Alien: Earth

As soon as I found that it's not Ridley Scott who was writing/directing this show, I had high hopes for the series. I watched two episodes and can say with confidence that the show has so far been more disappointing than even Prometheus and all the subsequent Ridley Scott's Alien movies. I am 100% sure the rest of the series will be worse.

The series seem to be turning Alien universe into yet another boring monster universe like that Godzilla and Kong universe. The writing is terrible. The characters are bland and boring. The conversations are so plebeian, soporific, and flat that my fingers had the urge to press fast forward button whenever two people started talking.

I will watch the rest of the series, but I expect the show to devolve further compelling me to downgrade my current 6/10 rating to a 5 or even 4.

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.

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.

I'll give it a chance but so far its very disjointed and feels like there is very little in the way of a plot.

The atmosphere, tension & suspense of the movies has been jettisoned and replaced with inappropriate syth music to "tell" you when you're supposed to be excited or scared when the filmmakers havn't earned any of that in terms of storytelling.

The series opens up with a throwback to alien which, I assume, we will revist as a flashback episode at some point. Its a nostalgia tip of the hat but it felt all surface level and rushed. I wasn't invested in any of the characters so far. There was no tension built at all. A series gives you the opportunity to explore the world with depth which so far seems to be a secondary thought here.

Many reviewers have mentioned the glaring issues in the first two episodes which I wont rehash here. Suffice to say it does raise a few questions in terms of writing and direction.

There have been plenty of Alien projects that have come out over the years since the original trilogy and while some have been watchable and the other down right awful, this is closer to the unwatchable ones than the watchable. Somehow, it's gotten nothing but great reviews from both critics and split from fans of the franchise. It actually currently has a fantastic 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. Alien: Earth is about when a mysterious spaceship crashes on Earth and a ragtag group of soldiers, led by a woman named Wendy, have to make the discovery that will put them up against the greatest threat the planet has ever seen. What follows is a series that looks like it was made for kids and not adults.