Noah Hawley, the creative force behind FX’ Alien Earth, is staying in business with the network and Disney Entertainment Television.
Season one had an interesting premise that fell into the same pitfalls as other more recent Alien stories.
The promise of a look at a range of new extraterrestrial creatures was a good hook, but I feel like they were all squandered, even the eye, who spent 80% of the series stuck in a sheep staring at people.
The show seemed to think that people watch Alien media because we really love androids. The xenomorph takes a major backseat to the kids, to the extent that it becomes a trained dog for our main character.
The first episode featured a xeno that murdered everyone violently with teeth and claw, and then threw a main character softly into a wall to knock him out. This happens throughout the show, and really takes the energy out of a scene.
I hope that all of the setup the first season made can be paid off in season two, but I think I’ll hold off on watching it.
i was thinking, is this alien show, or an android show. the android in alien is used as a foil against the aliens.
It’s fine, even good, for a show to build out its world by focusing on different parts of it. As said above, the premise of a show about androids, corporations, and new xenos is solid. The writing and direction are the failures here.
Great series. I can’t wait.
So far, it’s a good series with the potential to be great. Hawley can make that happen but there are still some current shortcomings. I like the direction they have taken and the themes.
The acting is for the most part good, but sometimes it’s a bit twee with adults pretending to be children in humanoid bodies. The plot is a little disjointed and there are multiple times where characters having a frank discussion would have led to a different path for everyone.
I wonder if the xenomorphs are on screen too much and sonlose their impact. Interesting to have a bunch of other unrelated creatures. We’ll see how that develops.
The acting of the hybrid characters is phenomenal, especially Smee. The dialogue and mannerisms are almost surreal to watch.
Gosh. I thought smee was mediocre. Boy kavalier and nibs were grating, but nibs does the crazy under surface excellently, to be fair. Timothy Olyphant was great and understated but underutilized. Brother was dull and superfluous. He’s great in other stuff. I think it’s more the part and plot than acting ability.
Yeah I’m putting most of the blame on the shaky script and lackluster direction.
there are multiple times where characters having a frank discussion would have led to a different path for everyone.
This has been the central theme of drama for centuries.
Pretty much the source for requisite conflict
I feel like most of the people whining about this show are saying: “the characters dont’ act according to logic and sound reasoning. I think they are stupid people therefore I don’t like the show because they don’t act like I would like them to.”
like… ok… if they did their would be no point/plot/drama. The point is that people aren’t logical and reasonable.
I really don’t get people who criticize a fictional property’s characters for not acting in accordance with the arbitrary rules of behavior they have in their heads.
Not in good shows. In good shows, characters have frank discussions and still pull stupid shit because of motivations.
Yes, but usually poorer drama. Misconceptions and misunderstanding happens in real life. When it feels contrived,.it loses impact. Good writing can overcome it but some of the writing seemed like characters making poor choices, not because of any misunderstanding but rather the misunderstanding was created to make a motive.
Been afraid to give it a chance.
Depends on your expecations. If you like Noah Hawley’s previous work you will like this.
If you are expecting some hardcore sci fi realism, you won’t like it.
I really enjoyed it
The way they use the alien as her pet dog… And it is basically just invincible now. Or just never ever ever gets hit by bullets.
Everyone told me this show was so good but I found it mostly full of characters I feel are largely flat.
It’s more interesting watching it as a slice of life look at the dystopia they live in rather than anything having to do with the aliens or actual plot.
I dont know why I bothered. I made it into the fourth episode before I gave up.
The show is trash,
I watched the two intro episodes and 10 minutes of the 5th standalone episode.
I hated it. It’s the reasons why I dislike series.
Felt like a Disney Channel x Alien crossover.
everytime its almost everytime but the aliens, and the aliens are only side characthers, or cameos. just like with prometheus. its alway adjacent, like some other life form that is also parasitoid. plus they dont have the horror/alien scifi element to the new show.
Good. I’ll have my eye on you, if you know what I mean…🐙
i won’t be hatewatching the second season the first was enough.
I choose you, Trypanohyncha Ocellus!
I can’t believe it. That show was absolutely brain dead. We made it through the first two episodes before we realized the writer’s room was either completely green or extremely bad, and that besides the set design or the vfx crew no one was a real Alien fan.
Inventing a new company built around a tech boy billionaire who proclaims to be the smartest person in the world and whose motive was stated as “to have a new and interesting conversation” while doing absolutely nothing to demonstrate his intelligence felt like weird corpo porn. If you’re gonna say a character is smart, you have to make them do or say smart things. One of the first decisions we see him make is sending in children in superhuman Android bodies (priceless by the way) to a collapsing building. No training, no education past general academic things, no practice in anything relevant. Unbelievably stupid.
The main character takes a paper cutter arm and puts it on her back like a sword, that level of stupid, throughout the whole series.
I also hate when cash grab entries in a franchise advance the tech or introduce world changing lore that water down the original product. Like touch screens? In a famously tactile and retro sci-fi world? Introducing cybrogs is fine, playing them identically to androids, all to seemingly be different in concept from the originals (and set up this supposedly important tech race) while paying beat for beat homage to them. Gosh, a cold calculating
androidcyborg kills part of his crew for no stated reason (unlike the original entry where it was stated and good).I mean I could go on but I don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum. If you liked the show, I’m happy you’re getting a second season, but if anyone’s looking for a review - don’t fuckin watch it. It was so poorly written. THE XENOMORPH CAN SMELL FEAR NOW AND THAT’S WHY IT KILLS, After Earth-type bullshit levels of bad writing.
I’m just so disappointed because after Alien Romulus I was hoping whoever was making the franchise calls was maybe capable of revitalizing the IP. But I’m treating Romulus like Andor, a fluke (not that it’s Andor levels of good but that it was an unintentional outcome of the mass production of old IP pieces).
You smash the premise as being brain dead. OK.
Then why is it so reflective of what is currently going on in America? It’s actually a great metaphor of the arrogance and ignorance of so many corpos and their sycophants today. People are not logical.
I don’t think it’s reflective at all. I don’t think it’s smart enough to be saying anything intentionally. Having a braindead tech CEO who happens to be one of the richest men in the world would be a great literary space to play around in and reflect on the world if you knew that was what you were doing. The show never once demonstrates that level of self-awareness, doesn’t say anything on the subject (at least in the first two episodes as I confess to having only seen the two), and we could be overly generous on the writer/director/actors intentions but that doesn’t put them on the screen. The US IS not sending children into burning buildings after a plane crash to steal secrets from rival corporations/countries (without explicitly telling them that’s what they’re there for). America is doing a lot of dumb, crazy, and evil shit. Yes, tech bro CEO’s right now have too much power and money and they’re largely morons who got elevated by statistical inevitability. That doesn’t mean every half baked show with a dumb CEO is intelligently written or philosophical or even has something interesting to say.
Too much credit is being given to shapes that look similar but are fundamentally not patterned artistically. The show is full of logical, character, and world building flaws that I think destroy any lenience someone could give in any one category or instance. Or maybe the production value is so high people can overlook these things, idk, that’s fine too. But I maintain it’s not saying anything captivating on purpose.
I came here to write this, so thank you for saving me the trouble.
I really wanted to like this show. It has great production value. It has some good actors. It had potential.
Unfortunately the writing is so bad it’s insulting to my intelligence as a viewer.
You know how fire fighters and medic personnel FAMOUSLY bring assault rifles into every collapsing building or emergency situation? Or how elevator doors close lightning quick after you enter them, such that they could prevent… Oh let’s just be hypothetical here… A XENOMORPH from catching you, or how famously quiet plane crashes are when they hit your building such that you can continue your apartment party without being any the wiser?
I’m happy you found my comment useful. I’m just stunned this has a 66% on RT with viewers. I’m not shocked when critics are wildly off base, but for the viewers to have given this such a high score speaks to how hungry people are for high budget sci-fi properties or maybe just Alien specifically. Either way, this franchise should have had more room to be better than it was clearly given.
It was kinda fun to watch. The least shitty Alien after Aliens, possibly. Timothy Oliphant is kind great in everything he does.
But it was also quite derivative. Almost as if an AI wrote the script.
