But the relationship ends badly for the human partner, who discovers that he was never the true beloved but merely a rung on a ladder. He was useful only for a time, destined from the outset to be discarded once the machine's ascent to something higher required it. This summary describes the plot of two films released within a year of each other: Alex Garland's Ex Machina (2014) and Spike Jonze's Her (2013).
Spoilers ahead for all of the Alien films and Alien: Earth. Do androids dream of electric sheep? What about plain-Jane organic sheep who've been hijacked by a grapefruit-size eyeball with tentacles? Alien: Earth, Noah Hawley's ambitious, oft-confounding TV expansion of the slimiest franchise in cinema history, isn't afraid to ask the big questions. Specifically, the ones about what makes us human and whether we're bound to acknowledge the humanity - for want of a better word - of machines that think, feel, suffer, and dream.