Over the past year, streaming services have not been reluctant to dump content. Not just movies and shows licensed from other studios--those have always come and gone from the various streamers--but originals, shows and movies made specifically for the service that get stuffed into a black hole, possibly never to be (legally) seen again. To be fair, many of these abandoned projects do find homes at other services, including the free, ad-supported ones. Also, in many cases, movies and TV shows are still available for purchase, so if you really want to spend $20 to digitally own all ten episodes of Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies, you can. And of course, in 2023, almost nothing completely disappears, so if you are craving to watch The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers, you can if you know the right places to look. But still, original programs disappearing from streaming sites feels somewhat like a betrayal.
The one major streamer that has resisted the temptation to purge, at least so far, is Netflix. With very few exceptions, once Netflix puts an original on its service, it stays. They may cancel the show abruptly after one season, but at least you can bask in the entire run of, say, Girlboss, which came and went in 2017. That's probably why its still easy to see Alien Xmas. The stop-motion special, created by the Chiodo Brothers and produced by Jon Favreau, premiered on the site in 2020 with little fanfare and seemingly little notice (there are a whopping 7 reviews for the program on Rotten Tomatoes). If it was another streamer, it easily could have been put on the chopping block. But its on Netflix, so why we're unlikely to see a sequel, at least we can see it this Christmas, and probably next Christmas and many Christmases to come.
The rather busy plot follows the alien X (the title is a pun!), a member of a race of scavenger aliens who roam the galaxy stealing as much as they can. X may be the best thief of them all, but he's also the runt of the ship, so no one takes him seriously. He sees an opportunity to fix this when he volunteers to go to the next planet on the list and prepare the anti-gravity device that will allow the aliens to easily scoop up all the planet's stuff. That planet? Earth, of course, and the landing site is the North Pole, just before Christmas.
Meanwhile, in Christmastown, little elf girl Holly's only Christmas wish is to get to spend more time with her dad, Obie. Unfortunately, he happens to be Santa's top engineer, tasked with working out the kinks on Santa's new super sleigh before Christmas--and there are a lot of kinks. So, when X, prowling around the town, is mistaken for a doll, Obie gives him to Holly, where X experiences something he's never felt before--love.
Will X have a change of heart? Will his entire alien race have one as well? Will Holly get her fondest wish for Christmas? While the special does have a couple of mild twists and turns, it's not the least bit subversive, and no one should be surprised that the special goes exactly where anyone who has watched even a handful of Christmas specials before expects it to go.
That said, while this isn't an all-time classic, it is still well worth watching. The Chiodos are masters of puppetry and stop-motion, and you've seen their work in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, Team America: World Police, recent Oscar nominee Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, various episodes of The Simpsons, and Elf, among others. So it should come as no surprise that the special is a visual treat. Even though X looks like a stereotypical grey alien (at first), his face and movements are very expressive, and that craftmanship extends to the rest of the special, which is bright and colorful. Indeed, the whole thing feels like a loving homage to the works of Rankin-Bass, complete with a Santa who isn't perfect (though he is still miles nicer and kinder than R-B's stable of Santa jerks).
If Alien Xmas had been made for Disney+, it likely would have gotten far more hype than it did at Netflix. However, there's no guarantee that it would even still be on Disney+ this holiday season. Say what you will about Netflix's quick hook, at least the shows they make stick around. This one may have flown under the radar, but at least it's still flying. It's well worth checking out.
Next time: An exclusively family Christmas (except for the backup dancers and choir)
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