Explosive
Summary
Alien: Earth is a welcome addition to the franchise with fascinating new characters and plenty of xenomorph action. There is lots of gore and impressive visuals to keep you glued. My only real gripe is some of the music choices which are jarring, but aside from that this is quality fare.
Plot: When the mysterious deep space research vessel USCSS Maginot crash-lands on Earth, “Wendy” (Sydney Chandler) and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet’s greatest threat. FX’s Alien: Earth is created for television and executive produced by Noah Hawley.
Review: I’ve been curious to how you can make a series set in the Alien universe interesting. I figured it would be slowburn and it would be a few episodes before we actually get to see the Xenomorphs, but thankfully creator Noah Hawley knows what we’re here to see and they show up in the first three episodes doing what they do best.
Alien: Earth captures the look and feel of the movies especially with the set design; the ship in the first episode is designed like the Nostromo and it even has flashes of the original theme tune as well. The only aspect I don’t love is the addition of songs during some episodes and the end credits. It feels out of place in this universe and is just something that plagues practically every single American TV show.
Aside from that this is well paced with some creepy moments, gore and spectacular visuals. We are in a golden age just now where sometimes I don’t think we appreciate just how we’ve come on in terms of technology where we can get a TV series with production values like this.
The performances are all first rate with Sydney Chandler in a star making role as the synthetic Wendy; she was a terminally ill young girl called Marcy whose consciousness is transferred into this new body, so despite looking like an adult she behaves like a child. This works surprisingly well and the other kids who go through the procedure struggle with their new “lives”.
Timothy Olyphant makes everything better and as always he’s magnetic any time he’s on screen as the mysterious Kirsh. Babou Ceesay is also quite unhinged as Morrow who is one of the main villains of the show.
Episode 4 is a little slow and kills the pacing a bit, but otherwise Alien: Earth is a welcome addition to the franchise. The Xenomorphs aren’t the only alien threat with something called The Eye one of the grossest things you’ll ever see.
On the action front we get some shoot-outs and battles against the xenomorphs, but this goes more for the sci-fi horror of Alien rather than the action of Aliens.
Overall, Alien: Earth captures the spirit of the first Alien with a barnstorming first 3 episodes and then the pacing slows a little; however, it’s never boring and the acting is faultless with enough gore and squirm inducing moments to keep things moving.
FX’s “Alien: Earth” premieres with two episodes on Tuesday, August 12 at 8pm ET on FX and on Disney+ in Canada.