is never named either), explored his attempts to come to terms with his powers and his mental illness, accompanied by the unknowable reality of Aubrey Plaza’s Lenny, all while being pursued by the astoundingly sinister Amahl Farouk (Navid Negahban). It was like nothing else on TV. (The above is a genuine scene from the TV show, not a compilation or trailer. It was this fantastic.) And that’s why I’m so hyped for Alien: Earth.
Hints of the possible weirdness have appeared throughout the promotional campaign for the series, not least a full three minutes of a cat’s eye view of a Weyland-Yutani ship:
But somewhat less overtly, there have been multiple trailers featuring shots so distinctive from Hawley’s shows; sparse, symmetrical spaces, intercutting shots of idyllic nature with barren, metallic greys. There’s so much potential here for headfuckery, peculiar flashbacks/forwards that can sit unexplained for episodes at a time, and visual flare that will speak far more potently than the scripts.
Or, of course, it could be terrible. No one knows yet. But I have such high hopes. Last month we had a trailer that stopped holding back and introduced us to the idea that the the Weyland ship that crashes into an North America’s Prodigy City isn’t just carrying a Xenomorph, but at least four other alien species. One of them looks like a Metroid. Another is the cutest little evil octopus.
We also learned that this 2120-set show, taking place a couple of years before the events of the original 1979 Alien film, has a program in which human consciousnesses are transferred into synthetic bodies, and throughout the earlier trailer, there were hints that this will cause issues for those minds: perfect Hawley territory for unreliable narration and ambiguity over reality.
This latest trailer at first seems to be something of a best-of of what’s come before, but in fact subtly moves ideas forward a step. The young girl whose mind is transferred into a synth body—she’s not questioning her humanity. The alien creatures we know have escaped on board the crashed ship? We now see their eggs, their victims, and a whole lot more blood. And most of all, if you’re me and geeking out about this, we see a constant flip-flopping between sci-fi metallic horror and comfortable, Earthly bucolic nature. Right up until that final shot, the incredibly subtle yet striking image of a Xenomorph lit by natural light.
When did you last see a Xenomorph lit by natural light?
Oh, and talking of progression between the trailers, we need to talk about the poor goat. The left side of the picture is how it appeared last month, the right side how it appeared today:
There are so many questions. Not least, based on this being set two years before the original movie, you’re forced to wonder how much was known about the Xenomorphs ahead of Ripley’s first encounter in 2122. Now, forgive me, because I’m no expert in this franchise (obviously Alien and Aliens are masterpieces in their own distinct ways, but the rest of the movies really don’t bear all that much scrutiny in my opinion), but I’ve tried to piece this all together. And for the record, the Alien Vs. Predator movies are not canon, as Ridley Scott made sure of by the story he told in Prometheus.
2012's Prometheus was set in 2093, at which point it’s made clear that Xenomorphs are yet to exist. Alien: Covenant, released in 2017, is set in 2104, just 16 years before this TV show, and now—as a result of experiments with fungal spores on an alien planet—it seems they do. But they’re nowhere near Earth, and it’s unclear whether or not anyone could have reported back about them. The next chronological movie is Alien, which of course was not created to be part of some enormous franchise spanning the timeline in either direction, and so gave no thought to where or why the Xenomorphs existed. But it does reveal that the as-yet unnamed corporation had deliberately sent the Nostromo out to encounter the aliens.
So, this all suggests that Alien: Earth is going to explain how Weyland-Yutani knew to go look for the buggers: they literally encountered them on the planet’s surface. That’s quite a twist! It also leaves huge questions about those other four species! Why have we never encountered any of these again in the four other films that take place after Alien? Obviously Aliens takes care of itself, in its own contained story, but what about Romulus? That’s set on a Weyland experimental ship, but here they’re only focused on the Xenos. And sure, the more we can forget Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection the better, but the latter is set another 200 years later on and still doesn’t suggest other lifeforms are out there.
It’s obviously tempting to just say, “Dude, who cares? It’s a sci-fi story and they’re just making shit up as they go.” And yes, that’s absolutely true. But people take canon and continuity really seriously, especially in nerdcore like this. It would, I think, be a bit lazy to set a TV show in such a crucial moment in the mythos’ history and act like what comes next isn’t important. It seems very unlikely that’s the plan. Hence why it’s so interesting to speculate!
The show is going to be on FX and Hulu, starting August 12 with two episodes. After that, it’ll come out on a weekly schedule, like TV used to in the olden days, with eight episodes total finishing on September 23.
Clearly I’m way too excited for it.
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