Review

Aliens

Culture

Film & TV

Monsters

13 November 2025

5 min read

Alien, Nietzsche and the death of dread: why the franchise lost its fear

Alien: Earth forgets what made the original so terrifyingly profound

Jonathan Rowlands

Jonathan is a theology lecturer and Liverpool FC fan.

Don't pet the alien.

26 Key Productions.

The credits are rolling on Alien: Earth and all I can think about is Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche is one of history’s most enigmatic and misunderstood philosophers, one of Christianity’s greatest foils and explains exactly why the TV series, to my mind, fell flat.

Oh, how excited I was for Alien: Earth! It looked like someone had finally nailed the look and feel of Ridley Scott’s original Alien and paired it with a script by Noah Hawley (who wrote, among other things, the first series of Fargo, which I still think is one of the best series of TV ever made). I couldn’t wait.

But far from understanding what made the original Alien so terrifying, Alien: Earth manages to undermine the franchise’s key premise at almost every turn, resulting in something truly baffling. While Alien is a deeply nihilistic piece of art that draws on its nihilism for its thoroughgoing sense of dread and unease, Alien: Earth is too cute, too pleased with itself to be truly nihilistic. And therein it loses the power to shock that Alien wielded so effectively.

Let me explain what I mean. (Spoilers ahead for both Alien: Earth and Alien – although Alien came out in 1979 so if you haven’t seen it at this point, where have you been?)

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?”

So declares ‘the mad man’ in Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, giving rise to one of philosophy’s most quotable moments. Nietzsche isn’t talking about a literal ‘death of God’ (he didn’t think there even was a God to kill!). Instead, he’s talking about the death of belief in God.

But, for Nietzsche, society’s collective loss of belief in God is not a trivial thing. It’s not like realising Santa Claus isn’t real (sorry if anyone was still clinging to that!). No, belief in God gave society structure, purpose, and meaning. Without belief in God, society needs to start from the very beginning and give itself these things all over again. We cannot stop believing in God and imagine that the rest of our lives are untouched.

For all Nietzsche’s faults – which are numerous – he is clear about the implications of what we might now call ‘secularisation’, in a way that is seldom recognised. In this respect, I often wonder if Nietzsche is the only real atheist who ever lived.

There is no grand ‘why’ behind the world. No objective meaning or structure to it: we must instead impose our own, individual meaning onto our lives.

Alien is a deeply Nietzschean film. The xenomorph (that is, the eponymous alien) does not come with a ‘why’. It has no motives other than to kill; no grand plan. It’s not really a villain, in this sense: it just … is. It is the chaotic unstructured whirlwind of a universe without God distilled into a creature.

It is pure, nihilistic, Nietzschean nightmare fuel.

At the end of the film, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) doesn’t ‘defeat’ the xenomorph; she just sends it into space and escapes. She doesn’t ‘overcome’ this nihilistic creature, she just about manages to escape with her life. She does what Nietzsche encourages us all to do and lives despite meaningless chaos of the godless world around us.

This is not what happens in Alien: Earth, however. The most telling parallel between Alien and Alien: Earth is the role science and technology plays in both. In Alien, the mysterious Weyland-Yutani company wants to capture the xenomorph to use it as a bio-weapon. But the xenomorph resists such human categories and just does what it does: kill, indiscriminately.

In Alien: Earth, again the xenomorph is seen as a potential weapon, as a potential piece of technology. And … that’s exactly what it becomes. The main character in the show – Sydney Chandler’s Wendy – a little girl whose consciousness is put into the body of a robot (to cut a long, tedious story short), eventually learns the xenomorph’s language and even befriends the creature. By the end of the series, the two have effectively teamed up, with Wendy siccing (setting) the alien on her enemies.

Excuse me?

She … ‘sics’ the xenomorph on people? Becomes its friend? Right …

The first time this happened I full-on laughed at the screen. This is so far removed from the utter nihilism of Alien. Here the xenomorph has agency, motivations, preferences, and even flipping friends! It is so deeply … unscary.

And that shouldn’t be a surprise. In Alien, Nietzsche’s godless anarchy is distilled into a creature of pure terror. In Alien: Earth, that creature is literally made someone’s pet. Alien continues to terrify because it shows us something of the full implications of what it is to be without God: a world of disorder, anarchy, and chaos. Alien: Earth domesticates that entirely and puts it on a leash. In so doing, lacks all of the potency of its muse.

In his recent book Dominion, Tom Holland (no, not that Tom Holland) reminds us of what Nietzsche said long ago: our values, ethics, and even our society structures, come from a shared and historic belief in God. Too often we want to have those values, ethics, and structures without the theologies that underwrite them.

Alien: Earth wants to have its cake and eat it in precisely this same way. It wants to tell a story about a marauding, indiscriminate predator … that can be tamed by a little girl. It fails to scare because it undermines the deeper, even more terrifying story underneath Alien: that without the structure afforded us by belief in a creator, there’s no God out there to hear us scream.

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Review

Addiction

Community

Culture

Film & TV

13 May 2025

4 min read

This City is Ours – truth and lies about the global drugs trade

The drug-dealing family drama reflects the impact of the drugs world.

Henry Corbett

Henry Corbett, a vicar in Liverpool and chaplain to Everton Football Club.

Family saga.

BBC.

I asked a thoughtful Scouser and cinephile “What do you think of This City is Ours? – the crime drama TV series set in Liverpool. I wondered if he would hate all the talk of drugs, the power games, the violence and that the series about a global trade is located in our city.

“Well, it’s true.”

As a priest in Liverpool, I have taken the funerals of drug dealers and users, including one where the family quoted me Jesus’ saying, “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.” I have known too many people caught up first in the heroin trade of the 1980s and then more recently with cocaine.

I agreed that the series is truthful, and on many levels. Those involved in the criminal world of illegal drugs are still people.

I remember Peter (not his real name) who I knew when he was a young lad in the youth club I helped with. He was sitting in our kitchen with a mug of tea. He had bruises all over his face because of a drugs debt he hadn’t paid. One of my daughters came in to get something out of the fridge, and Peter apologised to her for the state of his face, explained it was because of being involved in drugs, and advised her strongly against it. He then asked after her interests and what she enjoyed and was ‘made up’ – happy - when she spoke of liking art. My daughter never forgot that conversation. She learned that people in the drugs trade were still people and could be kind, and that the illegal drugs world was to be avoided. People are both made in the image of God, capable of love and concern, and also flawed and able to be drawn into a trade that affects people so badly across the world.

So, the eight episodes of the first series of This City Is Ours show that the global criminal world of illegal drugs is brutal, violent and full of jeopardy. There are chilling deaths, executions, and vengeance. All truthful to that world. There are power struggles and a vicious family succession battle too. But there are also scenes of the same family at the dinner table, of the longing for a baby with a girlfriend who is very much loved. One moment a character is a hard-hearted killer and the next moment a tender partner. That is so truthful to the different compartments that people can live in: someone can be a loving son who cares for their mother and a ruthless power-hungry toxic gangster.

The consequences of that unnecessary “necessary” action are tragic.

A further truth that I see at every funeral is the ripple effect on partners, siblings, parents, the wider family, and friends, and outward across the community. Every episode of the show features family members: some in the gang, some outside the gang, some wanting a cut of the lucrative proceeds, others desperate to get out from this dangerous, chilling world. What we do can massively affect others close to us. So often family and friends, and a community, must live with the consequences of actions taken in a criminal underworld they are often excluded from and fearful of. Even young children can be affected and dragged into a battle for power.

So, there are truths, but what about the lies? Here’s two stand outs:

“Are we safe?” “Yes, babe.”

We know they are not safe. Definitely not. There’s a target on your back, and often on the family’s back as well.

And the second:

“It was necessary”. Or “f***ing necessary”.

No, it wasn’t. He didn’t have to become engaged in a succession struggle for power, money, and control. He didn’t have to kill someone he looked up to, respected, even loved. The consequences of that unnecessary “necessary” action are tragic.

Then there is the third lie about loyalty and trust. That false sense of being in a gang that will look after you and look out for you, that will secure your future and give you a sense of being someone who counts. From early on, this series shows that people are expendable, can be shot and tossed over a cliff, and that person you looked up to may be an informant to the police. That is maybe how they have stayed out of prison.

A fourth lie the series so truthfully nails is the notion that it is easy to walk away once you have seen through the attractions of money, of Spanish villas, of designer gear, of fragile power. It very often isn’t. You may desperately want a worthwhile life that brings good not bad, peace not killings, a freedom from looking over your shoulder and from a troubled conscience. But there may be money demanded by your supplier, there may be enemies you have made along the way. I have known people successfully move away from it all but that has often only been after a spell in prison, and with a sound alternative - whether a job to keep, a daughter to look after, or a move away.

Wisdom is a much-valued quality throughout history. Five of the Bible’s 66 books are often called Wisdom books and Jesus called Christians to be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” This City is Ours is beautifully shot, expertly scripted, brilliantly acted, and it truthfully lifts the lid on the world of the drug-dealing criminal underworld and on some of the lies peddled in that world. And I did explain in the funeral service that when Jesus said “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword” he was not recommending that way of life but warning against it.