{"id":533734,"date":"2026-06-13T19:29:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T19:29:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/533734\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T19:29:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T19:29:12","slug":"alien-earth-tones-down-xenomorph-gore-embraces-wide-shots-tension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/533734\/","title":{"rendered":"Alien: Earth Tones Down Xenomorph Gore, Embraces Wide Shots & Tension"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWriter-director Noah Hawley has a style he\u2019s developed over the past 16 years working with editor Regis Kimble across their FX shows Fargo, Legion and, now, Alien: Earth<\/a>: What is the lowest number of cuts they can get away with?<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNoah\u2019s totally into trying to tell the story with the least amount of cuts,\u201d Kimble says. \u201cHe likes to give the audience an opportunity to extract what they want from [a scene], instead of force-feeding people coverage.\u201d Another stylistic preference: holding wide shots and rarely indulging in close-ups. \u201cWe stay wide in a lot of places and sit in shots for quite a long time,\u201d he explains. \u201cWe do use close-ups, but they\u2019re earned by the time we land on them, rather than having every line of dialogue in a close-up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s a style that\u2019s somewhat similar to that of Stanley Kubrick<\/a>, as well as the Coen brothers (the latter whom, of course, created the original theatrical version of Fargo). It\u2019s also quite suitable for an outright horror series like Alien: Earth. There is something quietly unsettling about a shot that\u2019s held for a long period of time, or that\u2019s wide enough to include plenty of areas where a creature can hide.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tWide shots are a signature of the FX series.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of FX<\/p>\n

\n\tYet surprisingly, concealing the franchise\u2019s famous H.R. Giger-designed Xenomorph wasn\u2019t a priority for Kimble, even though the movies in the franchise tried to minimize the monster\u2019s presence. \u201cEverybody\u2019s seen so much of the Xenomorph, that cat\u2019s been out of the bag since 1979,\u201d says Kimble, referring to Ridley Scott\u2019s groundbreaking Alien.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat said, Kimble was asked to scale back one scene with the creature \u2014 an attack on a solider in episode two that turned out so gory, Hawley deemed it too much for even FX. \u201cWe shortened the shots and darkened some of the material, so it wasn\u2019t quite so in your face,\u201d Kimble recalls.<\/p>\n

\n\tOverall, Kimble modestly makes his job sound relatively simple: \u201cIf you have three-dimensional characters that people can identify with and they have a believability to them \u2014 everything starts from that,\u201d he says. \u201cIf it\u2019s written that way, and it\u2019s shot that way, then it\u2019s just a joy to cut the material.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Writer-director Noah Hawley has a style he\u2019s developed over the past 16 years working with editor Regis Kimble…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":533735,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[263],"tags":[10637,4648,18,6135,221362,117,19,17,327,103864],"class_list":["post-533734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-alien-earth","tag-awards","tag-eire","tag-emmy-awards","tag-emmys-2026","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-movies","tag-stanley-kubrick"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116744458915412892","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}