[Thor Joachim Haga]

I don’t obsess over many genre franchises out there. I mean, I dig STAR TREK, STAR WARS, LOTR etc. for what they are, but not on the level I see on many messageboards. Feel like a complete noob sometimes, compared to them, although I’m well above-average compared to most people.

However, there is ONE exception – the ALIEN franchise. I’ve obsessed over that since I was about 10 years old. The first film is crucial in forming my film interest in the first place.

And now there’s a new series out, ALIEN: EARTH. Saw the first two episodes on Disney+ yesterday, and quite liked them. Much better than ROMULUS; at least it had hints of an auteur stamp, which that film didn’t. Jeff Russo’s score was serviceable. The Goldsmith-ian echoplex trumpets were fine (although there’s a weird, upbeat version of it at some point, which felt off), some other bits and bobs that were appropriately moody. But also a lot of contemporary noodling. I’m torn.

Anyone else watching the show, or have any other input on ALIEN in general, films or scores?

[Nicolai P. Zwar]

I don’t have Disney+, so I’m not watching the show (yet…maybe it’ll be elswhere some day).
I admit I’m somewhat skeptical about Alien working as a TV series.
I loved the original ALIEN. It was a classic science-fiction monster movie, the type of which had been done before (with Mario Bava’s PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES an obvious predecessor, though Scott said he had not even seen the film… but the similarities are nevertheless obvious), but ALIEN was the first time such a movie was constructed with A-level production values. The monster-bursting-out-of-chest scene was at that time a harrowingly shocking scene, well done. The idea of Ash being a robot was a further, excellent plot twist. ALIENS then was a great sequel, because it didn’t try to do the exact same thing as before, but put marines up against aliens. ALIEN3 had its issues, but I liked the atmosphere, Fincher’s direction, and Elliot Goldenthal’s evocative music score. I did not care all that much for ALIEN: RESURRECTION, but I liked PROMETHEUS more than most (not because I don’t see its obvious flaws, but because I enjoyed that it tried to do some new things). That’s it, I haven’t watched any of the other Alien movies, though I do have ALIEN:COVENANT on Bluray for a rainy day.

There is a tendency in all of these franchises that go on for too long to overexplain this or that, and I don’t like the idea of de-mystifying the Xenomorphs too much. I don’t even like the idea that they were created as some sort of “biological weapon”… a “weapon” the wielder cannot control at all is rather silly. I find them much more interesting, and frightening, as naturally evolved but highly dangerous creature, that may have been part of a different eco system on a different planet where it fit in, but once it was taken out, is highly dangerous because it no longer has any natural “enemies”. The original Alien is one of the best designed alien creatures ever, it deserves to haven an aura of mystery around it.
As far as ALIEN:EARTH is concerned, I might give it a try one day.

[Thor Joachim Haga]

What I dig is how the films (especially the first) communicate so much via visuals and sound alone — the whole Freudian landscape that lingers in the subconscious, creating terror. In fact, subtext + auteur stamps are what attract me to them, and what sets them apart from all other franchises of its kind. Everything about motherhood and how that is explored in ALIENS (both Ripley and the queen), faith and redemption in ALIEN 3, science ethics and morals in RESSURECTION. All the intellectual (historical, literary) references in PROMETHEUS and COVENANT that add to the sheer experience aspect of it.

It’s mainstream food for cineastes.

That’s why ROMULUS was a relative disappointment. All surface value, no auteur stamp. There are some bits I liked, but it was basically a very expensive fan film.

ALIEN: EARTH shows more promise. Hawley brings his unique style from things like FARGO and LEGION (slow dissolves, extreme close-ups, meaty colour palette etc.). And the Peter Pan/eternal kid/android approach was a neat idea. It’s not on the level of the pre-ROMULUS films yet, but hoping it will continue to cement itself in the coming episodes.

[Malte Müller]

Yeah, the first three Alien movies are classics. They lost me a bit with the later parts and when they started to crossover with Predator.
ROMULUS I didn’t see but PROMETHEUS und COVENANT didn’t grab me.

Read that the series got quite good reviews. But as I also don’t have D+ – currently have Netflix only and my watchlist is full enough anyway 😉 –, I am not watching it for the time being.

(Feel free to spoiler, I will have forgotten about that if I ever watch it. Probably never will because it then already has several seasons ;-))

[Nicolai P. Zwar]

There are a lot of things I like about PROMETHEUS, it’s a great looking film, with a potentially intriguing premise. It’s in some ways a real “science fiction” film and less of a monster spectacle, and the look reminded me of some of the Analog Magazine covers I enjoyed so much. However, I don’t know why the writers ever thought they could get away with such nincompoop scientists, who were actually supposed to be the experts in their field. 🙂

[GerateWohl]

Broke up watching Alien Earth after half an our. The whole Neverland idea didn’t work out for me, that sick children give their life happily and die in the knowledge that an android with a copy of their conciousness will exist afterwards. For old arrogant narcistic men this might be an option. But for children.
I tried, but I just couldn’t care for any of the characters.

[Nils Jacob Holt Hanssen]

The ALIEN movies are among my favorites, for sure – at least the first two. But I like all of them, to a greater or lesser degree. I’m not as into it as I am into STAR TREK, for instance, so Thor, I guess my interest in the ALIEN franchise is at about the same level as your interest in STAR TREK, and vice versa. 😉

I do have both the DVD and Blu-Ray boxes of the first four films, and upgraded to 4K discs of ALIEN and ALIENS as soon as they became available. For the others I’ll probably be content with streaming them when I want to watch them again.

I was scared out of my pants the first time I watched ALIEN as a youngster, but now, of course, I enjoy it for the great piece of filmmaking that it is.

And the scores are up there as well, of course, with Goldsmith’s ALIEN doing an absolutely incredible job of increasing the suspense and dread, and Horner’s ALIENS is full of fantastic high-octane thrills. Goldenthal’s ALIEN 3 is also terrific.

There’s a limit to how much dystopian sci-fi I want to watch, but ALIEN I have no trouble with.

I’m putting ALIEN: EARTH on my “to watch” list of TV shows (although I see that reception is mixed). 😊

[Thor Joachim Haga]

Please do, Nils. It’s worth it.

My two cents on series and score are here.

[Thor Joachim Haga]

I pride myself in not being TOO much of a geekboy, but I quite often fail. An example is this ALIEN thing. Every now and then, I conjure up a scenario in my head that continues the storyline from ALIEN: RESSURECTION, just because I want to see the Ripley storyline continued without introducing the concept of alternate timelines, which the aborted Neil Blomkamp project tried to do.

Fortunately, all the actors who portrayed the surviving crew members from that film are still alive. Since the end of A:R takes place outside a decimated Paris, we’re now almost 30 years later, and settlements have started to crop up. But it’s a chaotic and lawless society. Ron Perlman’s Johner, Dominique Pinon’s Vriess and Winona Ryder’s Call are still together as a rag tag band, doing occasional missions with the Betty. Call looks visibly older, which introduces the idea that androids get older (thereby also opening up to Fassbender’s return in a third David film). Ripley 8 is no longer with them. They get an assignment where they need Ripley’s help and set out to find her. They find her, and then head out into space to face the mission, ripe with xeno threats.

I know, silly. But that’s how my brain works those nights when I can’t sleep. 😀

Anyone else doing their own storylines? And would you admit it?

[Malte Müller]

I pride myself in not being TOO much of a geekboy

If being a film score fan isn’t a high level of geekness what else? 😉

[Thor Joachim Haga]

True. We’ve already passed that threshold a long time ago.

[GerateWohl]

Never felt the urge to continue THAT story.
The idea with the aging android reminds me a lot of Terminator Dark Fate.

And please, no more David movies. There are already two too many.

But if one continued that story I would like the ideas, that Ripley 8 became kind of a mother by cloning herself five “daughters” from her DNA with the same special physical abilities. Then she, living with them hidden from the public like a bee queen gets contacted to save the world because someone at last managed to bring xenos to earth and as expected things got out of control. So Ripley 8 and her five clones go on a mission together with a team of mercenaries to save the day. But things get complicated when at least two or three of the clones team up with the aliens because of their mixed DNA the feel closer to them. So, Ripley gets between all the lines of fire because she wants to save ALL her daughters and has more or less to fight everyone, the aliens AND the human soldiers.
What about that?

[Thor Joachim Haga]

Not a bad idea, but I want them out in space again, be it a ship, station, planet, what-have-you. I don’t want something earth-bound, at least not beyond a first act.

Whatever one thinks of PROMETHEUS and ALIEN: COVENANT (I obviously adore them), Ridley should at the very least be allowed to finish his David trilogy so that it ties into the original film. If he can’t do it, or dies of old age, then someone else capable (Villeneuve, for example). But Michael Fassbender gets older too, so it either needs to be done quickly, or you need to introduce the ‘ageing android’ concept. I don’t want to see de-aging CGI.

[Nicolai P. Zwar]

I love ALIEN, great monster horror movie.
I very much enjoy ALIENS, good sequel, great monster action movie.
ALIEN3 had some interesting things, I love David Fincher as a director, but I guess many people were pissed that it completely destroyed the ending of ALIENS, and I think they do have a point. Still, the atmosphere on the prison planet was quite captivating.
ALIEN: RESURRECTION then went the way many franchises do when they run out of ideas, and inserted more “camp” and more “human” qualities. Those actually annoyed me. I found the ALIENS up to then were horrifying creatures, they were not “evil” but simply dangerous insects. In ALIEN 4, they started to act more “human”, and so they became less interesting to me.
PROMETHEUS was one of the best looking films in the franchise, and it started out with some very interesting concepts and ideas. What I really enjoyed was a movie that took place in the alien universe but wasn’t foremost about aliens hunting humans. What I didn’t like was that so many people in the movie acted like absolute idiots.

I haven’t bothered to watch any of the other alien movies yet, though I do have ALIEN:COVENANT on bluray somewhere.

[GerateWohl]

The biggest flaw of Alien 3 was the invention of CGI alien. It always looks artificial, terrible and not scary.

[Thor Joachim Haga]

Interestingly, there is very little CGI in ALIEN 3. The alien is mostly puppet (even that famous shot of it at the top of the ceiling). But the slick and somewhat jittery effect does make it look like early CGI a bit, and I even thought it was for years.

[Thor Joachim Haga]

Apparently, ALIEN: EARTH has been renewed for a second season, and is going into production in May already.

[ryanpaquet]

I really enjoyed the first season of ALIEN EARTH and thought the score worked well. I have not taken time to listen to the score albums from Russo on their own yet. I am expecting a CD release of this score at some point.

Did you watch Alien EARTH Thor?

I also recently ordered a copy of the Alien Romulus score from Mutant on CD – glad I waited a bit to do so, the more recent or re-pressing of these CDs has the correct sizing of the spine on the digipak. The first printing the spine was sized for a 2CD which you can see on discogs if you’re curious as a user uploaded scans of their copy. I do wonder if it was thought it was going to be a 2CD release – but I’m guessing it was more likely a mis-order on Mutant’s part and they forgot that the CD tracks would all fit on one disc. Just happy this is available on CD.

[Thor Joachim Haga]

Yes, as we talked about earlier in the thread, I sorta enjoyed the first season of ALIEN: EARTH. I thought it was a step up from ALIEN: ROMULUS, because it had auteur traits, which ROMULUS didn’t. This is important, because all the previous films have them. But at the same time, there were bits and bobs about the tone and approach that alienated me a bit (no pun intended). I’ve seen through the first season of ALIEN: EARTH three times (same with ROMULUS) so far. If you disregard some of my misgivings, there are plenty to enjoy in both.

There are similarly bits and bobs on both the EARTH and ROMULUS soundtracks that I enjoy, but it requires some whittling (especially in ROMULUS’ case, where some of the most harrowing sound design stuff needs weeding out). These are the playlists I landed on for both, 43 minutes for EARTH, 34 for ROMULUS:

[Author]

Posts