“Every step of the way is worse than the last”: Alien: Earth creator Noah Hawley talks about the classic and new aliens in the show

Imagine you are on Earth in 2120, a few years prior to the original Alien and you believe that you have witnessed the horrors, however, strap yourself in because the creator of Alien: Earth, Noah Hawley, has dialed up the fear. There are Amazon mega-corps and roaming synthetic bodies with human minds and there are Xenomorphs, but they are only the tip of the iceberg in Alien: Earth. Hawley does not stop at just summoning of the classics again, he is inventing new, gut-turning monsters and thought-busting ethical dilemmas that grow smart-stinging with each step you take.

Reviving the Xenomorph and adding his own touch in Alien: Earth

Noah Hawley did not only revive the story of Xenomorphs, he provided them with striking new appearances and new nightmares in Alien: Earth. With a mind to mirror those appalling muses of H.R. Giger (the egg, face-hugger, chest-burster and the huge monster), Hawley sought to recreate them as his own brand new horrifying version. With the best creative talent at his disposal he clarified to TechRadar that the show would not turn out to be “vending machine of alien life.” Rather, every monster was modeled to have weird, purposeful actions to drive the plot line. Among the grossest? Imagine an eyeball with tentacles, quite gross, right? designed to bring out primal fears of parasites and of human bodies being invaded.

"The design process was sort of form following function. Really, the idea was to come up with these creatures' behaviors that are as disquieting as what Ridley [Scott] created with the different phases of the Xenomorphs' lifecycle. So, it was always about trying to top the squeamishness of the movies. From there, we started a designing them with [special effects and prop company] Weta Workshop that led to the creatures you see in the show,”

Noah Hawley, creator of Alien: Earth told TechRadar.

What was Noah Hawley’s goal!

During his interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Hawley expressed his goal was to reproduce that visceral feeling you experienced the very first time the Alien life cycle played out before your eyes, only bigger. He confesses that with the classic xenomorph we are not able to feel that shock as before since we have known how such an organism develops.

“My job in reinventing these classic films is to figure out, what are the series of feelings that the original makes me feel? And then, how do I make you feel those same feelings?....The reality is I cannot make you feel the life cycle of this creature for the first time again because you know it so well, this evolution that it’s really four monsters and one. And it’s a parasite. Every step of the way is worse than the last….You don’t know how they reproduce or what they eat. So you get this dread that comes every time they’re on screen where you’re like, ‘I know something’s going to happen. I don’t know what it’s going to be.’ And then when it happens, it’s worse than you could have imagined.”

Haunting reality in Alien: Earth

In Alien: Earth the horror is not only alien, but also too familiar. Noah Hawley's fears as a parent to children in a dystopian world find their way into the pages and Hawley envisions a future where mega-corporations struggle with each other to have immortal identities. Hawley stressed on the importance of establishing real-world implications into the horror by relocating the scenes no longer in the depths of space but on the Earth. He positioned the series as one not dictated by cosmic horror, but by our own machinery.

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