[Editor’s Note: This list was originally published in May 2017. It has since been updated to coincide with the release of “Alien: Romulus.”]
Very few film franchises in history have the pedigree that “Alien” can lay claim to. The 20th Century Fox science fiction saga has evolved over the decades from claustrophobic horror to bloody action and back again, and it’s managed that transition by producing two undeniable classics. First is Ridley Scott‘s 1979 original, “Alien,” which made Sigourney Weaver an iconic final girl and became the flawless masterpiece all sci-fi horror attempts will inevitably be compared to. Then came James Cameron’s 1986 “Aliens,” which made Weaver an iconic action hero and became one of the most beloved and imitated action movies ever made.
With such a heavyweight one-two opening punch, the “Alien” franchise really had nowhere to go but down. But that hasn’t stopped the powers that be from plugging along, trying to create a follow-up that would recapture the magic that Cameron and Scott created. There was David Fincher’s disowned and controversial “Alien 3,” and the universally disliked “Resurrection.” There was the cheesy ridiculousness of the “Alien vs. Predator” crossover series, and Scott’s frustrating but compelling aborted prequel trilogy, which started with the enigmatic “Prometheus” before morphing into the near-brilliant “Covenant.” Now, with Scott presumably not making that third film any time soon, the Xenomorphs are back for an interquel, “Alien: Romulus,” which plays more than any installment in the franchise like an attempt to chase the indelible terror of Ripley’s first run-in with H.R. Giger’s disturbing monsters. Whether it succeeds is in the eye of the beholder, but the fact that audiences keep anticipating a new “Alien” film is proof of the hold that this franchise’s original perfection still has on the popular imagination.
With “Romulus” out in theaters now, we refreshed our look at one of cinemas’s most beloved franchises. Read on for all nine “Alien” movies ranked, from worst to best.
9. “Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem” (2007)
The tagline for “AVP: Alien vs. Predator” was famously: “Whoever wins, we lose.” But it wasn’t until this war crime of a sequel that the franchise really made good on the threat. And, to be clear, the audience didn’t just lose when they went to see the hilariously titled “Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem,” they got massacred. Directed by The Brothers Strause (lol) and only a “movie” by the dictionary definition of the word, “Requiem” is such under-lit garbage that it often feels less like an action-horror film than it does the world’s loudest podcast (remember, this was made before Bret Easton Ellis started his show).
Of course, not being able to see anything on screen was as much of a blessing as it was a curse because this was the movie that introduced the world to the garbage hybrid “Predalien,” which stalked the poor townspeople of Gunnison, Colorado. Yes, after decades of threatening to unleash the Xenomorphs on Earth’s civilian population, the franchise finally went for it in the most bastardized way possible. Both unwatchably stupid and also brash enough to end with a half-assed origin story for the second name in Weyland Yutani, “Requiem” is an unmitigated disaster. Xenomorphs coming to Colorado would be bad, but this movie playing in Colorado multiplexes was even worse. —DE
8. “AVP: Alien vs. Predator” (2004)
Hindsight being 20/20, maybe hiring Paul W.S. Anderson to marry two classic franchises wasn’t the best idea that 20th Century Fox has ever had, but it certainly wasn’t the worst (“A ‘Fantastic Four’ reboot directed by the guy who made ‘Chronicle?’ What could go wrong!”). Often misdiagnosed as one of Hollywood’s biggest hacks, Anderson can be a visionary eccentric when left to his own devices, and some of his more unmoored “Resident Evil” films border on the sublime. Here, however, he was saddled with the unenviable task of melding two classic franchises in a way that wouldn’t harm the IP of either, and he responded to the challenge with a subterranean thriller that’s kinda deft nearly as often as it’s completely daft. Nearly.
The first half of the film traffics in the same kind of ominous wonder and awestruck discovery that carried so much of the original “Alien” — the idea of finding a pyramid buried 2,000 feet below an Antarctic island is plenty compelling, and the movie is at its best when it poses its victims on the surface and has them peer down into the darkness of the funnel they’ve drilled. But, uh, the quality of the film sinks pretty severely as the story goes below sea level. The biggest problem here, and the hardest to solve, is that the Predators simply aren’t as interesting as the Aliens. On one side, you have H.R. Giger’s soulless killing machines, hatched directly from our most hellish nightmares. On the other side, you have moody teenagers with very big guns (and very bad skin) who have essentially come to Earth for their intergalactic Bar Mitzvahs. It’s not much of a fair fight, and Anderson never finds a way to make these space nemeses as interesting as the shapeshifting arena in which they’re fighting each other, but God bless Sanaa Lathan for stoically playing scenes where she’s forced to become friends with a Predator. There’s a moment where they almost high-five, and she pulls it off. That’s acting. —DE
7. “Alien: Resurrection” (1997)
You have to give “Delicatessen” director Jean-Pierre Jeunet some credit — for better or worse, “Alien: Resurrection” feels like a Jean-Pierre Jeunet movie. At least, it feels like one of the grimy eccentricities he made before softening up and striking it rich with “Amélie.” Nearly as action-driven as “Aliens,” but notably stranger at every turn, “Resurrection” might be remembered for its zaniness (I mean, Brad Dourif is in it), but for something so half-baked it’s actually a rather crucial addition to the franchise.
For one thing, it brings the Xenomorphs’ adaptability to its logical conclusion; Ripley provides the missing link between human and alien, her pregnancy re-contextualizing the chest-bursting imagery as an expression of birth rather than death. For another, it completes the series’ prolonged round trip back to Earth. Joss Whedon’s seriously compromised screenplay doesn’t spark with his usual wit, but the saga’s first “female” android (a pixie-haired Winona Ryder!) is a nice complement to Ripley’s complicated femininity. And while “Resurrection” doesn’t stick the landing in any sense of the word, it does have a scene where Dominique Pinon — playing a quadriplegic space mechanic — shoots at Xenomorphs while being carried by Ron Perlman in a reverse Babybjörn. So there’s that. —DE
6. “Alien: Romulus” (2024)
There are the bones of a good — maybe even great — “Alien” splatter film inside the legacy-quel nonsense of “Alien: Romulus.” Director Fede Álvarez brings some real verve and visceral bloodshed to the pressure cooker “trapped in a ship with aliens” scenario, even if the action is often clunkily ripped straight from a subpar horror video game (Álvarez has cited spinoff videogame “Alien: Isolation” as an inspiration, but “Romulus” can never totally capture the sheer dread that made that survival sim so compelling). And the new monster unveiled in the film’s white knuckle climax certainly strikes an impression, even if its existence feels stupider the more and more you think about it.
It’s a shame, then, that the strong setpieces are attached to an overlong, utterly dull story about an unlikable and anonymous group of space colonists attempting to pull a heist on a derelict space ship. The attempts to string some emotional or thought provoking questions out of the dead-in-the-water bond between action girl Rain and her android brother Andy just frustrates more than anything, despite Cailee Spaeny and David Johnsson’s more than capable talents. What really leads “Romulus” astray, though, is its utter lack of imagination and offputting attempts to resurrect the magic of the original two films with callbacks and shout outs that land with decided thuds. The garish and unpleasant use of CGI to resurrect the late Ian Holm as an unnerving copycat of his original android Ash feels like an apt metaphor for a film more concerned with chasing the past than charting itself a new course. —WC
5. “Prometheus” (2012)
Majestic and maddening in equal measure, “Prometheus” finds Ridley Scott taking the most circuitous possible route back to the franchise he first brought to the screen. Hardly the straightforward “Alien” prequel that fans may have wanted, “Prometheus” could have simply told the Space Jockey’s story (the Space Jockey wakes up, the Space Jockey kisses his wife goodbye, the Space Jockey goes to work on his ill-fated last day on the job…), but Scott and his dueling screenwriters instead opted for a slightly more ambitious route, resulting in a sci-fi epic that reimagines all of human history before its opening credits.
A blockbuster creation myth that peers into humanity’s uncertain future by retconning its past, the film clumsily combines the basic trajectory of an “Alien” movie — people fly a bit too close to the sun, land on a planet they never should have found, and then die all the deaths — with the existential inquisitiveness of “The Leftovers.” It’s the first movie of a (since-abandoned) trilogy that didn’t know where it was going, and, in keeping with the spirit of its greater franchise, let its ultimate destination be determined by throwing a hundred options at the story and seeing which survived the fans’ reaction. The result is a visually astonishing mish-mash of ideas that range from the interesting (Michael Fassbender as a Peter O’Toole-inspired android with ulterior motives!) to the inane (everything that leads to the moment where Charlize Theron says “FATHER”), an uneven prequel that’s nonetheless wildly compelling. —DE
4. “Alien 3” (1992)
Forever destined to be the most controversial of the “Alien” films — a dubious distinction that it earned long before it even hit theaters — David Fincher’s directorial debut is a grimy, industrial, vision of hell that couldn’t more obviously be a product of the early 1990s if the entire thing were scored to the “Macarena.” Set on a penal colony planet and shot like a feature-length Nine Inch Nails video, “Alien 3” makes it palpably clear that Ripley will never be able to make it home in one piece. Her dream of simply getting back to Earth with a crazy story to tell… that’s not going to happen. Watching Ripley slowly realize that fact results in some of the franchise’s most gripping storytelling, regardless of which cut of this film you happen to watch. Sigourney Weaver has never been better.
And that’s a good thing, because the special effects have never been worse. The result of a (truly) visionary director making his first feature in the pre-“Jurassic Park” era of CGI, “Alien 3” is a hot mess of awkward digital animation, overambitious puppeteering, and the kind of sloppy composite work that Fincher would never tolerate again. Sill, the experience clearly proved formative for the young Fincher, who survived this studio nightmare and emerged from it with the kind of perseverance that would make Ripley proud. —DE
3. “Alien: Covenant” (2017)
It’s a shame that Ridley Scott will likely never finish off the prequel trilogy he had planned, because “Alien: Covenant” did a shockingly good job of pointing his “Prometheus” saga in the correct direction. Mixing and matching elements from practically every film in the franchise, the surprising summer blockbuster morphs from a lost-in-space meditation to a more intense action flick back around to a coda riffing on the perfect original movie, “Covenant” attempts to tell a creation myth inside the “Alien” universe; that it doesn’t totally fail is a testament to Scott’s vision and verve as a filmmaker. While some might find the Noah’s Ark symbolism and existential bent exhausting rather than thought-provoking, “Covenant” has the benefit of being built around a perfect dual performance that expands and doubles Michael Fassbender’s already wildly compelling “Prometheus” turn, splitting the cold, icy actor into two duplicates of android David as the opposite ends of a debate about the nature of life in our universe. With Fassbender commanding such a heavy portion of the movie’s real estate, the iconic Xenomorphs almost feel a little superfluous, but the movie deserves credit as the first film since the original 1986 “Aliens” to offer something that succeeds on its own terms. —WC
2. “Aliens” (1986)
No, “Aliens” is not a perfect movie. I know it feels like a perfect movie, and flows like a perfect movie, and that it manages to run for more than 150 minutes while still boasting the rewatchability of an incredible Vine, but none of that matters once you notice Paul Reiser’s blazer. Seriously, James Cameron created an entire planet for “Avatar,” and he couldn’t be bothered to imagine that — in the 150 years between 1986 and 21whatever — the only advance in the fashion world would be that corporate weasels are wearing jackets with stiffer collars? Embarrassing. A real genius like George Lucas would have gone back and digitally inserted some CG patterns or something by now. What a disgrace.
Anyway, that atrocity notwithstanding, “Aliens” is obviously one of the greatest action movies ever made. Brimming with a sense of scale that few other filmmakers are capable of generating, Cameron’s steroidal sequel brilliantly illustrated that this franchise was every bit as adaptable as the monster it put on the marquee. An iconic spectacle that supplants the haunted horror of the previous film with a sense of overwhelming danger, “Aliens” unfolds like a PTSD flashback of the nightmare that Ripley improbably survived the first time around. It’s swollen with ingenious set pieces, littered with iconic moments, and proof that Cameron is a more gifted director of actors than people tend to give him credit for — from Lance Henriksen and Michael Biehn to Jenette Goldstein and the incomparable Bill Paxton, everyone on screen instantly forges an unforgettable character. It’s as fun to watch them fire at Xenomorphs as it would be to grab a drink with them at LV-426’s finest bar. —DE
1. “Alien” (1979)
Studio movies today have way too much story (and that most definitely includes both “Prometheus” and “Alien: Covenant”). There are like four things that happen in “Alien” — it runs two full hours and it’s one of the best films of all time. Some blue-collar space workers detect a strange transmission from an unknown planetoid, and their ship’s A.I. decides to wake them from hyper-sleep to investigate, because the ship’s A.I is definitely on their side (after all, Mother knows best). The crew investigates, John Hurt gets a stomach ache, and a woman named Ripley is the only one who manages to find the cure. But oh, how Ridley Scott fills in the parts between the plot points, milking Dan O’Bannon’s immaculately sparse screenplay for every drop of sinister goodness.
As richly atmospheric as its medium allows, “Alien” is a slasher that’s absolutely drenched in mystery; every nook and cranny of the Nostromo is black enough to hide a Xenomorph, but the film is so effective because it makes you as curious about the darkness as you are cowered by it. The genius of “Alien” isn’t just that it introduced moviegoers to the perfect killing machine, but that — in doing so — it preyed upon our own vulnerabilities, both individually and as a species. —DE
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