The future of Alien, without Sigourney Weaver

Telegraph

2 days ago

In space, no one can hear you scream. But what about down here? Well, we're about to find out. Having spent seven ­movies in the furthest reaches of the ­galaxy, the Alien franchise, begun by ­Ridley Scott in 1979, is about to be, quite literally, brought down to Earth.
In Noah Hawley's upcoming ­Disney+ TV series, Alien: Earth, a research vessel owned by the mega­corp Weyland-Yutani, familiar from the films, crash-lands into the Bangkok of 2120 (two years before the events onboard the spaceship Nostromo in the first Alien film). The crash brings HR Giger's unmistakable Xenomorph, plus a whole host of other nasty intergalactic beasties, to our planet. The snappy new ­tagline tells you all you need to know: 'We were safer in space.'
Hawley – the writer-director known for his innovative take on Marvel superheroes in Legion and his daring extension of Coen Brothers' lore in the Fargo anthology series – has given the sci-fi horror franchise another twist.
Alongside the familiar 'synths' – the unsettling androids made famous in the franchise by Ian Holm, Lance Henriksen and (in the Prometheus films) Michael Fassbender – and cybernetically enhanced 'cyborgs' (humans with hi-tech additions), Hawley has introduced an even more troubling creation: the 'hybrid'. These are synthetic beings downloaded with human consciousness, created by a shadowy corporation named Prodigy. In this case, the consciousness of a group of terminally ill children, who become known as 'the Lost Boys'. Forget Alien, this is Frankenstein for the 21st century.
'The first idea when I started thinking about Alien was the fact it's not just a monster movie,' says Hawley. 'The Ian Holm reveal – that he was a synthetic. He was artificial intelligence, and that artificial intelligence was trying to kill them.'
When Hawley began writing the show, 'ChatGPT didn't exist', but the series' central question about our reliance on and suspicion of AI has become eerily prescient. 'It's like Noah saw into the future,' says Sydney Chandler, who plays Wendy, the leader of the Lost Boys and the central figure of Alien: Earth.
It is the past, however, that has inspired Hawley. The look and feel, particularly in the opening scene, is pure 1970s. Andy Nicholson, the production designer, pored slavishly over the original two films (1979's Alien and James Cameron's 1986 ­follow-up Aliens). He used the Nostromo as a blueprint for the vessels and taking inspiration from 1970s Italian furniture and car interiors.
'We decided it should be the future as imagined in 1979,' says Nicholson, 'and not to go in the direction of Prometheus'. Scott, an executive producer on the project, was happy to let them get on with it. 'Every time I spoke to him, he was storyboarding,' says Hawley. 'First House of Gucci, then The Last Duel, and then Napoleon. He made at least three movies while I was ­making one season of television.'
Both Hawley and Nicholson are careful not to criticise Scott's Prometheus movies, but it's clear they want a clean break from them. 'The 1970s movie-ness of Ridley's film and the very 1980s movie-ness of Cameron's film, those were a big part of it for me,' says Hawley. 'Prometheus is a prequel, but one in which the technology feels thousands of years more futuristic. So I had a choice. And there was just no way to make Alien without the retrofuturism of technology.'
Indeed, much of the look has stuck so closely to the first two films' concepts that many of the original designers have been given production credits on Alien: Earth.
This is seen most starkly in the very first few minutes of the show, which begins just as Alien did, with a group of workers on board a vessel bound for Earth, the Weyland-Yutani owned Maginot, waking up from cryostasis.
The aesthetic – from the furnishings and computer graphics to the sweaters and the moustaches – is pure 1979. 'I really wanted to send a message that the movie I was most inspired by was Ridley's,' explains Hawley. Even Jeff Russo's soaring score apes that of Jerry Goldsmith's memorable intro music – with a twist. 'You want to pay homage to what came before and yet also forge a new identity – that's the trick, right?' says Russo.
As we approach the Maginot, Russo's orchestral title track is assailed by distortion and, most disturbingly, human voices. It's Alien, Jim, but not as we know it. Soon the Maginot, and its mason jars of alien lifeforms, are lying in pieces in Prodigy City, 'New Siam', on a sweltering Earth.
Those lifeforms were the major challenge. Hawley decided they could not simply rely upon Giger's world-famous, biomechanical Xenomorph. Nicholson felt the pressure: 'The Xenomorph was the scariest space creature you'd ever seen. And these creatures had to be worse.'
Before the Maginot goes down in flames, we see the jars and glass boxes filled with all sorts of primordial, unearthly beings. 'The first movie is rooted so much in body horror and a genetic revulsion about parasites,' says Hawley, 'and this really uncomfortable, pseudosexual, penetrative design aesthetic. So I just went with: what is the worst thing? What makes me the most uncomfortable or repulsed or disgusted?'
The answer, seemingly, lies in a creature known as T Ocellus, a ­grotesque, tentacled octopus/jellyfish thing that seems to be made out of eyes. 'That was the one,' says Nicholson, wincing. 'I saw the design and thought, 'Oh God, who came up with that?''
The jury is out on whether it is the creatures that will scare the living daylights out of viewers or whether it will be Boy Kavalier, a 20-year-old tech trillionaire played by Samuel Blenkin who runs Prodigy and has created the synthetic-human hybrids.
In the world of Alien: Earth, humanity is controlled by five megacorporations who, in the style of the East India Company, have largely usurped democratic governments. The companies are in an arms race for control of the Earth, the known galaxy and the future of human life itself. Thus when Weyland-Yutani's ship crashes into Prodigy City, Kavalier smells an opportunity.
An unscrupulous tech CEO with a god complex? Which real-life equivalent could Hawley have been thinking of? All of them, he says: 'It's narcissism that defines so many of these figures. The 'Great Man' has come back. And yet in many ways none of them want to grow up. If there's a metaphor between our show and our present moment, it's when you look around at all the really deep, complicated, intrinsic problems that we're having on this planet. What they really require to solve them is adults.'
Not wanting to grow up is key to the Peter Pan-obsessed Kavalier, who has named his research facility Neverland and reads the book to the children each night. When they transition to their synthetic bodies, Kavalier rechristens them all from JM Barrie's story – alongside Wendy, there's Slightly, Tootles, Curly, Nibs and Smee.
Kavalier, of course, is The Boy Who Never Grew Up. 'He likes that analogy,' says Hawley. 'Peter Pan is a dark book. There's a moment where Peter is angry and frustrated, so he breathes in and out as quickly as he can, because he believes that every breath he takes kills a grown-up. And it is implied that as the Lost Boys mature, he 'thins them out', to keep that out of his world. And those elements felt like they fit, thematically.'
Chandler's Wendy is the first of the Lost Boys to transition and acts as a big sister to the others as they get used to their new – adult, superhuman, immortal – bodies. Chandler, the 29-year-old daughter of actor Kyle Chandler (Friday Night Lights, Bloodline), is a relative unknown, yet was determined to land the role.
She flew out to Canada, where Fargo was being filmed, the morning after reading the script, and convinced Hawley to let her take him for dinner. Her determination (she calls it 'impulsivity') and passion for the role impressed him. It's a great piece of casting – Chandler imbues Wendy with an otherworldly gawkiness, a disarming innocence and an unnerving unknowability.
The actress, understandably, wishes to avoid comparison between Wendy and Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley. 'You can't recreate Alien. You can't recreate Ripley. If the scripts had gone in that direction, I wouldn't have wanted to do it. My goal was to bring as much strength and honesty and integrity and backbone to the character [as I could], because that's what I looked up to when I saw Alien for the first time.'
For all the ingenious concepts within Alien, what underpins the franchise is human greed and the extent to which corporations are happy to play God. Like all classic sci-fi, the humans in the TV series unleash forces they can no longer control. Does Hawley feel that, via AI, we are at such a point now? 'I don't think AI is going to take my job,' he says. 'But I'm at a rarified level of storytelling, with an idiosyncratic approach. [However] I think if you are a writer on Law & Order, you should be worried.'
But Hawley has bigger concerns, and they can be seen in the blood, guts and synth fluid of Alien: Earth. 'Europe does a much better job of regulating technology and thinking about the human implications of it. In the US, it's still about the dollar. And I worry there are no brakes on this train, because the people who would be the brakes are not incentivised to slow it down. I worry it's going to get away from us very quickly. If it hasn't already.'