Noah Hawley's Alien series (2025)

[Mobbd]

Looking forward to his Alien series

Me too.

If Hawley tackles Alien in a similar way to Fargo (i.e. by using the original film as a box of paints to create spiritual sequels/prequels instead of overly-literal fan service-rammed franchise expansions) we should be in safe hands. I trust him. Really looking forward to it.

Plus Vyvyan will be in it! And Phryne Fisher! And an Olyphant!

The series will serve as a prequel and will be set three decades before the events of the 1979 film Alien. It stars Sydney Chandler, Alex Lawther, Samuel Blenkin, Essie Davis, and Adarsh Gourav. The series is a joint-venture production between 20th Television and Scott Free Productions, and will be released on FX on Hulu.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(American_TV_series)

[bgmnts]

This sounds promising but i dont trust media to do anything well, now.

Nothing in any Alien media has come close to capturing that sense of 'space truckers on a shite ship, working for a dogshit company' of Alien.

Alien 3 had that sense of pure grimness, but had its own issues. I could see a telly show working, but I see it in my head and it'll be insufferable, about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face. Maybe we just need to wait for 'woke' to go away, first.

[Famous Mortimer]

Fuck all prequels. They fundamentally / deliberately misunderstand what people like about the originals; it's not that we were crying out for more background on the corporation who sent them to space, or the alien's social structure or what the fuck ever. Not that I watched a minute of the "Fargo" TV series, but "crimes in North Dakota" is generic enough to go in a million directions (I presume there's not a lot of lore there) whereas "Alien" is going to be about one of two things.

Also, this line from Wikipedia is a cheeky internet prankster, right?

Sydney Chandler as Wendy, a woman who has the body of an adult and consciousness of a child[2]

[hermitical]

This sounds promising but i dont trust media to do anything well, now.

Nothing in any Alien media has come close to capturing that sense of 'space truckers on a shite ship, working for a dogshit company' of Alien.

I wouldn't want anything to try and capture/recreate that sense and I like many entries into the Alien series regardless.

[bgmnts]

I wouldn't want anything to try and capture/recreate that sense and I like many entries into the Alien series regardless.

Oh I love most Alien things, I just loved that first film and how subtle and scary it is, and I'd like to see that again.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Maybe we just need to wait for 'woke' to go away, first.

Huh?

[Egyptian Feast]

I never even wanted to know what was the story with the space jockey, and wouldn't have, if someone hadn't explained the entire plot of Prometheus and Alien: Covenant to me down the pub after I'd said that.

[hermitical]

Huh?

yeah, missed that!

[Inspector Norse]

I never even wanted to know what was the story with the space jockey, and wouldn't have, if someone hadn't explained the entire plot of Prometheus and Alien: Covenant to me down the pub after I'd said that.

They had plots?

[Egyptian Feast]

They had something it took a long time to explain in detail anyway. Think I must have stopped listening somewhere during the first one, as I'm not sure I could explain whatever a space jockey is myself. Some dead alien gunner cunt Bava homage thing.

[bgmnts]

Huh?

So we don't have to deal with people whinging about things going 'woke' anymore.

[The Bumlord]

Fuck all prequels. They fundamentally / deliberately misunderstand what people like about the originals

Dude I need to know the backstoryyy

[Mobbd]

Fuck all prequels. They fundamentally / deliberately misunderstand what people like about the originals;

Normally I'd agree. Strongly! I hate the Star Trek prequels and I am not fond of the Star Wars ones either.

But... Noah Hawley. I guess we'll see!

[Dex Sawash]

So we don't have to deal with people whinging about things going 'woke' anymore.

You're back on the buddy list

[Menu]

They had plots?

I really liked Prometheus. Probably Ridley Scott's best film of the last few years. But I'm a bit of a sucker for ancient alien stuff in general. I think the main criticism at the time was that there weren't enough scares and/or aliens but I find that particular origin story genuinely interesting. Although the last image of the woman going off in a spaceship with a talking head in a jar was a bit too much like Futurama for my liking.

[El Unicornio, mang]

I liked Prometheus as well, and the one after it. But I didn't like the space jockey backstory being explained. Much preferred the creepy mystery of it.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I think the main criticism at the time was that there weren't enough scares and/or aliens

The main criticism is that that it's crap.

[Menu]

I liked Prometheus as well, and the one after it. But I didn't like the space jockey backstory being explained. Much preferred the creepy mystery of it.

Yes that's a good point. Actually, I wonder if Hawley will bring in any rejected Giger designs. That would be a good place to start.

[Menu]

The main criticism is that that it's crap.

Yeah that was the response from most people, especially fans of the series. But when you dug a bit deeper it was basically that there was no Alien in it. But when there were loads of Aliens in Covenant, fans didn't like that either. You can hear Scott's palpable bewilderment on his commentary for that film.

[Alberon]

I didn't much like Prometheus, but I disliked Covenant more for junking most of that lore and trying to get back to a basic alien film.

IIRC the new Alien film will be ignoring the prequels. But of all the mooted alien projects the one whose loss I mourn the most was Neill Blomkamp's direct sequel to Aliens.

[Menu]

I didn't much like Prometheus, but I disliked Covenant more for junking most of that lore and trying to get back to a basic alien film.

 

I agree that Covenant was disappointing after Prometheus. At least for the three of us who actually liked the origin elements of the first prequel. I mean, I can get a mediocre Alien film from Paul WS Anderson. I expect something more interesting from Ridley.

[Pete23]

The Pitch Meeting vids do a very good job of showing why I think the prequels were highly polished and lovely to look at crap (and it doesn't have anything to do with there not being enough Aliens in them):

I still watch them regularly, I love the neomorph in Covenant and all the disturbing David drawings, but I can see that from a story and script perspective they're just not very good (IMHO).

[Blinder Data]

Yeah that was the response from most people, especially fans of the series. But when you dug a bit deeper it was basically that there was no Alien in it. But when there were loads of Aliens in Covenant, fans didn't like that either. You can hear Scott's palpable bewilderment on his commentary for that film.

more aliens would not have saved Prometheus from being crap

I remember bursting out laughing when Charlize Theron delivered the line "...father" after a dramatic pause, as if this reveal was meant to move or surprise the audience somehow. i couldn't care less. it showed that scott and co had scarcely thought of the film from the viewer's perspective

plus all the other obviously stupid stuff like scientists acting like gooey kids when they saw a new creature and the lady thinking she could outrun the massive space ship rolling in one direction

back on topic, this series could be good, i dunno

[Mobbd]

Prometheus is pretentious rubbish. Covenant and other recent Alien (and Predator) offerings look like junk to me, though I haven't seen them. It's not my jam.

This TV series, however, promises to be something else. I'm not here for it as an Alien fan (I love the original but I don't even like Aliens tbh). My spidey senses are tingling slightly is all. I think it could be a goodie, irrespective of "franchise."

[bgmnts]

For what it's worth, I really like the idea of Prometheus, but it should have been its own thing.

[Good One of Wally]

One of the things about Alien was that the title was an adjective. It was weird and different and unexperienced.

Obviously, you can't do that again.

[Pete23]

Here's a few quotes from Hawley that may delight / depress you:

On the overarching theme of the series: "There's a moment in the second film where Sigourney Weaver says, 'I don't know which species is worse — you don't see them screwing each other over for a percentage.' I think there's something really intriguing about exploring humanity in all its goods and evils and then trying to recreate for an audience those feelings you had in watching those first two films — which isn't easy in a franchise that has had four subsequent films and another film coming out soon, but I think I have some tricks up my sleeve."

With regard to the vastly different tech levels in Alien/s and the prequels: "Ridley and I have talked about this — and many, many elements of the show," Hawley says. "For me, and for a lot of people, this 'perfect life form' — as it was described in the first film — is the product of millions of years of evolution that created this creature that may have existed for a million years out there in space. The idea that, on some level, it was a bioweapon created half an hour ago, that's just inherently less useful to me. And in terms of the mythology, what's scary about this monster, is that when you look at those first two movies, you have this retro-futuristic technology. You have giant computer monitors, these weird keyboards ... You have to make a choice. Am I doing that? Because in the prequels, Ridley made the technology thousands of years more advanced than the technology of Alien, which is supposed to take place in those movies' future. There's something about that that doesn't really compute for me. I prefer the retro-futurism of the first two films. And so that's the choice I've made — there's no holograms. The convenience of that beautiful Apple store technology is not available to me."

About the series length: "I think that endings are what gives a story meaning, and so you should never start a story without some sense of where it's going because then you can really build that meaning into it. With Legion, I had what felt like a three-act structure to it that I didn't know if that would be three seasons or five seasons, or whatever it was, but I sort of knew what a beginning, middle, and end was.

And here, similarly, I knew that their desire was for a recurring series, not a limited series, and I had an idea that I was excited about, that I could see the escalation of it from one year to another. That's where we ended up not pitching them having a bible or pitching them blow-by-blow, but saying, "Big picture: this is the first movement, this is the second movement, and we're ultimately going here."

Personally I'm liking most of that!

[bgmnts]

Regarding the discrepancy in technology, I always just put it down to the Prometheus escapade being a top secret mission with the absolute best tech available, whereas the Nostromo was some shite space truck that uses outdated technology.

I do prefer the idea that the aliens are just aliens that exist, rather than created bioweapons. In the comic, they do have a homeworld, and aren't even the apex predator on that homeworld - they compete with these odd, red pterodactyl type things.

[Key]

Should be quite good I reckon. I trust Hawley from what I've seen of his TV work and like how he's pretty much disregarding the recent excursions into Alienland. I thought Prometheus was a load of dog eggs and never bothered with Covenant after hearing it was worse.

Its a particular bugbear of mine when the technology level in a prequel is miles better than the films supposing to follow it. Star Wars had it a little bit, the recent Trek shows had it in spades and Prometheus was terrible. Ok I know its a result of these franchises being so resilient that they span lots of real world technology jumps - and it is a bit limiting to intentionally hobble your design aesthetic to a certain era...  but it really takes me out of the internal logic of the universe. Especially when it seems that huge technological developments that could have solved numerous plot problems have completely disappeared without warning or explanation in just a few in-universe years.

[Mobbd]

Its a particular bugbear of mine when the technology level in a prequel is miles better than the films supposing to follow it. Star Wars had it a little bit, the recent Trek shows had it in spades

I've never understood it. If you don't like the aesthetic of that time period, why set your story there? Fucking bizarre behaviour.

I don't want to get on a Star Trek high horse (no, really) but the way they carefully tended to those period-appropriate aesthetics for decades only for NuTrek to come along and artlessly bulldoze it all with a casual shrug of the shoulders (when they could have so easily done a whizz-bang sequel show instead of prequel show)... it defies belief.