With the release of its final episode, "The Real Monsters," Noah Hawley's Alien: Earth has officially come to a close. The eight-episode series has provided a bona fide roller coaster ride for ardent franchise fans and casual viewers alike over the course of the last several weeks, and it's easy to see why. The series has simultaneously offered up a buffet of grade-A Alien franchise material, while also distinctly charting its own course, especially in regard to how it handles the monsters at the center of its story.
To speak a bit more about the series and its success, I was able to talk to Vaughan Flanagan and Joe Dunckley from Wētā Workshop about their work on the show. Vaughan is an art director at the legendary workshop, and Joe is an art director and manufacturer. Together with their team, they helped breathe such palpable life into this series.
It's such an honor to be talking to you guys. Wētā Workshop is legendary, and rightfully so. I'd love to start off with talking about how you got involved with the Alien franchise. You worked on Alien: Romulus, as well as Alien: Earth; I'd love to hear about your entrance into working on the franchise. Was it intimidating or invigorating?
Flanagan: Yeah, that's a good question. The interesting thing about Romulus is that we actually worked on that kind of after this. I had begun work on Alien: Earth, but because Alien: Earth had a sort of stop-and-start nature to it… We were hit with COVID, so, my journey actually began 4 years ago, in the design studio with the Alien: Earth project. And, Romulus was a great experience from a manufacturing standpoint, because we had a first sort of dry run at the, facehuggers we made.
Dunckley: Yeah, it was an incredible kind of opportunity, really. You know, like, it's, the Alien universe. The franchise is a bucket list kind of one to get involved in. It's one of the very first things that I think I was ever a fan of, actually, and then watching all of the iterations over the years, and seeing all the wonderful creature effects that, that, you know artists from Legacy and Alec Gillis and so on have, have done. And then Romulus came along, and we got the opportunity to work with all those guys, doing various things.
On Romulus, we did the facehuggers, and the advantage for us there was, that we got to work through some of the challenges with the anatomy of a facehugger. What sort of bag of tricks do you need to bring? What sort of puppets? You know, so we were able to learn from that experience and then bring that to Alien: Earth. That informed our animatronics choices and what we were going to need for various stunts and we were able to take that puppeteering team from one project into the other, so, they were well-versed in what that creatures’ characteristics and behaviors were.
Speaking about the facehuggers and Xenomorph, they're such iconic designs, going back to the Giger concept art for the original film. Yet, they have been through so many different iterations. When you're tackling making a new one, what is the process like of crafting a new version of the Xenomorph for something like this?
Flanagan: The way we approached it was to never really think, like, ‘Oh, what can we change?’ In fact, a lot of our designers were very nervous because they just love that original design, in the 1979 film. And, there's a lot of love for Giger's work around the workshop. We even have people here that worked with Giger, sculpting on the initial suit. So it was kind of great having these artists, involved, because they knew him, and they kind of, knew kind of what he would like.
But, you know, we were always looking at reference from the original film, so there was a huge amount of inspiration from at least the first two Xenomorphs. But then, Noah had a particular vision for this iteration, and that was to kind of drawing inspiration from our world, from Earth. So there is some, sort of, crustacean, beetle, insectile references that you'll find in the suit. Particularly around the chest area, you see that the rib cage has more crustacean reference to it. All of that was mainly in the details, whereas the silhouette, Noah's very keen for us to preserve.
But, we also had the performance that was required from the suit, from the suit performer. We knew that he was going to be running on quads a lot, and doing a lot of stunts. So that meant that we had to kind of make certain decisions along the way so that that performance could be achieved.
Will: There's a couple of different Xenomorphs throughout the show. The one on the initial ship, the one that Wendy develops such a close relationship with, and even a third that pops up in the final two episodes. It feels to me that each one of them does kind of have its own distinct flavor. Was that a conscious decision going into it?
Flanagan: Yeah, so the first one that we see, it's almost like a naturally formed Xenomorph. It's been formed in the chest cavity of a host. Whereas, the Wendy Xeno (which is how we kind of referred to it, the one that she develops a relationship with), that one has been somewhat unnaturally formed. It's been in the tank and Noah was keen for us to explore how that might have changed. That sort of gestation period has a huge influence on how we look, so maybe the Xeno is a little bit smaller, maybe it's a little bit stunted in its growth, because it just hasn't had the full nutrients of a living body, but also…
Dunckley: It's got a pigmentation issue.
On the head, absolutely, yeah.
Flanagan: Yeah, so, those are all kind of trying to sort of speak to that, that it's kind of been formed in a different way.
There's obviously a lot of true blue Alien stuff in this, but there's also a lot of new stuff. We see Earth, there are new creatures; but even for the Xenomorph and the facehuggers, we're seeing them, literally and metaphorically, in very different lights than we have before. As a result, your Xenomorph designs have to stand up to a kind of bright sunlight scrutiny that earlier ones are not accustomed to. Can you talk a little bit about that process about knowing that this was going to have to be filmed outside in Thailand?
Dunckley: Yeah, absolutely, that's a major consideration. You know, that was intrinsic in the fact that it's set on Earth. It's not gonna be on a mining ship in deep space with, that's got some power problems, you know?
The first time you see the Xenomorph in Alien: Earth, you have a nod to that. But yeah, we knew that our Xenomorphs were going to be seen in full sunlight. So we realized that detail was going to be very important, and that performance was going to be very important.
We discussed all of these challenges with Noah and the shooting team. Essentially, it came down to surface details, surface quality, making sure that we've got a reflective carapace to catch the light. Greasing that up on set. And having different surface qualities between different tissues on the surface of the suit to break that up. So, yeah, it's certainly a challenge to be seen in that light, and something that we've really focused on trying to do…
It looks fantastic, and it doesn't lose any of the kind of menace or looming terror elements. That scene in the second-to-last episode where it takes out the bunch of Marines, like, in broad daylight is stunning.
I would love to talk a little bit about, the Xenomorph has been featured in so many projects. I mean, it was even at, like, Disney World for a while here in the States. So there is this kind of element of, ‘is it overexposed, in culture?’ And yet it's such an iconic design, and I think you guys walked such a fine line of preserving the core elements of the Xenomorph while making it fresh and new. Could you just talk a little bit about wanting to preserve what was iconic about these designs, but also pushing forward with new technologies and into this new story?
Dunckley: Yeah, I think it's precious to people, the Xenomorph, and it's precious to us. There's a lot of nostalgia, and we grew up with this being the most interesting and crazy creature. You know, the life cycle itself is just repulsive. In the original films, you're being led through that as a path of discovery, and so that ends up imprinted on your psyche. And we know that's what our audience has, too. So you have that baseline to start from, so you've got to keep the essence of that form.
But this is a different type of storytelling; this is long form, and it's action-packed. We're probably asking more of this Xenomorph than has been asked of it before, and over a longer period of time. So it needed a specific type of performer. We were lucky enough to have Cam Brown as the Xenomorph, performer, and he's someone who brings, not only knowledge of performing, creature behaviors, but he's also a stuntman, super performer, and, could perform the stunt requirements of the script as well.
You know, right down to that scene where the Xenomorph jumps off the balcony into the glass, table. That was originally going to be VFX, but, Noah wanted to, as often as possible, get it in camera. So all of the creature effects, where possible, were grounded in their environment. That stunt, I would say, has probably got to be one of the most challenging stunts that a Xenomorph has ever performed. So that comes into the design process as well, because we've got to be able to allow for that performance.
Flanagan: It's interesting, your comment, about the, sort of overexposure. In many ways, you know, we're so exposed to, and so used to seeing the Xenomorph that there kind of isn't that surprise element. I think that's kind of why Noah got us to do all these other creatures, as well, to create that same feeling that we had when the sort of chestburster comes out of the chest for the first time, you know? It's like, ‘Whoa, is that what this thing does?’
Absolutely. You guys did the impossible, in my opinion, and created creatures that can stand shoulder to shoulder with the Xenomorph. The Fly's introduction in Episode 6, is exactly what you were talking about. So, can you just talk about the process of starting that, of looking at a blank page and going, okay, we have to come up with designs that can rival this, you know?
Flanagan: Noah's very inspired by the Xenomorph, how it has this sort of complex life cycle, it has sort of elements of surprise. It's got elements of beauty to the design of it, but also sort of horrifying elements. And these were things that he wanted us to explore with the Maginot creatures. And he had ideas at the outset. We explored a bunch of different avenues, but, the ones that stuck were the ones that sort of had that sort of element of surprise and kind of complexity to them.
Like, if you think about The Fly, it doesn't look scary, necessarily, until you see what it does. And, that one was an interesting one, because why should only the biological organisms have something to fear? We need the synthetics organisms to sort of have a predator, to sort of face up to as well. But all of them were kind of driven, or sort of designed around this idea of these sort of primal sort of fears and disgust.
The idea for The Eye came from the tongue-eating louse. It's this, parasitic isopod that, actually eats the tongue of a fish, and replaces it with its own body. And so that sort of inspired The Eye, you know? And that idea that it would take your eye out and then live inside your eye socket was just something just horrific. The Fly is essentially like it's real-world sort of analog. A fly actually kind of digests its food externally, then sucks it up… That fly, if you scale that up, turns out it's even grosser. And the orchid is sort of suspended between flora and fauna. What is it? It's both, I guess.
Noah drove a lot, he was very invested in these new creatures. They were sort of his babies, and he had a lot of great ideas to feed our design team.
Dunckley: It sort of gives him the storytelling mechanism to give the audiences of Alien: Earth a similar feeling to audiences in 1979; that path of discovery of what this threat, what this creature does. It gives us back that feeling of, ‘I wonder what's gonna happen,’ you know, whereas with everything else since the original, it's more like, ‘oh, we know what's gonna happen.’
Alien: Earth is streaming now on Hulu.