Alien: Planeta Tierra

I've just finished the first two episodes. As a fan of the original movie and being in my fifties, this series is definitely not for me. It's got none of the suspense, tension or build of the original, a weird teen genius who eats apples and appears to be a moron, super-fast synthetic children in adult form who move painfully slowly at all times. Sorry but I just found the whole thing utterly ridiculous.

Also - it's still just set in a spaceship, it just happens to be crashed into the side of a building.

Very disappointing.

As an alien fan for 40+ years, I was hopeful that this series could finally revive the franchise. However, what made Alien great was suspense. What made Aliens awesome was action (and a sublime cast, script, and director). Whoever wrote and directed this has completely missed what makes the franchise great; instead, they think it's about horror about grossing people out. They're going for cheap scares and have just completely missed what makes the franchise great. Sad. Hoping it picks up, but based on the direction the series is going, I hold no hopes.

Not talking about the kids in your living room, the on-screen versions are the ones that botched the alien franchise. It COULD have been great, because scenes are well-built and the adult characters work, especially the on-board android, but somehow, someone decided to give the main lead to a 12-year old, that acts and think like a 12-year old, with 10 year old friends as the entourage to battle extremely violent and blood-thirsty monsters. It doesn't work. And the constant switching of timelines and pace deludes the storyline more than helping it. Sorry, my rating is generous. A 12 year old would probably rate it higher, but I am not 12.

I'll start by saying the show looks really good. I also appreciate that it's a bit of a slower burn with not much actual xenomorph action, at least not in the way most audiences are probably expecting (or hoping). It's an interesting new angle on the Alien universe, where we get a better look at the corporate reality of Earth.

But it's held back by some weird creative choices that don't really work.

First of all, a good chunk of the main cast are basically children who have been given young adult bodies. This results in a lot of people acting much more childish than their appearance would lead you to expect. It's an interesting idea, but it mostly just makes a lot of scenes feel very awkward in a way that doesn't contribute any meaning.

The music is also really uneven. I won't say it's as bad as Disney's Willow series, but there's still a lot of rather out-of-place music here. I like Tool as much as the next guy but I don't know why 90s kids-turned-filmmakers are compelled toward this kind of anachronism.

Some of the dialog is just really disconnected, and seems like it's trying to build characterization without being properly thought out or connected to choice or action.

The result of all of this is a bizarrely disjointed show that at times feels like it could be really interesting but then veers sharply towards nonsense. There's something vaguely compelling about that, but it's also hard to say it's actually good.

The production values are a solid 10. For better or worse, the target demographic is adolescents and mid-teens of median intellect. The writing and plot are at a level of a 1980s Saturday morning cartoon. Dumbness and plot holes ruin the experience virtually every 30 seconds. For example, a search and rescue team is dispatched to a spaceship crash: they look and act like a comic small town militia, sloppy, inept, no discipline, armed to the teeth, no rescue or search equipment. The WTF moments just keep stacking up until the irritation factor just turns you off.