Noah Hawley Talks Alien Series Storytelling and Aesthetic

[Gimitko]

Richest Noah interview about Alien so far:

"The prequels aside, because those are historical documents, what do we really know about the 'Alien' universe? We know there's a company called Weyland-Yutani. We don't know a lot more about it. We don't know what the government structure is, the politics of it, what's Earth — none of that. That's liberating on some level to not have to thread various needles. But the challenge is also that we're only ever in these artificial environments, the spaceship or a prison or whatever. What does an apartment look like on 'Alien'? That basic stuff of the palette of 'Alien,' the design of that ship, that dripping is so specific. I think that the sweaty aesthetic of 'Alien' plays very well into climate change and the hot, wet future that we're all moving toward. Technology in the first two movies was rooted in the retro futurism of the '70s and '80s. Is that our aesthetic? Those challenges really excite me because I would much rather deal with computers that look like that than holograms and feel like I'm in an Apple store.

"What's rooted in the horror of 'Alien' is discovery. The life cycle of this creature, besides being insane, is truly terrifying. It's an egg, and inside that egg is a creature that attaches to your face. I'm already out. But then that creature that attaches to your face lays another creature inside of you — hold on a second. Then that creature bursts out of your chest and grows to 9 feet tall? What is this creature? The experience of watching "Alien" for the first time is so visceral; it just gets worse and worse and worse and worse. [Director] James Cameron was able to take that and turn it into an action movie in which you knew what the life cycle was, so there was the horror of anticipation. But who's laying those eggs? So he added that other element to it. But after that, there's no discovery or surprise, we're just doing that again and again.

The challenge for me is: Is there a way that we can take the audience back to "wait, what's happening? What does this thing do?" That was the first challenge. The second challenge, which is why I think it justifies a show with multiple hours of storytelling, is that it's not just a monster movie. It's about humanity trapped between this primordial "they want to eat us" past and the AI future, and they're both trying to kill us. We've created these tools that are turning on us, or if we program them correctly, we'll go insane. Those elements of humanity, artificial intelligence, trans-humanism — 'what's the future of humanity?' is a really interesting thing to talk about right now. Combined with the revenge of nature — we're experiencing that now as weather or viruses or whatever. If we're in a place where our self-driving cars are gonna kill us, or we're going to drown in them, there's a story to be placed in the middle of that."

https://starsinfocity.com/noah-hawley-on-fargo-season-5-jon-hamms-nipple-rings-and-alien/

A retro-futurist aesthetic confirmed, along with my suspicions that the show will be about the climate crisis. His intention to "remystify the alien" seems more promising when expanded upon.

[Nightmare Asylum]

I think this might be the most enlightening statement on the show to date – and really starts diving into what Hawley actually originally meant when he talked about us being caught between that "primordial past" and "AI future" all those years ago.

[BlueMarsalis79]

You have my sword.

[Nightmare Asylum]

"[...] those are historical documents [...]"

This tickles me.

[Ingwar]

Books inside Noah Hawley home office in Austin, Texas.

Existentialism, Ethics, Marxism, a lot of Albert Camus (existentialist), Zizek (socialist), Wes Anderson.

https://starsinfocity.com/noah-hawley-on-fargo-season-5-jon-hamms-nipple-rings-and-alien/

[TheBATMAN]

Richest Noah interview about Alien so far:

"The prequels aside, because those are historical documents, what do we really know about the 'Alien' universe? We know there's a company called Weyland-Yutani. We don't know a lot more about it. We don't know what the government structure is, the politics of it, what's Earth — none of that.

Gaska ain't gonna like this!

[Nightmare Asylum]

Richest Noah interview about Alien so far:

"The prequels aside, because those are historical documents, what do we really know about the 'Alien' universe? We know there's a company called Weyland-Yutani. We don't know a lot more about it. We don't know what the government structure is, the politics of it, what's Earth — none of that.

Gaska ain't gonna like this!

An RPG is nothing if not malleable by design!

[TC]

Richest Noah interview about Alien so far:

Excellent find. TY.

Technology in the first two movies was rooted in the retro futurism of the '70s and '80s. Is that our aesthetic? Those challenges really excite me because I would much rather deal with computers that look like that than holograms and feel like I'm in an Apple store.

Great. Retro futurism was on my wish list. Alien Isolation may have taken it a bit far (VHS video?!?) but in general, Creative Assembly did it well.

... [Director] James Cameron was able to take that and turn it into an action movie in which you knew what the life cycle was, so there was the horror of anticipation. But who's laying those eggs? So he added that other element to it. But after that, there's no discovery or surprise, we're just doing that again and again.

He's wrong about that last point. After Cameron upped the ante by multiplying the aliens, Alien 3 followed suite by this time having Ripley actually infected with a chestburster, and then with Alien Res the ante was upped yet again with the hybrids. They weren't just doing the same thing again and again.

The challenge for me is: Is there a way that we can take the audience back to "wait, what's happening? What does this thing do?" That was the first challenge.

Yes, that could be a challenge if you choose to go that route. The other way to go is the Walking Dead model: The zombies are pretty much explained early on and then become the constant background threat that motivates the human drama that occurs in all the stories thereafter. IOW you don't really need to re-invent the Alien to make a new mystery out of it. You might choose to, however, if this is some kind of reboot.

The second challenge, which is why I think it justifies a show with multiple hours of storytelling, is that it's not just a monster movie. It's about humanity trapped between this primordial "they want to eat us" past and the AI future, and they're both trying to kill us. We've created these tools that are turning on us, or if we program them correctly, we'll go insane. Those elements of humanity, artificial intelligence, trans-humanism — 'what's the future of humanity?' is a really interesting thing to talk about right now.

Fair enough. 10 hours of story has to be filled something more than sci-fi places and chases. You could argue that that's all Alien '79 was (it was, as Scott continually reminds us, a mere B-movie after all), but the films after that always had the action plot up front backed up with a deeper theme underneath (yes, even Alien Res). Hawley is right to add a deeper layer of something. If he makes it some social commentary about the future of humanity, I'm good with that.

TC

[Immortan Jonesy]

Richest Noah interview about Alien so far:

"The prequels aside, because those are historical documents, what do we really know about the 'Alien' universe? We know there's a company called Weyland-Yutani. We don't know a lot more about it. We don't know what the government structure is, the politics of it, what's Earth — none of that. That's liberating on some level to not have to thread various needles. But the challenge is also that we're only ever in these artificial environments, the spaceship or a prison or whatever. What does an apartment look like on 'Alien'? That basic stuff of the palette of 'Alien,' the design of that ship, that dripping is so specific. I think that the sweaty aesthetic of 'Alien' plays very well into climate change and the hot, wet future that we're all moving toward. Technology in the first two movies was rooted in the retro futurism of the '70s and '80s. Is that our aesthetic? Those challenges really excite me because I would much rather deal with computers that look like that than holograms and feel like I'm in an Apple store.

One of the things that excites me about the TV series is that they can show us what the universe of Alien is like, even the human context. The wolrd where the space truckers like Ripley come from. There is interesting potential there by addressing elements that cannot be explored in depth in 2 hours of film.

[Nightmare Asylum]

I'm guessing that this series (and Fede's film as well) is likely going to lean hard into the retro-futurism of the original films and Isolation, and that's definitely cool.

But also, some day I want to see some of these approach some of the visual language of Vincent Ward's concept. Covenant comes the closest, but isn't quite there.

[Immortan Jonesy]

William Gibson was equally curious about these kinds of details of the Alien universe:

"I found a lot of things in the original [Alien] that were interesting even when it first came out. I thought there were germs of stories implicit in the art direction. I always wanted to know more about these guys. Like why they were wearing dirty sneakers in this funky spaceship. I think it influenced my prose science-fiction writing because it was the first funked-up, dirty kitchen sink spaceship, and it made a big impression on me. When I started writing science fiction, I went for that."

Explore what lies behind retrofuturism in a similar way to the dieselpunk subgenre; a retrofuturist artistic movement that combines aesthetics based on the interwar diesel engine with futuristic technology, while evoking the roaring twenties and the fulfillment of the great American dream, in contrast to the Great Depression and World War II. It is a genre made by and for dreamers, so its images reflect a way to escape from that negativity. In a similar way, I really want to understand, what is behind the futurism of Alien

Having said that, can't wait to see Noah Hawley's take on the world of Alien. I'm also looking forward to Fede Alvarez's movie.

[Nightmare Asylum]

Give me some monks and robes and wheat fields. Let Dane Hallett have a field day on it.

[[cancerblack]]

Give me some monks and robes and wheat fields. Let Dane Hallett have a field day on it.

I still genuinely have a soft spot for the Harvest fake script.

[ralfy]

It looks like I have to dumb down.

You weren't already doing that with all your posts?

Apparently not, according to several in the forum.

Richest Noah interview about Alien so far:

"The prequels aside, because those are historical documents, what do we really know about the 'Alien' universe? We know there's a company called Weyland-Yutani. We don't know a lot more about it. We don't know what the government structure is, the politics of it, what's Earth — none of that. That's liberating on some level to not have to thread various needles. But the challenge is also that we're only ever in these artificial environments, the spaceship or a prison or whatever. What does an apartment look like on 'Alien'? That basic stuff of the palette of 'Alien,' the design of that ship, that dripping is so specific. I think that the sweaty aesthetic of 'Alien' plays very well into climate change and the hot, wet future that we're all moving toward. Technology in the first two movies was rooted in the retro futurism of the '70s and '80s. Is that our aesthetic? Those challenges really excite me because I would much rather deal with computers that look like that than holograms and feel like I'm in an Apple store.

"What's rooted in the horror of 'Alien' is discovery. The life cycle of this creature, besides being insane, is truly terrifying. It's an egg, and inside that egg is a creature that attaches to your face. I'm already out. But then that creature that attaches to your face lays another creature inside of you — hold on a second. Then that creature bursts out of your chest and grows to 9 feet tall? What is this creature? The experience of watching "Alien" for the first time is so visceral; it just gets worse and worse and worse and worse. [Director] James Cameron was able to take that and turn it into an action movie in which you knew what the life cycle was, so there was the horror of anticipation. But who's laying those eggs? So he added that other element to it. But after that, there's no discovery or surprise, we're just doing that again and again.

The challenge for me is: Is there a way that we can take the audience back to "wait, what's happening? What does this thing do?" That was the first challenge. The second challenge, which is why I think it justifies a show with multiple hours of storytelling, is that it's not just a monster movie. It's about humanity trapped between this primordial "they want to eat us" past and the AI future, and they're both trying to kill us. We've created these tools that are turning on us, or if we program them correctly, we'll go insane. Those elements of humanity, artificial intelligence, trans-humanism — 'what's the future of humanity?' is a really interesting thing to talk about right now. Combined with the revenge of nature — we're experiencing that now as weather or viruses or whatever. If we're in a place where our self-driving cars are gonna kill us, or we're going to drown in them, there's a story to be placed in the middle of that."

https://starsinfocity.com/noah-hawley-on-fargo-season-5-jon-hamms-nipple-rings-and-alien/

A retro-futurist aesthetic confirmed, along with my suspicions that the show will be about the climate crisis. His intention to "remystify the alien" seems more promising when expanded upon.

Makes a lot of sense for a TV show because he has to put in a lot of content. That means moving in different directions, and hopefully in a way that works, until the show ends successfully or is run to the ground.

The implication is that the move to TV works if it's a mini-series, i.e., there's a set number of parts, so that writers know what content to consider and how to space them out among the parts. An alternative to that is a regular series with a set number of seasons, but that's not usually the case because franchise owners want to maximize earnings and thus show as many seasons as possible.

William Gibson was equally curious about these kinds of details of the Alien universe:

"I found a lot of things in the original [Alien] that were interesting even when it first came out. I thought there were germs of stories implicit in the art direction. I always wanted to know more about these guys. Like why they were wearing dirty sneakers in this funky spaceship. I think it influenced my prose science-fiction writing because it was the first funked-up, dirty kitchen sink spaceship, and it made a big impression on me. When I started writing science fiction, I went for that."

Explore what lies behind retrofuturism in a similar way to the dieselpunk subgenre; a retrofuturist artistic movement that combines aesthetics based on the interwar diesel engine with futuristic technology, while evoking the roaring twenties and the fulfillment of the great American dream, in contrast to the Great Depression and World War II. It is a genre made by and for dreamers, so its images reflect a way to escape from that negativity. In a similar way, I really want to understand, what is behind the futurism of Alien

Having said that, can't wait to see Noah Hawley's take on the world of Alien. I'm also looking forward to Fede Alvarez's movie.

I just realized that, too, especially when we compare that with what interiors look like in actual space trips, etc. OTOH, maybe given a lot of time, things get dirtier while companies cut corners, etc.

What's good about this isn't just making the situation look realistic but also the natural elements in dialogue, etc., like the Nostromo crew having a meal and discussing bonus situation. Making them look like regular truckers, etc., also helps, not to mention crew members with varying ages.

In contrast, the prequels and various shows in different franchises want to show something like the opposite.

[Still Collating...]

The artwork that was shared didn't seem to "Alien" to me, but I hope that by this he really means he will go the retro way.

I'm worried about how he'll expand and "reinvent" the Alien. It's always a warning sign to me when someone feels they have to reinvent the wheel, cause that just means they don't get what the "wheel" actually does and can do. I hope it's subtle and smart and effective. Not just new for the sake of newness.