With FX’s Alien series set to premiere on August 12, fans continue to debate the merits of the often starkly different installments in the series. Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, Resurrection, and the prequels are each very different flavors of horror, but according to showrunner Noah Hawley, they each have their merits, too.

“I think every Alien movie has greatness in it,” Hawley said in a roundtable discussion ahead of the series’ premiere. “I think Fincher brought a lot of really great moments and ideas to it, and [Alien Resurrection director Jean-Pierre] Jeunet, the first half of it, I really liked. It was very odd in a way. But I love the sort of clone Sigourney and that whole storyline. Everyone introduced very interesting ideas to it.”

Still, Hawley continued, Alien: Earth leans into only the first two movies for its most direct inspirations, especially the 1979 original.

“In order to simplify my task, I just really focused on the first two,” he said. “The technology of Prometheus, which takes place I-don’t-know-how-many hundreds of years before the first Alien, is so much more advanced than the retro-futurism of Alien, and I just prefer, aesthetically, the retro-futurism. Like if I’m going to adapt Ridley [Scott]’s movie, which is what I told him I wanted to do, then that’s how it has to look.”

For his part, Hawley says he wants to re-mystify the Xenomorph.

“Every time you thought you knew what the lifecycle of this creature was, it just got worse, right?” Hawley said. “It was like, ‘Okay, it’s an egg and this giant crab comes out and grabs your face,’ and you think ‘I’m out.’ It’s like, ‘No, I’m not done.’ Now, the giant crab lays another egg inside of you, that then bursts out [of] your chest, and you’re like, ‘Okay, game over.’ And then it’s like, no, now it grows to be 10 feet tall. And then James Cameron added, ‘Well, who’s laying those eggs?’ But you’re never gonna get an audience to be surprised by that again. And so I’ve tried to come up with ways that the show returns that sense of what’s going to happen next.”

The debate over which Alien is best (and sometimes, which aren’t good at all) will likely rage on for decades more, but it’s good to hear from the latest torchbearer regarding how the series has held up over time and how he sees his contributions to the lore fitting in.

For more on the series, here’s how COVID changed the trajectory of Alien: Earth.

Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email news@gamespot.com