Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate, and… Xenomorphs? The creator of Alien: Earth may be reluctant to draw a line between the franchise and Blade Runner, but the idea of them being interlinked isn’t a ridiculous notion.
“In the future, the race for immortality will come in three guises,” the opening text of the new Alien series reads. “Cybernetically enhanced humans: cyborgs. Artificially intelligent beings: synths. Synthetic beings downloaded with human consciousness: hybrids. Which technology prevails will determine what corporation rules the universe.”
The cine-savvy among you will detect an obvious echo: the beginning of both Blade Runner movies, which outline the advent of replicants (“bioengineered humans”) and their use, risks, and future under the Tyrell Corporation.
But is that all it is: an echo between two sci-fi worlds that happen to have begun with Ridley Scott? There’s a short answer and a longer (and better) theory.
Why Alien: Earth didn’t use the Tyrell Corporation
First, some context. In Alien: Earth, we learn that the planet is governed by five corporations, each of which presides over different regions and technological fields: Weyland-Yutani, Prodigy (the main focus of the show, with Samuel Blenkin playing its bare-footed, smarmy CEO), Lynch, Dynamic, and Threshold.
In our interview with showrunner Noah Hawley, we asked if he considered making Tyrell one of the series’ big five.
“No,” he said. “Look, I would say to all of our department heads, ‘If you’re making Blade Runner, you’re making the wrong Ridley Scott movie.’
“But at the same time, there’s a kind of undeniable echo aesthetically between Blade Runner and Alien. You could plausibly look at Blade Runner and go, ‘Well that is what Earth is like in the movie,’ because there’s a lot of moisture in both of those movies.
“And thematically obviously the second movie takes the sort-of Ian Holm synthetic being, and makes a whole movie about it. That concept of what is human and what is synthetic. So it’s kind of unavoidable – looking at those two movies in the same thought.”
Similarities between Roy Batty and Kirsh
It’s not just the general overlap with synthetics and replicants. Kirsh, played by Timothy Olyphant, is inspired by Rutger Hauer’s Roy Batty – as confirmed by the actor himself. “That’s spot-on. That was a good look,” he told us. As for whether there’s an actual connection, he smiled and said: “I’ve got nothing there.”
When asked about Kirsh and Batty’s shared likeness, Hawley said: “I think there is an other-ness in this synthetic being that we wanted to play with, and certainly that look is very iconic.”
Now, while Hawley undoubtedly had creative reasons behind not using Tyrell (maybe he thought it was a needless, fan-brained link, or perhaps he just never thought to do it), it’s important to remember who holds the rights for both franchises right now.
Alien: Earth is an FX show distributed by Hulu and Disney Plus, and the wider franchise is owned by Disney after its acquisition of 20th Century Fox. Blade Runner is owned by Alcon, which financed and co-produced Blade Runner 2049 for Warner Bros, Blade Runner: Black Lotus for Adult Swim and Crunchyroll, and has partnered with Amazon for a new live-action series, Blade Runner 2099.
Would Alcon be amenable to a crossover? Who knows, but it doesn’t help that a Blade Runner series is being developed for a competitor’s streaming platform. Even if Hawley wanted to, it may have been off the table.
Is Alien connected to Blade Runner?
Alien and Blade Runner are connected, as confirmed by Ridley Scott.
As Hawley said, there is an “undeniable echo”: both franchises revolve around corporations that specialize in AI and set up off-world colonies, and that’s before you get to other similarities (like David and Roy Batty, an android and replicant who cause carnage to meet their makers).
However, there are real, tangible links between the two, rather than just analysing their thematic and story overlaps. For example, Tom Skerritt’s Dallas worked for the Tyrell Corporation before joining Weyland-Yutani, as revealed in the special features of 1999’s Alien: 20th Anniversary Edition DVD.
Speaking on a director’s commentary for Blade Runner, Scott said: “So almost this world could easily be the city that supports the crew that go out in Alien.
“So, in other words, when the crew of Alien come back in, they might go into this place and go into a bar off the street near where Deckard lives. That’s how I thought about it.”
A booklet released as part of the Prometheus Blu-ray steelbook also included a diary entry penned by Peter Weyland, who spoke about a “mentor and long-departed competitor” who wanted him to come with him to “become the new Gods… that’s how he ran his corporation, like a god on top of a pyramid overlooking a city of angels.”
This is a clear reference to Dr. Eldon Tyrell, the head of the Tyrell Corporation (its building in Los Angeles even looks like a pyramid).
Alas, that doesn’t mean Alien: Earth needs to abide by the lore of Blade Runner (or the other Alien movies, for that matter). “Everything doesn’t have to fit together the way you expect from Marvel. Fans don’t expect that in this universe. It doesn’t have the same pressure,” FX chief Gina Balian said in a statement.
In short, Alien and Blade Runner’s connection is just for fun, but if you’re expecting Alien: Earth to build upon it, “I can’t lie to you about your chances, but… you have my sympathies.”
In our interviews with the cast, we also asked them how they’d react to a Predator and which characters from the Alien movies they want to see in the series.
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