Credit: 20th Century StudiosThe Alien franchise is finally about to drop its two most recent films, as the upcoming Alien TV series is set to take things back to basics.
It’s been almost seven years since the xenomorph last terrorized moviegoers. Alien: Covenant (2017) did little to impress fans, critics, and the box office, and while, for the most part, the sequel to Ridley Scott’s Prometheus (2012) feels like an Alien movie, it quickly descends down the same philosophical and pretentious rabbit hole of its predecessor.
Originally intended as the first in a series of prequels that would eventually lead into the original Alien (1978), the films detail the “origins” of the xenomorph, revealing that it is nothing more than a bioweapon made by a race of supreme, God-like beings known as the “Engineers,” a concept many audiences felt undermined the otherwise enigmatic nature of the most terrifying extra-terrestrial to have ever graced the silver screen.
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But as the franchise has proven time and time again, you can’t kill the xenomorph. There are currently two major Alien projects in development: one is a theatrical film from acclaimed horror director Fede Álvarez that will act in isolation to all the other films in the series, and the other is a television series set for Hulu from Fargo showrunner Noah Hawley.
Now, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Hawley has addressed the problem with Ridley Scott’s prequels and how he plans on tackling them in the Alien TV series. When asked if he’d be using Prometheus and Alien: Covenant to serve as the backstory for the series, which takes place on Earth in the near future, Hawley explained that he’s been in talks with Scott about those films, while also addressing their jarring futuristic aesthetic that makes no sense compared to the retro, quasi-futuristic, and industrialized style of the original films.
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Here’s what he said:
“Ridley and I have talked about this — and many, many elements of the show. For me, and for a lot of people, this ‘perfect life form’ — as it was described in the first film — is the product of millions of years of evolution that created this creature that may have existed for a million years out there in space.
The idea that, on some level, it was a bioweapon created half an hour ago, that’s just inherently less useful to me. And in terms of the mythology, what’s scary about this monster, is that when you look at those first two movies, you have this retro-futuristic technology. You have giant computer monitors, these weird keyboards… You have to make a choice. Am I doing that?
Because in the prequels, Ridley made the technology thousands of years more advanced than the technology of Alien, which is supposed to take place in those movies’ future. There’s something about that that doesn’t really compute for me. I prefer the retro-futurism of the first two films. And so that’s the choice I’ve made — there’s no holograms. The convenience of that beautiful Apple store technology is not available to me.”
Whether or not the series will de-canonize Scott’s two prequels entirely remains to be seen.
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How do you feel about Prometheus and Alien: Covenant being retconned in the new Alien TV series? Let Inside the Magic know in the comments down below!