THE FRANCHISE THAT FELL TO EARTH

Noah Hawley's Alien prequel series stars Sydney Chandler, in a role anticipating Ripley's

- BY JUDY BERMAN

A SPACECRAFT HURTLING THROUGH THE cosmos. An indomitable female lead. Armed crew members creeping through claustrophobic hallways where death could be lurking around any corner. A hostile alien that looks like a giant, bullet-headed scorpion in fetish gear and bleeds acid the color and consistency of infected snot. All that extraterrestrial drool.

These are the hallmarks of the Alien franchise, which have remained mostly consistent across the seven movies (plus two vacuous Alien vs. Predator crossovers) that have kept those terrifying Xenomorphs coming back to our screens every decade since the original premiered in 1979. Yet Alien has always been an elastic property. In 1986, James Cameron followed up Ridley Scott’s minimal work of cosmic horror with Aliens, an action spectacle for a maximalist era. Hero Ellen Ripley’s (Sigourney Weaver) lonely fight for survival gave way to a military mission to vanquish aliens ravaging a human colony; Cameron filled the frame with cocky Marines, boxy space tanks, and an adorable orphan who finds in Ripley a surrogate mother. Both films rank among the best in their respective genres.

Subsequent features haven’t been nearly as successful. In the ’90s, David Fincher (Alien 3) and Amélie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Alien Resurrection) mishandled the intellectual property. Even Scott’s intriguing but convoluted 2010s origin stories and 2024’s adequate Alien: Romulus (soon to be followed by a sequel) do little to dispel the impression that the franchise’s heyday ended 39 years ago. Especially in light of this history, FX’s fantastic Alien: Earth—the first live-action Alien series—is a remarkable achievement. But I wouldn't call it a surprise. With ambitious small-screen takes on the Coen brothers opus Fargo and the Marvel superhero