The Alien Franchise is back! Alien: Earth is great so far

The Alien franchise has travelled far and wide, but it's finally back! After many attempts to get a franchise going, Alien has really suffered with some truly boring entries. Some films being absolutely terrible, lackluster and just recycling the same nonsense. Though the previous film, while I don't remember a whole lot about it, was one of the good ones. A refreshing take on the story without really doing much different. Though snippets of the film explored something new to the franchise: the off-world colonies. The life beyond the ships that end up being slaughtered by an alien species. I found this aspect to be the most interesting part of the film. Giving us a glimpse at the universe out there that the others had not. And I remember thinking that it would be great to see more of that. Well, here we are! With Alien: Earth. A television series which still sort of remains stuck around the alien, but is finally taking us into different locations and exploring the progress of humanity within the universe.

To match the previous film, Alien: Earth takes the budget to new highs. And it really shows here in the episodes released so far. This is where the Alien franchise can really shine, where the rich science-fiction goodness of the universe the stories unfold within can really be displayed. People often would say that the designs of the original Alien film were unmatched. And that was true given the additional films would make significant changes in the wrong direction. Though with today's budgets and styles, I found the episodes to be incredibly beautiful. A very nice cyberpunk look to everything with the addition of anamorphic looking lenses. This style definitely allows for things to stand out a bit more and seem more out of this world, compared to regular lenses which wouldn't offer the same characteristics: lights are not just circular, instead they're oval. A shallow depth of field makes things look a bit more dreamy. And this also comes with a more filmic look which makes things look softer and darker. With different environments and locations, the story feels much larger, something with lots of little details to admire. It adds more weight to the moments of action that do appear as we aren't constantly following people aboard a ship. Instead we see the contrast between the low life aspects of civilisation and the developments of society that have formed careless and odd elites. This was very quickly addressed in the previous film regarding corporations and off-world colonies. But here we see the attempts made from trillionaires to expand upon humanity's abilities, to create the androids of their dreams that have human consciousnesses but aren't limited to the weaknesses of a human body. We've seen plenty of times in previous films how androids end up betraying the survivors, how they are sworn to the interests of corporations above all, though we never really saw the foundations of that, and here we are starting to. Down to the ways in which corporations of massive scales interact and fight each other.

And this is of course mixed with the personal drama of its characters introduced. Giving more depth to the characters given the television series will keep them around for a while, perhaps the entire series. Still, some are written with brief development just to write them out again, and that's fine. But the show so far really is taking advantage of its ability to pace itself and display reasons to care for its characters. Showing the situation they're getting caught up in and how the schemes of others are leading them into horrors beyond their imagination. Currently there are three episodes out, on a weekly release schedule. But it's well worth jumping into if you're looking for something to scratch that more serious science-fiction itch, or if you're an unfortunate fan of the Alien franchise.