“I believe we are able to all agree that the planet’s about to get loads hotter and loads wetter,” Hawley says, and Bangkok is a tropical location crammed with rivers and canals. Initially, he envisioned Prodigy’s troopers shifting round New Siam on trains, however as soon as he visited Bangkok, “it turned very clear: We’ll put individuals on boats, [and] it will assist promote this concept that the water has reclaimed a number of the metropolis.”
Hawley’s design workforce constructed out a sq. mile of New Siam in Unreal Engine, the identical graphics software program used to develop video video games like Fortnite and Closing Fantasy VII Rebirth. Within the eyes of Prodigy, there are “tiered layers” of the town, in keeping with Hawley: Humanity Minus, Humanity Plus, and Humanity Prime (although this idea isn’t mentioned on-screen within the last minimize of the collection).
“The upper you go, the richer you might be, and the decrease you go, the poorer you might be,” Hawley says. When Prodigy troopers descend to the place the Maginot crashed, we see “Humanity Minus” dwelling in darkish subterranean hovels, however after they ascend the corporate’s supertall towers, they encounter a Louis XIV-themed celebration straight out of J. G. Ballard’s Excessive-Rise. Even larger, we first meet the CEO of Weyland-Yutani 1000’s of ft above one other company metropolis (an unnamed one Chicagoans will acknowledge).
“The place Are the Adults” in a World Run by Trillionaires?
In our precise current, Elon Musk, a 54-year-old man who nonetheless thinks 4/20 jokes are humorous, is poised to turn out to be one of many first trillionaires. Within the twenty second century of Alien: Earth, the “youngest trillionaire ever” is Boy Kavalier, performed by Samuel Blenkin, an egomaniacal “boy genius” who based Prodigy when he was 6 years outdated and is now in his early twenties.
“The CEO of this firm tells himself he is Peter Pan,” Hawley says. “And then you definitely learn Peter Pan and also you go, ‘That’s a darkish e-book.’ He’s kidnapping these youngsters, he is taking them to this island, [and] it is implied that after they begin to develop up, he removes them.” In a pleasant literary parallel, Kavalier creates the primary hybrids in a analysis facility on a secluded island known as Neverland and renames them after Peter Pan’s Misplaced Boys.
Alongside his costume designer Suttirat Anne Larlarb, Hawley determined that Kavalier would put on pajamas with no sneakers all through the collection as a result of he owns every thing in Prodigy Metropolis and Neverland. “All the things’s his home,” Hawley says. “The factor about cash that I’ve noticed is at a sure level, every thing is simply free. You don’t really feel the lack of the cash, you’re not truly shopping for something or conscious of the transactions.”
However Kavalier’s ultrawealthy mindset additionally impacts the best way he sees and treats different individuals. “Triage the rescue by earnings bracket,” he instructs his right-hand man after the Maginot crash turns Prodigy Metropolis right into a mass casualty occasion. Hawley says Kavalier “is a method of literalizing what I really feel after I look around the globe that I am dwelling in proper now, which is: The place are the adults? The place are the individuals who suppose extra about tomorrow than at the moment?”
“Retro-Futurism” Meets Model-New Monsters
The primary episode opens on the Maginot, the place Hawley’s manufacturing designers painstakingly re-created the appear and feel of Ridley Scott’s Nostromo. “That’s what Alien is, so far as I’m involved,” Hawley says. “It’s the retro-futurism. It is these outdated cathode [ray] tube displays. It’s the inexperienced ASCII textual content. It is these loopy keyboards with the Egyptian hieroglyphics the place, like, how do they even know what they’re writing?”
Whereas 1979’s Alien spent 40 minutes establishing the on a regular basis lives of area truckers, Hawley knew Alien: Earth needed to accomplish the identical factor in simply 4 minutes. “Translating a movie to tv, your first job is authenticity,” Hawley says, so the Maginot was designed based mostly on Ridley Scott’s Nostromo blueprints “all the way down to the props.”
