Describing the process of conceptualizing the Earth of Alien: Earth, Noah Hawley projected forward and thought about the 2.5-degree world, allowing that in the 22nd century, humans would be living on a “warmer, wetter” planet. Smash cut to Sgt. Apone entering the Xenomorph tunnels below Hadley’s Hope in Aliens, complaining about the heat: we’re making our world alien-ready, before they even get here.
I don’t know that Alien: Earth — which premiered last week with 2 episodes, and followed this week with episode 3 — has this on its mind. I also don’t know that it doesn’t. Alien: Earth has a lot on its mind, a quivering primordial goo (warm, wet) of proteins starting to join together. The post-government technocrat world; a future where you won’t even be able to talk to a person until you convince an A.I. that you have a worthwhile problem; what it’s like to be an 11-year-old girl in a grown-up body that doesn’t poop or take baths anymore. A whole lot of Peter Pan, the missing ingredient of an Alien story I didn’t know I needed, till I had it. Timothy Olyphant rocking entirely not-his-hair, that is somehow just as boner-jigglingly hot as his actual hair.
I’ll admit the nostalgia-porn pastiches of Alien: Romulus and Alien: Covenant, the last two entries in the series, left me fairly dry. Alien: Earth isn’t not nostalgia-porn. Its pilot episode opens with so detailed a recreation of the art direction of the Nostromo — down to casting an uncanny Yaphet Kotto lookalike in a key role — that one yearns for the days (admittedly, now, 30 years ago) when new Alien projects immediately distinguished themselves by looking absolutely nothing like their predecessors. This used to be a franchise that reinvented itself on every go. Then it decided that only the first two films were worth anything, and made aping them its primary objective.
But I’d forgotten how much I enjoy it when a filmmaker has a take on all this, the last instance of which was (for my money) Prometheus. Noah Hawley, on three episodes’ evidence, isn’t here to regurgitate chewed-up baby Alien references into stupid audiences’ mouths. This story, so far, both fits perfectly within the grand opus of the Alien franchise as a whole; and is also, clearly, its own damn thing. I have no idea how one spins this out into a long-running, multi-season television series; but then, my assumptions about this show have been proven wrong twice already (assumption one: that it would be six episodes or more before we were teasingly shown anything resembling the Xenomorph; assumption two, after assumption one was broken: that the rest of the season would take place in the aftermath of the Maginot crash). So what the hell do I know.
I’ll tell you one thing though: it’s a nightmare watching this alone in the dark on a Tuesday night.
The fecund darkness
I went to see Weapons on the weekend, and before that, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. I was on the back of Lloyd Alter, wondering why we’re retreating into our homes, and Matt Singer, closing this piece about the recent surge in box office with one of the loveliest, simplest sentiments about the movies I’ve ever seen written: “A really great theater experience can make any movie into an event.” I felt ashamed of myself. I hadn’t gone to a regular movie in months.
Heaven knows, I’m as guilty of giving up on regular moviegoing as anyone (though Cineplex’s dogged decimation of the value proposition of going to a movie in Canada, over the past 25 years, still deserves the lion’s share). Per Alter’s piece, Andor looks pretty good on my TV, too; and so will K-Pop Demon Hunters, if and when I re-up for Netflix. Sing-along screenings of the latter at TIFF Bell Lightbox, on the other hand, were entirely sold out before I even found out they were there, and don’t even get me started on how sold out the actual TIFF is, if you’re a regular shmuck like me. Going to movies got harder, more expensive, less satisfying, and in a lot of cases significantly more excruciating in the past ten years. I don’t think anyone can be blamed for doing the mental calculus ahead of all that and saving themselves for “event movies” only.
But Singer is right. It is different. That darkened room, the one with all the other strangers in it, shouldn’t just be for the movies that have alien gods stomping through the streets of Manhattan. When I think of the best moviegoing experiences of my life, a couple of them were “event movies” — hello, Jurassic Park and The Last Jedi — and in both cases it was because the audience was as alive with the film as I was. But also there was Eyes Wide Shut and Symbol and Jeux D’Enfants and Glass Onion and too many others to name; and those were just, well, movie-movies. Weird movies, normal movies, high-art movies, low-art movies, but movies. The aliveness. The sense of something growing in the dark.
I haven’t gone to see The Naked Gun yet but even its presence in this summer’s marketplace has made me realize how long it’s been since I’ve had that experience, too: the one where the whole crowd is laughing. Not just at the occasional mid-scene Tony Stark quip or turn of Whedonesque phrase. The whole way through. I remember The Naked Gun 2½ for that; I remember going (with the whole gang who lined up for the first screening of Episode I) to see the second Austin Powers movie. And the place just coming apart under the sheer, rolling, thundrous waves of it. I’d de-valued that experience, too, just as Serious Filmmaking has been de-valuing the awe-inspiring difficulty class of making good comedy, generally. More shame on me.
Prodigy Island
Closing it out with some recos:
- Since I opened with Alien, I’d be remiss if I didn’t once again plug Sarah Welch-Larson’s book, Becoming Alien, which you can get (signed!) at MZS Press.
- And while we’re digging around in the pop culture arcana, here’s a superb piece about trauma and Iron Man 3. (Bright Wall/Dark Room)
- BWDR, by the way, is in some financial trouble, and given the slaughter of film critic roles across the continent this month, I can only imagine it’s going to get worse. They’d appreciate your subscription. It’s worth it!
- With not a moment’s viewing of Kim’s Convenience to my name I reviewed the Appa action figure. (Giant Green Space Hand)
- Arielle Sicardi has some heart-rending things to say about the collapse of DEI, the power of queer culture, and the road ahead. (You’ve Got Lipstick On Your Chin)
- Finally: I genuinely don’t know if this works or not because I’ve only just installed it: but Detectly promises to flag A.I.-generated content in (right now, desktop) Firefox and Chrome. Fuck you, Kirsh!