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Indianapolis Star
4 hours ago
- Indianapolis Star
Xenomorphs on Earth? Find out on FX's Alien Earth—watch on Sling
The Alien franchise debuted in 1979 and we're still in Sigourney Weaver's universe. In a franchise nearly as complex as Star Wars, where does Alien Earth fit? There's a great (but lengthy) ScreenRant recap of the entire series, but in short, Alien Earth is somewhere after Alien: Covenant and two years before the events of the original Alien. Confused? No worries, you can catch up on Prometheus and Alien: Covenant on Sling with HBO Max. According to the FX website, the series will feature a deep space research ship crash landing on Earth. You can watch the series premiere at 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday, Aug. 12 on FX, live on Sling. Here's how to stream Alien Earth on FX with your Sling subscription: Alien Earth premieres on FX on Tuesday, Aug. 12 at 8 p.m. ET. Episodes will air every Tuesday. Watch Alien Earth on Sling Sling TV has flexible and affordable plans all year long and regularly offers special deals to help you save even more. Prices will vary depending on other add-ons and offers you select. Below, we break down the differences between Sling Orange and Sling Blue. Try Sling today! Sling is putting you in control of how you watch TV. The live-streaming TV service is offering a new way to watch your favorite live TV shows and sports for less. You can now purchase a Sling Day Pass, Week Pass or Weekend Pass to watch your favorite content on-demand. No matter which pass you select, you're getting access to the Sling Orange package, but here's a breakdown of how they will work and what each pass will cost: Sling is now offering day, weekend and week passes so you can catch the game, binge a series or watch a whole tournament on your own terms.
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
‘Alien' Has Always Feared AI and Big Corporations. That's More Relevant Than Ever
The new FX series 'Alien: Earth' traffics in familiar themes about greed, oligarchy and mysterious robots that tie into what's going on in the real world The 'Alien' movies vary widely in quality — there arguably hasn't been a truly satisfying one since the first two in 1979 and 1986 — but a key thread has endured across the 46 years: However scary the xenomorphs are, 'Alien' has always feared AI and the greed of faceless corporations. And in that respect, its time has come. The latest entry in the franchise, 'Alien: Earth,' which premieres on Tuesday, certainly exhibits those political undercurrents while bringing the threat home, both in the location and the shift from theaters to FX and Hulu, where only your neighbors can hear you scream. More from TheWrap Jimmy Fallon's Greg Gutfeld Interview Scores Biggest 'Tonight Show' Audience Since 2023 | Exclusive 'Wednesday' Season 2 Debuts to 50 Million Views in Just 5 Days on Netflix 'Alien' Has Always Feared AI and Big Corporations. That's More Relevant Than Ever Alex Ross Perry's 'Videoheaven' Charts the Rise and Fall of Video Stores, I Was There | Essay Granted, nobody comes to an 'Alien'-branded project — a franchise with one foot firmly planted in sci-fi and horror — for a lecture about the perils of unfettered capitalism. Still, the underlying apprehensions feel even timelier now, from the AI threat to the notion of corporations supplanting governments. 'Alien: Earth' lands at a moment of heightened unease about income inequality and the growing political clout wielded by billionaires like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos — moguls who have become household names. Their companies, meanwhile, keep growing, with trillion-dollar valuations — which would have sounded like the stuff of science fiction a few decades ago — now a reality, with Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Google among those cracking that barrier. 'The Trillion Dollar Stock Club Is Bigger — and Richer— Than Ever,' blared Barron's headline closing 2024. Despite healthy profits, those same companies are also embracing AI in a way that both ignores potential unintended consequences and threatens the careers of its own employees. Several have explicitly stated as much, with Amazon CEO Andy Jassey issuing a memo in June spelling out that the technology will 'reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.' The eight-episode series takes the real-world drift toward corporate oligarchy to its dystopian extreme, with Earth governed by five massive corporations, which, as usual, exhibit few compunctions about sacrificing human life to advance their objectives and enhance their profits. In the broad strokes, though, this latest addition to the mythology — as conceived by showrunner Noah Hawley, who previously translated 'Fargo' to TV — very much contains the same core of distrusting those in charge, along with some new wrinkles that work more fitfully. The end game of those corporate objectives as usual remains murky, but again involves using synthetic androids — whose actions and motivations prove suspect — and seeking the means to capitalize on the alien creatures. Naturally, that requires the customary hubris about attempting to cash in on something so uncontrollable, unpredictable and dangerous. By adding a human face, in the form of a young technocrat (Samuel Blenkin) running a company appropriately named Prodigy Corp., 'Alien: Earth' does endeavor to make the story more contemporary. The self-proclaimed 'boy genius' feels like a composite inspired by any number of CEOs, which says something about this plutocratic moment given that the character would have seemed exaggerated or cartoonish before the modern tech explosion. As Hawley said during a pre-launch press conference, 'If I had done the 1970s version of capitalism it wouldn't have felt right for the world we live in today,' adding that humanity is 'trapped between the AI future and the monsters of the past.' The shock of the first 'Alien' — beyond wedding a haunted house to striking monster biology and set design — hinged in part on the cavalier attitude 'the company' harbored toward the lives of the crew. What they intended to do with the xenomorph was ill defined — something about the bio-weapons division — but the key point was treating the survival of those manning the ship as a secondary concern. That aspect became even more pronounced in the brilliant sequel 'Aliens,' directed by James Cameron, which features Paul Reiser as Burke, a mid-level manager, and the kind of corporate suck-up everyone has encountered. Burke gradually reveals who he is, balking at eradicating the aliens because a space installation has a 'substantial dollar value,' before seeking to curry favor from his superiors by allowing Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and a young child to be 'impregnated' by the monster in order to bring specimens home. As Ripley says whens he exposes the plot, 'You know, Burke, I don't know which species is worse. You don't see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage.' Their shortcomings aside, the subsequent films, up to last year's 'Alien: Romulus,' have continued playing with these themes. Even after it was given a name, the company, Weyland-Yutani, cares more about the research and development possibilities in that enticing alien DNA than preserving the humans in its employ. Of course, there's some irony in that, since 'Alien' has itself become a title with a 'substantial dollar value,' spanning nine movies (including two crossovers with the 'Predator' franchise) totaling almost $2 billion in global box office. In an interview last year, original director Ridley Scott conceded the third and fourth films 'ran that firmly into the ground,' while more generously appraising the subsequent sequels, having directed two of them. In later episodes, 'Alien: Earth' pointedly addresses some of the issues the franchise has contemplated, with a character discussing the irony of smart people who are 'too stupid to realize you don't bring parasites home with you.' There's a possible lesson there regarding AI, where the lure of its potential might be blinding us to its dangers, and massive real-world companies appear either oblivious — or worse, indifferent — to the societal harm that it might do. That's evident in the commentary from the likes of Meta and OpenAI, who are pouring billions of dollars in an AI arms race against each other and China. Even if the robots don't murder us, as envisioned in the sci-fi version of these scenarios, they appear more tangibly destined to replace us by killing off a lot of our jobs. The employees in 'Alien: Earth' also recognize who's calling the shots, with one acknowledging that everything being done and the risks they're facing are 'always about power,' which includes exploring space to serve the company's ends. 'Alien' notably premiered at the close of the 1970s, a decade seen as a golden age for paranoid conspiracy thrillers — including those that reflected the callousness of corporate greed, like 'The China Syndrome' and 'Coma.' In that sense, having five corporations run things, like the American Mafia's five families, hardly feels like an accident. Because in 'Alien,' then and now, 'the company' rules the world, and the rest of us just try to hang on working for them. 'Alien: Earth' premieres Aug. 12 on FX and Hulu. The post 'Alien' Has Always Feared AI and Big Corporations. That's More Relevant Than Ever appeared first on TheWrap.
USA Today
6 hours ago
- USA Today
'Alien: Earth' series asks: Which is scarier, a giant xenomorph or rogue AI?
Nobody pleaded that "Fargo," that 1996 cinematic gem from Joel and Ethan Coen, should be made into a TV series. And yet writer and director Noah Hawley has (so far) delivered five seasons and an award-winning hit, against steep odds. Now, Hawley is looking to smash another adaptation pitch into the bleachers with FX's "Alien: Earth" (streaming weekly starting Aug. 12 on Hulu), based on Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi opus that spawned eight movie sequels and prequels. So do we really need eight small-screen episodes – and possibly more, in future seasons - of multi-jawed monsters terrifying people in claustrophobic spaceships? No we don't. But, as actor Timothy Olyphant says, those fears are unfounded. "I started sleeping well the moment I heard Noah ask, 'If you take away the monster, what is the show?' He knew you couldn't lean on that little guy popping out of people's chests week after week." Review: FX's 'Alien Earth' is everything 'Alien' fans could want Hawley sums up his challenge simply. "It was in essence the same approach I had with 'Fargo,'" he says. "I tried to just figure out, what's the feeling I had when I watched that first 'Alien' movie, and how do I create the same emotions by telling you a different story?" What Hawley has crafted is part futuristic fright-fest, part timely allegory. The terrifying Xenomorph, created by Swiss artist H.R. Giger, very much appears, but almost in a cameo role. The focus instead is on Earth, which is now ruled by a handful of powerful tech companies each vying to create the dominant AI future. Sound familiar? While some of the companies are pushing for advancements in cyborg technology, others have banked on the rise of synths, or synthetic humans. Olyphant plays an unusually cagey synth named Kirsh who works for genius tech whiz Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), whose Prodigy Corporation is on to something revolutionary: infusing the human consciousness of dying children into artificial robotic bodies. The offbeat inspiration for Noah Hawley's 'Alien: Earth'? J.M. Barrie's 'Peter Pan' It gets heavier from there. The ailing children chosen for this journey reflect Kavalier's obsession with J.M. Barrie's "Peter Pan." The kids' new-body names – Slightly, Tootles, Smee, Curly and Nibs – echo the Lost Boys from the famous 1904 book, which Kavalier reads from obsessively. And they are led by a fearless Wendy, played with wide-eyed wonder by Sydney Chandler. "Noah is taking some really big swings here, and that's great, because Ridley was the first person to say, 'What more can you really do with that (Xenomorph) creature?'" says David Zucker, chief creative officer for the director's production company Scott Free. "Ridley's feeling about doing this series was the same thing he stressed when they wanted to do a sequel to 'Blade Runner,' which is, this show has to have a reason for being," says Zucker, adding that the British director was not directly involved in the new TV series. "He's not really interested in revisiting things he's done before. But what excited him about this is that while it honored the aesthetic of the original, it took a very original approach." The story of these Neverland kids, who are pressed into dangerous service for Prodigy as they navigate the transition into their adult synthetic bodies, is indeed a new twist, one that asks big questions but also provides ample laughs as we watch adult actors behaving like preteens. It's a welcome break from those jump-scare jabs. "To me, the show is in part about how we are raising our children today. What morals are we giving them? Where are the real adults?" Hawley says. For Chandler, "jumping back into the mind of my younger self was amazing," says the avowed sci-fi and "Alien" fan, whose father is actor Kyle Chandler. "That feeling of bravery and honesty. Playing a kid in a synthetic body in a future world with aliens was a scary challenge, but one I was ready for." 'Alien: Earth' features massive sets built partly off the blueprints of the original Ridley Scott movie 'Alien' Helping Chandler get into character were massive sets "that I would always get lost on" and a frightening 9-foot-tall Xenomorph suit worn by a "sweet man named Cameron, who when he put that on and chased you, it was genuinely scary," she says. To enhance the horror and appeal to "Alien" fans, Hawley coordinated with Ridley Scott to get the blueprints for the set of the original ship, the USCSS Nostromo, to create the research vessel that, through a series of deadly mistakes, winds up plummeting out of orbit and plowing into buildings on Earth. "The cryochamber in our ship is a bit bigger than Ridley's, but otherwise the bridge is the same," he says. "It was fun to see the actors react to being there on set. It was like they had stepped into the movie of their childhood." Whenever possible, Hawley used old-fashioned costume-based special effects, resorting only when necessary to digital magic created by New Zealand-based masters Wētā FX. Monsters may scurry around 'Alien: Earth,' but Noah Hawley suggests the really terrifying characters might be human beings Hawley says preserving the sheer horror of the original films was integral to his project, and as viewers will see, the Xenomorph eventually gets some creepy friends. But even more chilling was the prospect of ceding control of Earth to machines of our own creation. Although "Alien: Earth" was written "before ChatGPT was even launched," Hawley says, he's surprised and grateful the series is landing when the debate about the oversight of AI is gathering steam. "The show is about humanity being trapped between its monster past when we all were just food and its AI future, and in both cases something's out to kill us," he says. "So it's important to talk about it. Is AI the next step in our evolution, or will it be the end of humanity? Are we going down the road of (Elon Musk's company) Neuralink, where technology will be added to our bodies, or are we going beyond that to a place where we will all be transhuman? "It's just amazing how fast things have progressed just since I started writing this show back in 2020." For Olyphant, who played to type as a U.S. marshal in Season 4 of Hawley's "Fargo," the chance to work with the writer/director again, on a project focused on big-picture ideas about our unsettling human future, proved irresistible. "Ultimately, in 'Alien: Earth' Noah is writing about what we're dealing with right now. It's this pursuit of living forever, of taking great technology but just trying to monetize it, of being willing to manipulate the lives of children for profit," he says. "And it's about this distrust of AI, this thing that is not human, and my character more than others encapsulates this issue. There are so many 'Alien' franchise diehards out there, so I can't wait to see who comes along on our trip."
