Nine movies in, assumptions start to pile up like a precarious Jenga tower that every ounce of originality’s been squeezed out of the lucrative “Alien” franchise Ridley Scott erected. Just burn that thought down. Audacious showrunner Noah Hawley, the upstart who turned the Coen Brothers “Fargo” film into a nervy series, defies the odds and builds upon the mythology of Scott’s durable foundation. He oxygenates it by drawing in themes and characters from “Peter Pan” — that’s right, J.M. Barrie’s hero and his Lost Boy crew who have never grown up.
The notion of fusing a story about voracious alien monsters with a beloved children’s classic sounds like it would be a disaster. But Hawley is a creative storytelling dervish, and not only does he interweave the two seamlessly but also dives headfirst into thought-provoking moral debates about AI and the unethical practices of tech industry titans who lack a soul and a heart. That gives it a bristling relevance.
FX’s eight-part series does pack in a lot of chewy ideas, but none come at the expense of what an “Alien” series should do: Freak us out and test our gag reflex.
Set in 2120, it hinges on a batch of alien and various mutating specimens who crash-land on Earth in a research vessel that’s owned by one of five corporations that now rule during this Corporate Era — a chillingly plausible schematic.
When the bratty but brilliant CEO of the Prodigy Corporation — the pajama-wearing Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) who lives on a private island named Neverland — catches wind that the Weyland-Yutani corporation craft holds some secret cargo, he smells a profitable entrepreneurial opportunity. “Boy” wants to be No. 1 all the time and has been testing out his latest stunning tech advancement: putting the consciousness of terminally ill kids into the bodies of humanoid robots. He assumes that he and those who work for him — including the maternal but cunning Dame Sylvia (Essie Davis); his lapdog synth (a humanoid robot who is AI); Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant, with a shock of white hair reminiscent of Sting’s in David Lynch’s “Dune”) — can keep these kid hybrids in check. What a fool. “Boy’s” first creation — now named Wendy (Sydney Chandler) — not only holds superpowers but longs to be reunited with her brother Hermit (Alex Lawther) and soon sees that she’s but a pawn in “Boy’s” world. Other members of this synth “Lost Boys (and Girls)” start to question and push back while the only survivor of the crash — Weyland-Yutani employee Morrow (Babou Ceesay) — enters into the mind of Lost Boy Slightly (Adarsh Gourav).
In the foreground and background of all this are gooey, disgusting alien creatures (the special effects compare to any those in any summer Hollywood blockbuster), including an evil, super-smart sheep with many eyes, massive flies spewing acidic goo, scurrying eyeballs and, of course, that toothy alien itself. They become the focal point of a power struggle that puts the series on a path to what we can only hope will be another season. It certainly flings the door open for that.
Hawley’s take on Ridley Scott’s original film boldly continues to shock and surprise throughout as does its cast — specifically Chandler, Blenkin, Olyphant and particularly Gourav, who’s uncanny in channeling a younger kid stuck in the body of someone older. It probably doesn’t hurt that Scott is an executive producer of the series.
But it is Hawley’s astute attention to detail and desire to construct an intricate story that distinguish and make “Alien: Earth” a big step up in quality for the “Alien” series overall. It’s certainly one of the best series I’ve seen this year, and better than the majority of studio blockbusters this summer in theaters.
Contact Randy Myers at [email protected].
‘ALIEN: EARTH’
4 stars out of 4
Created by Noah Hawley
Starring: Samuel Blenkin, Essie Davis, Timothy Olyphant, Sydney Chandler, Babou Ceesay, Adarsh Gourav
When & where: Two episodes available on Hulu and FX; new episode premieres each successive Tuesday on Hulu at 8 p.m. EST and on FX at 8 p.m. PT.