Diem Camille (far left), Sandra Yi Sencindiver, Noah Hawley, Babou Ceesay, Samuel Blenkin, Alex Lawther, Sydney Chandler, Timothy Olyphant, Essie Davis, David W. Zucker, Jonathon Ajayi and David Rysdahl attend the ‘Alien: Earth’ European premiere at the Barbican Centre on July 29 in London.Kate Green/Getty Images
Maybe you remember the online backlash to last year’s Alien: Romulus, in which a character from Ridley Scott’s 1979 horror classic was resurrected using AI-assisted technology.
Spoiler alert: the character was the murderous synthetic Ash, a cunning artificial intelligence played by the late Ian Holms, whose family signed off on his likeness being eerily (perhaps queasily) replicated through a mix of animatronics, CGI and the kind of machine-learning technology that artists and industry are now deeply divided on.
AI has had a fascinating and uneasy evolution in the long-running Alien franchise, introduced by way of Ash, and then followed up with synthetics played by Lance Henriksen, Winona Ryder, Michael Fassbender and David Jonsson, all finding varying degrees of empathy, purpose and menace in their characterizations. Today, AI isn’t just the creation of storytellers but is threatening to play a cost-efficient role in the creation of that storytelling.
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“Whatever you gain in terms of savings for using AI, you’re losing in terms of the human, handmade quality of these films,” says Noah Hawley, creator of Alien: Earth, the franchise’s ambitious foray onto the small screen.
Alien: Earth is set in 2120, two years before Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley gets facetime with the Xenomorph. And it does what no Alien movie has done before: It brings the extraterrestrials – along with the body horror – home. But as in every other instalment, the threats in Alien: Earth aren’t limited to the iconic phallic-headed monster of the title.
There’s dominating tech companies, exerting Amazon and Tesla-like influence on the government while they put lives at risk for their bottom line (the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, which sent Ripley on her ill-fated journey, among them). There’s a diverse array of new creatures crash-landing alongside the Xenomorph on our planet, including a monstrous eyeball with tentacles that does terrifying work getting under our skin. And then, of course, there’s AI, which – like the face-huggers that plant chest-bursters beneath the rib cage – makes creepy advances into the human anatomy.
Actor Sydney Chandler plays Wendy in series ‘Alien: Earth.’JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/Getty Images
Alien: Earth centres on doe-eyed Sydney Chandler’s Wendy, a new hybrid in which the consciousness of a fatally-ill child is uploaded into a synthetic body, a process meant to defy mortality, so long as those pesky Xenomorphs don’t get in the way.
Hawley, speaking to The Globe and Mail on a Zoom call alongside executive producer David W. Zucker, can’t say for certain whether his series, which grapples with the threat of AI, was made completely free of such technology. “I can’t really speak to what the visual effects houses use,” he explains. “We use the Unreal gaming engine in building out the virtual cityscape. I don’t know what degree to which that uses AI. But no jobs were lost in the creation of this show.”
“We do shoot so much of this practically,” Hawley continues, describing how little room he leaves for AI in his process while making an argument in favour of handmade artistry, and the human flaws that come with it. “I really do feel like imperfect is perfect, and you want that messiness – that reality to it – because your eye knows what’s real, and what’s not real.”
Zucker, the chief creative officer at Ridley Scott’s production company, Scott Free, echoes Hawley’s sentiments. He mentions the original blueprints from the Nostromo, the monumental yet claustrophobic spaceship in Scott’s original, which were used on Alien: Earth to build their new sets and create a space that the cast could inhabit and feel in their performances. “I would wonder what the virtual version of that would be,” says Zucker. “I think it would be a disappointing experience, relative to all of the textured nature of what Noah is referencing and wanting to capture.”
Alien isn’t the first movie Hawley has adapted for TV. He’s the multihyphenate who turned the Coen brothers’ Fargo into a celebrated anthology series, enjoying a freedom to diverge from the source material while the original directors mostly stay hands off.
“Every season that I make of Fargo is a completely different aesthetic that’s right for the story that I’m telling,” says Hawley. With Alien: Earth, he’s taking a franchise mostly made up of self-contained survival thrillers and unpacking that into long-form storytelling, overseeing a production that includes multiple writers and directors, while retaining what he calls “a cinematic philosophy” that feels essential to this series.
At its best, Alien is a franchise in which individual artistry tends to stand out, where auteurs take the simple canvas laid out by Ridley Scott in his chilling and elegant horror movie and put their own stamp on it in a way that AI never could. James Cameron made the sequel Aliens a gonzo war movie. David Fincher brought a punk vibe to Alien3, amplifying the franchise’s anti-corporate sentiments. Even the maligned Alien: Resurrection is a fascinating watch for Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s weirdo euro sensibilities.
Hawley makes Alien: Earth a dark fairy tale, which perhaps comes off as obvious, what with the overt references to Peter Pan. Chandler’s Wendy is the leader of “The Lost Boys,” child guinea pigs created by Samuel Blenkin’s Boy Kevalier. He’s a bratty tech bro who fixates on tales of the boy who never grows old, while experimenting with immortality using synthetic bodies. This is a show about conquering death, and killing humanity in the process.
“There’s a certain nihilism to some directors’ approach in Alien‚” says Hawley, looking back at the franchise and searching for the ways his take diverges from the canon. “Other directors may be more hopeful. Certainly, James Cameron’s film ends on a triumphant note. Whereas [in] Ridley’s film, [Ripley] escapes, but you’re not leaving with a feeling of triumph.”
“I’m rooting for humanity,” says Hawley. “In some ways, it’s a completely different version of Alien.”
Alien: Earth premieres with two episodes on Tuesday, Aug. 12 at 8 p.m. ET on FX and on Disney+ in Canada.
