Alien: Planeta Tierra

Allen: Earth is finally here and I have to say I was hoping it would be a lot better than it is. It almost feels like a teen CW version of Alirn and not the Alien franchise we all came to know and love. I was promised the show would be full of enough excitement and thrills that make the episodes feel like they fly by. It's not. The other thing I can't stand is that we have to wait to wait a week between episodes. I have come so used to binging series that that's how I like to watch my shows. I hate waiting a week when I enjoy a show. I admit I'm not the biggest or most knowledgeable Alien fan, the originals were made before I was born but I have watched them and enjoyed them. I am a big sci-fi fan though so that's why I was looking forward to this so much and why I'm disappointed. I did read that if you are a big Alien fan that this series will reward you with plenty of fun Easter eggs and the more you know about the franchise the more you're going to enjoy this series. That was a lie.

I really wanted to like this, I was one of those people really excited for a new entry into the Alien Universe...but this is not the Alien Universe, at all. It feels like a typical sci-fi story that happens to have a xenomoprh running around, but the real plot has nothing to do with it. The atmosphere also feels off, it's like watching a fan-made flick with mediocre writing. Even the creature looks wrong, it looks fake, like a plastic puppet.

It's a shame, but since Alien 3 there hasn't been any good secuels, all of them are not able to understand the real myth behind alien.

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.

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.