Tag: Timothy Olyphant

Hello my fellow Alien fans!

I am here to share my thoughts on the new Hulu series, Alien: Earth, which premiered at San Diego Comic-Con 2025 in Hall H. At the end of the panel, we were shown the first episode.

As a Gen Xer, Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) and James Cameron’s Aliens (1986) are, by definition, masterpieces. Both serve as models for how to craft a horror science fiction film. They have stood the test of time, being over 40 years old and still making audiences scream in their seats, no matter how many times I watch the original and the sequel. I love them more with each viewing. I was not a fan of Alien: Romulus; I had many issues with that film.

So, when I heard about a potential series called Alien: Earth, I was intrigued but honestly a little skeptical. My skepticism stemmed from wondering how the writer or writers tackled the issue of Earth, since Earth was not in either of the two movies. And I asked how they would expand a simple Xenomorph hunt into a whole series. I know it took about five years or more to develop this series, due to the writer’s strike and the actor’s strike, which also played a role in the delay of the series. I was excited to get into Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con. Naturally, I was optimistic.

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Neverland:

As the first episode, titled “Neverland”, written and directed by Noah Hawley, began, I felt happy because it closely matched the style of the original films.

The way it was filmed, the scenery, and the tribute to the original movies conveyed a sense of camaraderie and unity when we saw the galley, a duplicate of the scene from Alien. That feeling of connection and shared spirit was obvious.

Then the episode continued. I want to warn you now; I will be referencing the original two films many times throughout. And I have some thoughts on it. I was not too pleased with what came out, but then again, I am such a purist when it comes to the original two films. This post will contain the first two episodes, not a complete summary, but the highlights, including my pros and cons.

I will say that the aesthetics started beautifully in the very first episode. It mirrored the scope of *Alien* and *Aliens*, particularly in its depiction of Mother. However, one thing that bothers me is that the ship is still too bright; there was a kind of haze in the lighting of both films that I feel is missing here. Additionally, I find it troubling that Neverland is involved and that Peter Pan is somehow engaged in the story. I do not believe this aligns with the canon.

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The opening crawl of the series states, “In the future, the race for immortality will come in three guises—cybernetically enhanced humans, cyborgs, artificial, artificially intelligent beings, and synthetic beings downloaded with human consciousness hybrids.” This added information confused me a bit because, once again, in the original two movies, both Ash (Ian Holm) and Bishop (Lance Henriksen) were androids, not cyborgs or synthetics. The next part says, “which technology prevails will determine what corporations rule the universe.” That is a scary thought because corporations are what caused the mess in the first place.

The opening scene is pretty and effective. I like the initial scenery, where you see the ship, followed by flashes of the alien, and then you hear the music, which always plays a significant role in both movies. Butthis Alien: Earth has modern music, which I always dislike when it is used in a context that does not seem to fit.

The year is 2120. USCSS MAGINOT Mission length is 65 years. The next thing you see after that is the opening of the sleep chambers, just like in the original film. There are parts of Alien: Earth that I will give them credit for because they stay true to the aesthetic of the original two, which I find crucial. If you are going to create a series based on two iconic, historic, groundbreaking movies, you should at least maintain their look to avoid feeling too jarring or disconnected from the series. It states that the distance to Earth is 805,000,000 miles.

The other thing I was questioning, not necessarily disappointed about, was the main character, Wendy (Sydney Chandler). She is almost like a copy of Ripley. I understand because Sigourney Weaver is the model for how Ripley looks. They could have chosen someone else to avoid the same look. That is also what bothers me — they did not opt for blonde hair and blue eyes instead of dark hair and dark eyes. I have this weird aesthetic thing.

What I love is seeing them all wake up from the sleep chambers, reintegrate into their place in the galaxy, and go about their daily routines. All their talking and eating together—which is precisely what happens in Alien—is what I appreciate about both films. To me, that is an homage because that is what I expect to see in everything from now on. I am still so disheartened that it went down that Disney rabbit hole. They included Peter Pan, the Lost Boys, and Neverland, which has nothing to do with Alien, Aliens, the Xenomorph, or any of that. It is just another way, I guess, of bringing Disney into the fold when it doesn’t need to be there.

Morrow (Babou Ceesay) is the security officer and resident cyborg. Five companies control the entire universe. Prodigy is the newest, led by Boy Cavalier (Samuel Blenkin), who resembles an Elon Musk-like figure—a trillionaire boy genius with hints of Howard Hughes. The wonderful thing about the two movies is that we don’t know much about the characters; we only know their names. We know extraordinarily little, if anything, about their backgrounds. The only way to learn more would be if you watched the director’s cut of Aliens. For example, we know Sigourney Weaver’s character Ripley had a deceased daughter because Ripley had been floating in space for 57 years. That’s why it’s called Alien. It has nothing to do with the humans being just part of the story. And yes, they play a part, but the central focus is the aliens, which is the whole point. It’s the suspense, it’s the fear, and it’s the anticipation of what is to come.

Like any science fiction show, it features other creatures as well. What they are experimenting with or what they’ve discovered isn’t always clear. However, face huggers and xenomorphs are the main monsters. The specimens are the mission, as Morrow said.

I think one of the key differences for me is that now we’re dealing with Earth, which is much larger and more expansive. In both films, we dealt with a much smaller space. We were on a spaceship, so there was nowhere for them to go. I believe that made the suspense feel much more immediate: they were trapped. They couldn’t go anywhere. They could only launch out of the spaceship, but even then, Ripley was in space for 57 years. As they said, “You’re damn lucky we found you. You could have been wandering out there forever.”

That’s what I love about both films, the sense of isolation, of solitude. You’re in space, with nothing around you. On Earth, it’s a different story. So, again, I keep coming back to the two films because you can’t compare them, as they are the templates for every Alien franchise film, from the very first to this current version. There’s no way you can avoid comparing them.

And now we’re on Earth. Prodigy. Neverland. Research Island. I love that Timothy Olyphant (Kirsh), who plays a synthetic, is in this series. He’s such an outstanding actor and has appeared in several iconic series before. He’s just an exceptional actor overall. I hope that Kirsh will be a character to sink his teeth into.

Within the Neverland research island, experiments involve mind transference from a dying host to a new one, transferring a dying child’s mind to an adult body. I have no idea what this has to do with aliens in general. This part makes no sense to me and doesn’t fit with the rest of the story. It feels like a side story the writer added without considering the main plot. Also, the fact that the character’s name is Wendy, which relates to Peter Pan, and the mention of the Head of Prodigy—it’s like Peter Pan; he never wants to grow old because he’s the youngest trillionaire ever, walking around in linen suits and barefoot. It just makes no sense to me. The mind transference, or consciousness transference, is from a human to a synthetic, which again makes absolutely no sense.

Disney has its hands in this episode by showing not only parts of Peter Pan but also Ice Age. I am still baffled by how this relates to the main point of the series. My frustration lies in the fact that, again, they are not sticking with the canon that has long been established.

That’s also something I’m a little confused about: they gave the main character the name Wendy. Who’s now the synth? The consciousness of a girl who has a brother. So, Wendy, among all the alien stuff, is going to find her brother. Which I guess makes sense, but it doesn’t, because again, it has nothing to do with the aliens. And this is, I think, my biggest problem with this: when it’s called ‘Alien: Earth,’ show us aliens. I don’t care about the backstory of the synthetics or humans. Just show me the aliens because that is what it’s all about. They are characters, yes, and yes, I semi-care about them because they’re there to fight the aliens, but that’s the surface level; I don’t care about it. At least I don’t care about their backstory. All I want to see is them fighting the aliens. That’s it. There are many elements of playing God in this that they want to preserve the human mind, even if it is in a synthetic body. So, it’s a lot of playing God and preventing someone or something from dying. They keep it alive by transferring human consciousness into a synthetic body. The problem with that is, as Kirsh mentioned, there are no emotions. There’s no anger, no pain, no happiness, nothing. Because it’s all gone, since they are no longer human, yet they retain a human mind, which I think is a recipe for disaster. “If I’m not human, what am I? Whatever you want to be.”

When we finally get back to the spaceship, the lights and sound sirens are going off. That I love; I’m back to the place where we should be and never leave, however what bothers me about this is that it’s too bright. Meaning it’s not dark enough. It’s not mysterious enough. It’s not creepy enough; it needs to have that element of suspense, which it lacks. It almost looks like you are on a ride at Disneyland because of the lights and sounds. It doesn’t feel urgent enough. When Morrow is sitting at the Mother keyboard and is typing in commands or information, Mother is feeding it back to him. That part I love because that is very much part of what I know and love about the two films. And that feels authentic, that feels real. One of the other crew members is banging on the door to Mother’s room and asks Morrow to let her in. On the screen, it says crew status. And he gets up and looks at her and doesn’t let her in. And to me, the crew member her reaction doesn’t feel genuine because there’s a xenomorph after you, and you’re not panicking. I don’t know, that doesn’t seem very authentic to me.

Not even 30 minutes in, we see the Xenomorph pass by the glass of the door And I hate to say this, but it looks fake. And again, my problem is that you see the Xenomorph fully, and that’s what bothers me because, with the first two films, we don’t ever see the Xenomorph completely until the last 15 minutes or so of the film. We only see it in shadow, silhouette, or partially; we barely see it fully, which adds to the creepiness and terrifying nature of it, along with the terror and scariness of how it makes you feel. It just slowly walked by the window where Morrow was, and it almost looked fake. That whole sequence of it walking by just seemed ridiculous. Morrow writes on the board. “Crew status: crew dead. A collision course with Earth is unavoidable.” “Containment of specimens is priority one.”

Seeing the alien shouldn’t happen within the first 30 minutes. This is the first episode, and there are 35 minutes left. This is precisely what I’m talking about. You don’t see the alien until, or in full view, until 15 minutes before the end of the movie in both films, if I remember correctly. And that’s what makes it so suspenseful, so horrifying, so terrifying, and so fear-inducing — because you don’t know where it is, what it looks like, how big it is, or anything else. I guess we do have some idea of what it looks like, but the fact that it also moves very humanly, almost threw me off a little bit. It’s not as alien as I would expect it to be.

Mr. October:

We are in a place called New Siam, Prodigy City. Just another typical day, like nothing’s about to happen. And then, boom. Alien crash. An interesting point is that they show parts of New Siam, and if this is supposed to be the year 2120, why does it look like modern-day Siam? Or modern-day Vietnam or something similar. It doesn’t match the year it’s supposed to represent.

After the search and rescue team goes in to find survivors from the crash, they go underground to explore further. And that’s when things start getting, of course, more like Aliens.

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Of course, when the search and rescue team split up on the downed science vessel spaceship, it’s dark with red lights and sparks flying. I understand this because it echoes those two original films. When it reaches that part, I’m fine. I love those moments. It’s everything else that’s implausible that bothers me. I don’t care about Wendy finding her brother, Joe D. Hermit (Alex Lawther), who’s a tactical officer and medic, joining the search and rescue. None of that matters to me. I want to see the aliens. That’s what I signed up for.

So, when Wendy discovers that there is a tactical unit inside the downed spaceship, she wants to go in and help rescue people because her brother is there. And her brother thinks that she’s dead because he doesn’t know that her mind was transferred to a synthetic. So, Boy Cavalier sends the Lost Boys to help, and of course, he is going to monitor their heart rate, their brain waves, and other vital signs to see if they can stand the stress.

This is what’s very baffling to me. These synthetics have zero training in search and rescue. They are not Marines like they were in the second movie. So, I find it perplexing why you would send these children into that situation, because that is what their mental state is geared toward. It is a life-or-death situation—literal life and death—with no training and no experience. It is very strange to me that this even happened, which strains my suspension of disbelief. Does not make any sense. I understand that in the second movie in *Aliens*, Ripley herself says, “I’m not a soldier.” Still, she has been in enough scenarios where she’s at least a flight officer and knows her way around, and she learns a bit from Hicks (Michael Biehn) and the others are around Marines enough to pick things up. These are kids. They have no training, nothing, and it seems implausible. I don’t even think they would make any impact at all.

Two members of the rescue team enter a room and find the specimens, which are being transported behind a locked door. They’re happy to see that because they know those are dangerous. I’m sorry, I know that’s CGI, but the face huggers and the other creatures look fake. That’s another thing: as I’ve mentioned, the fact that they spent so much money on this and couldn’t use practical effects is inexcusable, as far as I’m concerned. They could have made that real, made it look genuine.

As the ragtag team of rescuers heads toward Earth, Kirsh gives a spiritual rant about how humans used to be food. The context is interesting since that’s what the Xenomorphs use humans for — a host to feed and grow. I have no idea why they’re playing rock music at the end credits, but that’s the end of episode 1. Again, I didn’t like it, and watching it a second time didn’t change my opinion.

Mr. October is the title of episode 2, written by Noah Hawley and directed by Dana Gonzales. In episode 2, we first see a couple of the rescue team members and Joe going through the wreckage. He thinks he sees something behind him, the viewer sees the end of the tail, and they’re starting to make the creepy vibe of the original.

As the team enters the med lab, Joe notices that the suffocation some of them suffered is unusual. He observes the blue lips and mentions that it was a toxin. Joe then notices a screen that shows a picture of the inside of one of the victims, looking like a foreign object inside him. He says it’s got a code 1562. When one of the other team members asks why 1562 is so bad, Joe says, “Alien.” The interesting thing to me, though, is that he says it nonchalantly, like there’s no emotion, there’s no urgency to it. How is that normal? Maybe seeing a foreign object, an alien inside a human body, is normal at that point, but there doesn’t seem to be any urgency on his part for it. So, it was very odd to see that. I believe the problem with this series is that it focuses too much on the backstory of the humans, cyborgs, synthetics. Again, this is just my opinion as a viewer—I don’t care about the backstory. That is not important to me. What matters are the aliens and how the humans/synths/cyborgs interact with them. That’s my primary concern. I couldn’t care less about Prodigy, Neverland, or any of this. As a fan of the two greatest science fiction horror films of all time, I care about what those movies are about. The other movies don’t focus on the back stories of the humans involved. Again, this is just my opinion. If you are going to make a movie about an alien Earth, then show aliens on Earth. Could you show me the aliens? That’s what I want to see.

Boy Kavalier raises a good point about AI. He says that with artificial intelligence, we build a machine, and then that machine creates an even better one, and so on, surpassing humans. His idea is about unlocking human potential. And we’ll see what they built before the machines destroy everything.

Dame Sylvia (Essie Davis) brought up a good point. She said, “We did something that no one else did—we ended death. But we must give them a quality of life.” Again, it all comes back to the hubris of man thinking they’re God, that they can stop the natural progression of life and death, which they can’t. There’s nothing on this planet that’s truly immortal. Maybe a jellyfish, but even then, it regenerates itself, so technically, it’s not. Anyway, one thing that always bothers me is when people try to go against nature. The human body is meant to grow old and then die. I mean, if we were to keep everybody alive and keep regenerating repeatedly.

And of course, they have a cat. Because God forbid, we leave out an homage to the baddest cat in any galaxy, Jonesy. There is an eyeball-like creature that comes out of the cat, or did an alien possess it?

The CGI on the cat does not look particularly good, and as a cat owner myself, I can tell you that they should have used a real animal and added prosthetics. It would have looked a lot better and more realistic.

From here, the story gets a bit odd with a costume party happening in the building, and the alien showing up. There are elements of the story that are nonsensical and don’t serve the story. I wanted a bit more alien action, giving me the harrowing terror of the original films. By showing us the alien fully, the mystery is taken away.

My issue also lies with the actors themselves. When the humans see the Xenomorph, there is no fear in their eyes. It is as if it’s normal to see something like that. The actors show no emotion in the scenes with the alien. The story itself is complicated and again doesn’t serve the purpose of the series. Especially when Joe finds out that Marcy, his little sister who died, has now taken over Wendy’s body, he does not react to that news. He may be in shock from hearing that, but when he mentions he went to her funeral, again, no emotion. Even if he were in shock, his body would show it. That’s the power of a camera; it captures every nuance, every subtle movement. And again, modern rock music is used in this series as episode two ends.

I think they could have used the money, the reported $250 million or however much they invested in this for a better series. The money could have gone toward practical effects. One of the many reasons the original two movies work so well is that the aliens are practical, not CGI. They look real and terrifying, especially the Queen alien in the sequel. Please understand that this is just my opinion about this series. I don’t want that to stop you from watching and enjoying it. It’s just not for me. I will always go back to the original two because I consider them masterpieces. They are the templates—things that should be studied, looked at, and emulated.

I’m overly critical of movies or franchises I love, those I know a lot about, and those I hold dear to my heart and in my movie-loving mind. This series isn’t very impressive at best. I may be a complete and utter snob about this kind of thing, but for me, as someone who loves film, original material, practical effects, acting, directing, and writing, this series is not.

I do hope that you do watch it and make your own decision about it. Please do not let my strong opinions keep you from enjoying this series.

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Thanks to Kenn for video and image embedding for my feature article and many thanks to you for visiting WormholeRiders News Agency. Kenn will be back reporting on episodes three and four. I will return in the future with new information about my Team WHR adventures at San Diego Comic-Con 2025!

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See You on The Other Side!

Until next time,

Regards,

Lori