Earth. Impact: Imminent. #AlienEarthFX, an all-new original series, premieres this Summer on Hulu and with Hulu On Disney+.
I hope the Alien ends up having to work multiple gigs to survive in Iowa.
I love the alien franchise but this is almost for sure gonna be shit.
I wouldn’t be so sure, it’s being produced by Noah Hawley who did the masterful Fargo TV series
Good news. I hope something original in the universe, rather than “top 15 quotes and scenes only true fans of aliens remember! You won’t believe number 14!!” That romulus was.
And legion, which was weird and wonderful.
Legion is one of the best TV shows I have seen in my life. It infuriates me that so many people slept on that series, it’s incredible.
“Love will not save us; Love is what we have to save.”
Why so negative when we know almost nothing about it yet?
Because the last time anyone made a decent entry in the Alien franchise was 1986 (unless we’re counting video games or the Alien 3 assembly cut).
That said, if Hawley is behind this, it might actually be good. That man doesn’t miss.
The Assembly cut is still based on a terrible script. The William Gibson version made for a much better story.
In addition, I’d say that Alien: Romulus was a good addition to the series that brought world-building that was absent from about all of them after Aliens.
Hawley running this makes me a bit optimistic.
I’ve read the summaries of the Gibson script that are floating around our there, I agree that it would have been an interesting new direction for the franchise, but even as an absolutely die hard Gibson fan (top three authors of all time, easily) I’m not sure it would have been the best direction to go in. I actually think that the idea behind the script for Fincher’s version is really good, stripping the series back down to its horror roots. And it offers an excellent ending to Ripley’s story. The problem is really more in the execution in my opinion.
That being said, if someone from a parallel universe offered me a DVD of the Gibson version as a finished movie, I’d sell a kidney for it.
There’s an audio drama treatment of the Gibson script featuring Michael Biehn and Lance Henrickson, reprising their roles from Aliens. It may feel a bit dated with the space commies and all but, Alien really has what is now a retro-future setting and set design, which makes it feel right.
I think that one of the things that irks me about the Fincher script (beyond general quality and poor science) is that it took compelling characters and killed them without a good reason in order to limit the scope of the story and “reboot” it to making it just about Ripley. To me, that made the whole story just one-dimensional. Yes, there’s “trapped in the spaceship” ala The Thing from Another World, or the original Alien but, it does little to advance any narrative bigger than that, to develop Ripley or the inmates’ characters, etc.
That could be fine as a single film or an episode of The Outer Limits, but, as a cinematic series, especially one where the first two films left so many narrative options to springboard from, I find it to be just bad writing. To make a sportsball analogy (I have no idea why - I don’t watch sports), it’s like a game of baseball in the final inning, the bases are loaded, an easy pich comes in and Fincher bunts, making nearly the entire buildup meaningless.
I think that one of the things that irks me about the Fincher script (beyond general quality and poor science) is that it took compelling characters and killed them without a good reason in order to limit the scope of the story and “reboot” it to making it just about Ripley.
This is what irks most people about Alien 3. It irked me for a long time too, but I’ve come around to thinking it was actually a genius decision.
Alien 3 strips everything away from Ripley. These are horror movies. Even in death, the monsters still win. All of Ripley’s badass hyper-macho ass kicking at the end of Aliens ultimately amounts to nothing. That’s a fucking bleak angle to take, which is exactly why it’s interesting.
Ultimately, Ripley is faced with the reality that there is no winning against this monster. She cannot prevail. She cannot triumph. Not for herself. The only thing she can do is prevent it from hurting any more people, through a final act of sacrifice. That’s the best “happy ending” she can get in this world.
As a sidenote, both Ripley’s death and the film’s stripped down approach to the monster, with no guns available to the characters, were specific demands Sigourney made. Also by the time they made the movie they were going to have to either kill Newt, recast her, or put in a time skip, because the child actor was no longer a child actor by that point.
Anyway, the approach they took was guaranteed to be controversial, and I completely get why it’s a sticking point for a lot of people. But for me, I think it makes Alien 3 into a far more interesting movie, and a much more dramatically complete payoff to what is, ultimately, a horror story.
Oh, and I will absolutely be checking out that audio drama, that sounds awesome. Thanks for letting me know.
Oh, and I will absolutely be checking out that audio drama, that sounds awesome. Thanks for letting me know.
Definitely! It was enjoyable. Dirk Maggs also directed three adaptations of Alien novels that are considered canon:
- Alien: Out of the Shadows (takes place between Alien and Aliens)
- Alien: River of Pain (tells the story of the fall of Hadley’s Hope)
- Alien: Sea of Sorrows (set ~350 years after OotS)
You make some solid arguments. And I do agree that removing the availability of firearms really does a great job at increasing tension. IMO, killing Newt, Hicks, and Bishop as still a mistake in the bigger series’ picture. Preserving the overall arc of the Fincher script could have been done by, for example, having Ripley’s pod jettisoned (possibly Bishop as well) and leaving Newt and Hicks for another writer or underline Ripley’s futility against the xenomorphs with the Sulaco arriving after Ripley’s fall (or dramatically, during).
Such a path would give more space for world-building (Hicks coming out of cryo, trying to figure out what’s happened and get the ship turned around) as well as leave a solid cast characters for future installments (probably timeskip to Hicks having deserted with Newt and training her to survive as they try to get the word out and build a resistance against W-Y’s xeno-biological horrors, or Newt stuck in cryo due to having been facehuggered, or any number of alternatives that would leave the characters in play and allow for better future continuity).
The Fincher script pretty much ended the series, giving him the final word and leaving little for anyone else. Maybe it was that he was specifically not thinking about anything outside of a single, episodic horror story and happened to have this one.
At first I thought it was going to be an animated series, which is probably the best choice…
… But then I realised it’s just shit CGI.
I am convinced this will be the greatest show ever made. My expectations are sky high, and they can never be met!
