As its title suggests, Alien: Earth was always going to bring Alien‘s Xenomorphs to our home planet. So how would the series adapt the legendary movie monster to its new environment?
That was the challenge the staff at Wētā Workshop faced going into their work on Alien: Earth. Vaughan Flanagan, a supervising art director at Wētā, and Joe Dunckley, a senior art director at Wētā, walked Mashable through their process over a Zoom interview.
“We were very keen to explore Xenomorph design, but we were also very nervous about that, because within the creature design space, the Xenomorph is highly venerated amongst a lot of our artists,” Flanagan said. “There’s always that trepidation when it comes to messing with the perfect organism.”
Wētā has worked in the Alien universe before, creating the Facehuggers for Alien: Romulus. “Romulus was an amazing experience in that [director] Fede [Álvarez] brought together people from shops all over the world,” Dunckley explained. “But the Xenomorph for Alien: Earth, that was our opportunity.”
Creatures from Earth inspired Alien: Earth‘s Xenomorph.
Cameron Brown as the Xenomorph in “Alien: Earth.”
Credit: Screenshot: FX
When it came to bringing the Xenomorph to life, Wētā and Alien: Earth showrunner Noah Hawley didn’t want to mess with artist H.R. Giger’s original design too much.
“We really wanted to preserve that silhouette — the elongated head, the tail, the piping, all of those things,” said Flanagan. “A lot of the areas in which we sought to innovate was within the details. This was a show set on Earth, and so Noah wanted to draw a lot of inspiration from terrestrial creatures: crustaceans, insects, beetles, and whatnot. A lot of that was integrated into the suit design.”
At first, Alien: Earth‘s Xenomorphs weren’t going to be suits. But when the show moved in that direction, Dunckley and his team took over the manufacture of the suits.
“We started with the performance requirements of the Xenomorph. The Xenomorph in Alien: Earth has to do a lot, so we needed someone who could bring the creature performance, but could also withstand the rigors of the action in the show, because Noah wanted to do as much as possible practical,” Dunckley said.
For that, Wētā turned to stunt performer and actor Cameron Brown, who plays the Xenomorph from the Maginot over the first episodes of the season.
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“Something that I really wanted to bring was the animalistic quality of the creature,” Brown told Mashable in a Zoom interview. “A lot of inspiration for that came from watching the original films.”
To figure out how the Xenomorph moved, Brown drew on his stunt performer background. “A lot of my pre-visualization was, ‘How is this creature going to interact in different situations?'” Brown explained. “Like in the Maginot, for example, what’s it like when there’s no threat around and it’s just exploring the space? Or what’s it like when there is an immediate threat? How does it tackle that?”
How do you put a Xenomorph in the jungle?
Jayde Rutene as Wendy’s Xenomorph in “Alien: Earth.”
Credit: Screenshot: FX
In the latter half of Alien: Earth Season 1, stunt performer Jayde Rutene stepped into the role of the adolescent Xenomorph that Wendy (Sydney Chandler) learns to communicate with. (On set, the character is known as “Wendy’s Xenomorph.”) At this point, Brown stepped into an advisory role for Rutene.
“All of the exploration process at the start is, for me, the most joy in filmmaking,” Brown said. “So then when it came to passing all of that on [to Rutene], I got to experience that a second time in the production, which was really exciting to me, sharing some of the discoveries I’ve made, and then watching my friend Jayde make her own discoveries.”
Because Wendy’s Xenomorph spends so much time stalking through the jungles of Neverland, Rutene and the Alien: Earth crew had to consider new ways to shoot the Xenomorph outdoors.
“A lot of difficulties with performing in a creature suit is trying to stay away from a human silhouette. You can put on this very elaborate and incredibly well-designed Xenomorph suit, but if you just stand there, it’s still just a guy in a suit,” Brown said. “Finding ways to break that inside a space like the Maginot, where it’s all dark and you have the help of lighting and claustrophobic spaces and camera tricks to do that, lent itself to being a lot easier to than when we moved to the jungle. Knowing that Jayde was going to be in a lot more open spaces, we had to try and make sure that all of our movement was foolproof for that.”
Wendy’s Xenomorph looks different because of how it was raised.
Jayde Rutene as Wendy’s Xenomorph and Sydney Chandler as Wendy in “Alien: Earth.”
Credit: Screenshot: FX
Seeing the Xenomorph outdoors in an Earth jungle is a disarming image for the Alien franchise, and Alien: Earth worked to be make it even more disarming by visually separating Wendy’s Xenomorph from other Xenomorphs. Wendy’s Xenomorph is lighter than others fans have seen, and it comes with its own strange markings.
For Hawley and the artists at Wētā, these design changes reflect Wendy’s Xenomorph’s unconventional life cycle, as it grew within Hermit’s (Alex Lawther) lung, instead of a full human body.
“The idea that Noah brought to us is that maybe because [Wendy’s Xenomorph] has grown in this unnatural way, its development would have been altered,” Flanagan explained. “We looked at piebalding and mottling for the skin texture. We also thought that maybe this Xenomorph is a little bit more stunted. Maybe it’s not as tall as the 7-foot-tall Xenomorphs that we’re used to seeing.”
The result is a Xenomorph that’s uniquely of Earth, one that’s still in action by the end of Season 1. How could this Earthen Xenomorph evolve in the future of Alien: Earth?
Alien: Earth is now streaming on Hulu.
