“She’s acquired her fortunate walrus and her paper cutter on her again,” Hawley says. “My son is 12 and he nonetheless goes out within the yard and fights monsters with a stick or no matter he’s acquired within the hand. It felt like there needed to be a certain quantity of Spielberg on this – within the scale of it, the crashing ships, and the investing in these characters. However discovering the steadiness of that was actually fascinating.”
Nikola Tesla and the “Struggle of the Currents”
Although Alien: Earth is about in our planet’s future, the geopolitical state of play very a lot resembles its previous. As evidenced by the existence of the highly effective Weyland-Yutani Company in Scott’s authentic movie and all its sequels and spinoffs, the Alien universe imagines human development into the celebs as a dismal byproduct of capitalistic ambition fairly than Star Trek-esque beliefs.
“Assume two or three steps forward from the place we’re proper now,” Hawley says. “I imply they’re already working towards the concept that we don’t want nationwide currencies anymore. We must always simply have cryptocurrencies which can be personal currencies. It’s going to make lots of people actually wealthy, however as a structural conceit for a society, it’s not the world’s finest model.”
Alien: Earth takes issues a step additional by inserting Weyland-Yutani right into a technological arms race amongst 4 different megacorporations that dominate the planet. Right here, the creation of artificial life and synthetic intelligence isn’t nearly helping in interstellar journey however attaining one thing resembling immortality whereas producing revenue. Right here, Hawley sees a comparability to an analogous technological competitors in nineteenth century American historical past, the conflict of the currents.
“I actually appreciated the thought of selecting a second in time the place you had Edison and Tesla and Westinghouse, and there was this new expertise, this electrical energy, and one in all them was going to manage it, proper? They have been all in competitors: which model of the sunshine bulb [will win out]? Which model is AC or DC?”
H.R. Giger (Clearly)
After all, the perfect inspiration for an Alien TV collection is Alien. Hawley views Scott’s Alien and James Cameron’s Aliens (1986) because the chief leaping off level for Alien: Earth‘s prequel story. In the meantime, not solely does H.R. Giger’s xenomorph creation from the unique Alien make a return right here, but it surely serves because the structural inspiration for a way the present delivers its narrative.
