Ranking the Alien Franchise, from Classic to Calamity
Sunday, August 25, 2024 at 8:00PM 
They call it a perfect organism. The beast brings forth destruction like nothing else in the universe, designed for maximum lethality and single-minded bloodlust. It slays and reproduces, only ever caring about the perpetuity of its kind over other living creatures. There are many ways for it to come into the world, whether through a mysterious black liquid or intelligent spores, an infection, or insemination by a violating face hugger. It is the product of mutation, ravaging existing beings as incubators or raw material for a further step in monstrous evolution. So, is it perfect or just good at killing and hard to kill? Is it perfect or an abomination? Am I talking about the xenomorph or the franchise that birthed it?
Through transforming genres and crossbreeding with other movie legacies, through artistic inspiration and corporative rot, through thick and thin, masterpieces and mediocrities, the Alien movies have persisted across decades. With its ninth installment now in theatres, it's a good time to take a look back at the saga and rank its nine films...
09. ALIENS VS PREDATOR: REQUIEM (2007) Colin Strause & Greg Strause
Disposable characters, more meatbag than person, are nothing new in the horror genre, especially since the rise of the slasher. Even so, there's something particularly heinous about what passes for an ensemble in Aliens vs Predator: Requiem. The small town under attack by a predator-xenomorph hybrid and its brood is nothing short of anonymous, full of people you can't identify or even pretend to care about when it's time for them to perish. It makes the movie's ruthlessness lack bite. Yet, the time spent with the humans is at least visually legible. In other words, you can see what's happening on screen.
Can't say the same for the beastly passages, whereupon Daniel Pearl's gloomy cinematography turns the frame to mush. That said, it's not all his fault. Indeed, the lighting scheme is often a saving grace in the sloppily staged, frightless fright fest. If only someone hadn't turned the exposition down in post. On social media, the Strause brothers have said that their movie wasn't supposed to look so dark, that it's a color grading mistake. Whatever the case, AVP: Requiem is as much an audiovisual catastrophe as a narrative one.
Aliens vs Predator: Requiem is streaming on Hulu, Fubo, Starz, and FX Now. You can also rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, and the Microsoft Store.
08. ALIEN: ROMULUS (2024) Fede Álvarez
Whatever one might say about the previous Alien movies, they all had a sense of self-possession, an identity. For better and for worse, even the Predator crossovers felt unique in their conception. They felt made by human folly, rabid fandom, rather than some mercenary direction from an impersonal committee. Alien: Romulus is a deviation in that regard, cynical in its regurgitation of nostalgia for nostalgia's sake, with a bit of digital grave-robbing thrown in for good measure. Risks are nowhere to be found, and it only ever works in a purely mechanical fashion that's closer to video game mechanics than big-screen storytelling.
All the production value Disney money can buy, and all the polish in the world aren't enough to salvage the thing. Watching it is an experience in registering wasted potential. Every good aspect needs an asterisk next to it, from David Jonsson giving it his all in a magical negro role to Naaman Marshall's production design, caught in the shackles of callback fever. The effects are the worst victims, because there's much to love in the practical stuff, not to mention a dazzling space landscape. Yet, it's all for naught when Ian Holm's visage crawls into the light, looking as AI-generated as the script, untethered to the body double's skull.
Alien: Romulus is currently in theaters worldwide.
07. AVP: ALIEN VS. PREDATOR (2004) Paul W.S. Anderson
Sure, it's stupid to the point that saying the story is dumb as rocks would be an insult to rocks. Sure, it weirdly manages to look underlit and overlit at the same time. Sure, the most exciting part of the whole thing is witnessing how Sanaa Lathan finds sexual chemistry with a Predator against all odds, conventions, and good taste. Yet, AVP: Alien vs. Predator is fun enough once it gets going and the frozen scenery gives way to gloopy practical creatures, all shiny wet surfaces, jagged crystal fangs, convulsing egg sacks…and did I mention the goo. Such glorious goo!
Anderson's work has received its fair share of criticism over the years, but time has been kind to it. For all the mistakes committed in the first Alien vs. Predator crossover, the sequel was so bad it forced a reappreciation of its predecessor. Moreover, with Alien: Romulus' safeness, the 2004 movie's wilder swings become admirable whether they work or not. Honestly, some of the biggest failures in sight at least have a patina of B-movie shamelessness to redeem them. Not the weird othering of Mesoamerican cultures, though. That's as desultory now as it was when the movie came out.
AVP: Alien vs. Predator is streaming on Hulu, Fubo, and Starz. You can also rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, the Microsoft Store, and Spectrum On Demand.
06. ALIEN: COVENANT (2017) Ridley Scott
Talk about big swings that look better in retrospect than in their first moment in the sun. Alien: Covenant is a singularly cruel movie in the Alien canon, angry to an incoherent degree. Considering the franchise was built on the fertile ground of early slashers, all piling bodies and erogenous carnage, that's saying something alright. But it can't be denied when one's confronting Covenant's blackened heart, so relentless that the underdevelopment of its cannon fodder can almost be seen as another spiteful attack from the filmmakers on their own creation.
The palpable malice has made my rancor toward the film cool down into something close to respect. I still don't love it, but there's much to love in its separate parts. Consider Michael Fassbender living his best Island of Dr. Moreau fantasy when he's not sexually harassing himself in a fantastic bit of android fuckery. Consider Dariusz Wolski at the top of his game, finally finding a way to marry his taste for somber monumentality with the unnatural crispness of his digital photography. Consider one sequence dripping with human weakness, a med bay nightmare that's all the more visceral because it feels grounded in the realities of panic, bad decisions and all.
Alien: Covenant is streaming on Hulu, Fubo, and FX Now. You can also rent it on Apple TV, Amazon, and the Microsoft Store.
05. ALIEN RESURRECTION (1997) Jean-Pierre Jeunet
When considering the Alien sequels, one often finds themselves playing a game of push and pull. The third and fourth movies, especially, are so messy in conception and execution that it's hard to ignore their faults even as you try to focus on the good within. Appreciation pulls you one way, while skepticism exerts its own force in the contrary direction. Jean-Pierre Jeunet's stab at American sci-fi is emblematic of this, containing two of the best scenes in the entire franchise – Ripley finding the failed clones room and her final confrontation with the newborn human-xeno hybrid.
Only, to get there, the viewer must put up with Joss Whedeon's rotten dialogue, forced failed humor from end to end, and the impact of an auteur whose formal idiosyncrasies are an uncomfortable fit for the material. Then, there's the matter of the different cuts – another constant consideration when evaluating the four first movies – and how tonally distinct they can be, up to a finale identical in text but not in emotion. At the end of the day, though, Alien Resurrection has something none of the other movies possess in its favor.
It's Sigourney Weaver's turn as the amalgamation of Ripley's DNA with the xenomorph queen she once gestated. After pushing for the character's death in the previous chapter, the actress approaches her new role as a distinct entity whose humanity has given way to a predator's behavioral patterns. Throughout Resurrection, Weaver negotiates the quandaries of semi-personhood with the monstrous aspect of this new being, never afraid to alienate the audience. Her physicality is a miracle by itself and, in an ideal world, would have been enough to secure the saga a second Best Actress nod.
Alien Resurrection is streaming on Hulu, Fubo, Starz, and FX Now. You can also rent it on Apple TV, Amazon, the Microsoft Store, and Spectrum On Demand.
04. ALIEN³ (1992) David Fincher
Out of every Alien movie, the third installment is where the difference between cuts is most evident and drastic. The Assembly version, edited without Fincher's final say, is much superior to the theatrical cut, winning out in terms of pacing and spatial cohesion, storytelling concepts, and performance beat, too. Charles S. Dutton gets a notable boost in the extended cut, getting to flesh out his religious inmate into one of the franchise's most intriguing supporting players. I'd go so far as to say he outperforms Weaver in her third round with Ellen Ripley.
Nevertheless, the scars of a troubled production are all over the finished film. The nature of the planet where Ripley gets stranded is the most obvious victim of that hullaballoo. In some versions of the script, it was supposed to be a monastery rather than a planet-sized prison, insinuating religion into the franchise long before Prometheus made it a major theme. The monk-like robes remain in the movie, as does much of the imagery, but now it makes little to no sense, more a distraction than anything. David Fincher's feature debut remains a misshapen thing, even in its ideal version.
Alien³ is streaming on Hulu, Fubo, and Starz. You can also rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, and the Microsoft Store.
03. PROMETHEUS (2012) Ridley Scott
Some franchise flicks would be better off if they could be considered independently from the series that encase and contextualize them. Prometheus is a prime example. Ridley Scott's return to the Alien universe after three decades found him musing on aspects of genesis that had long haunted his career, problematizing faith through a story where humans go in search of God, whatever that may be. Folded into it, there's another tale, that of Man's creation revolting against its creators, rising above human imperfection toward an ideal that holds power above all else.
Leading the charge of that latter storyline, Michael Fassbender delivers one of his best performances as David, the artificial man obsessed with Lawrence of Arabia and the wonders of biological experimentation. Many other aspects are at his level. The quality of effects, the body horror and production design are top-tier, reviving Giger's wild imaginings for a new era, while the score is curiously lush. It promises a great adventure, something more optimistic than what the characters find. That disconnect could break the film, yet it does the opposite, bolstering the tragedy.
Ultimately, Prometheus' biggest sin is inextricable from the project's basic premise. It's also why it works better when divorced from the wider Alien mythos. Simply put, Scott's original film is a lean, mean, machine energized by the mysteries within. To demystify, to explain, to solve the puzzle of where the xenomorphs come from or what is the space jockey is to rob the movies of a brilliant horror that was all the more insidious for how unresolved it remained. Oh well, from all the franchise entries that have no reason to exist, at least this one excels in a vacuum.
Prometheus is streaming on Hulu, Fubo, and FX Now. You can also rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, and the Microsoft Store.
02. ALIENS (1986) James Cameron
The first Alien is a piano wire wrapped around your throat, slowly contracting until it's embedded in the flesh, dripping libations of blood, ready to cut bone. In contrast, James Cameron's Aliens is more akin to a tank, a cannon, or some type of mighty machine with enough firepower to flatten a city. The first act of the movie is setting up the weapon with unusually elegant exposition and the delineation of new emotional through lines for this next step in Ellen Ripley's evolution. After that, it's one perfect shot after another, literally and metaphorically.
It just doesn't quit, a faultless action movie that never feels like a retread of the original sci-fi horror. In part, this comes as a consequence of the genre switcharoo, but there's more to it. Cameron's direction should be taught in film school, the tonal flexibility of the editing deserves standing applause, the queen design earns fanboy fervor, and, of course, Sigourney Weaver is beyond brilliant, illuminating a mother's grief while never abandoning the specificities of a popcorn monster movie. That 1986 Best Actress Academy Award belonged to her.
Aliens is streaming on Hulu and Max. You can also rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, the Microsoft Store, and Spectrum On Demand.
01. ALIEN (1979) Ridley Scott
In simplicity, one may find the sublime. There need not be explanations or deep lore, no puzzles to be solved, and not even character backstories to discover. Alien shows the path to transcendence can manifest as a straight line, direct, viciously so. Sights and sounds are the focus, as are the frights they summon for the spectator. Through the combined geniuses of Scott, Giger, and many others, the screen may become a portal into hell. And that inferno isn't burning in flame. Instead, it's damp and sharp, slithering under the skin and into an open throat, violating the psyche with sexual anxieties and iterations of rape that go beyond our biological reality.
To paraphrase the movie, this is the perfect cinematic organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility as a piece of horror. And for once, I'm not using those words to question the xenomorph's in-universe superiority or loom the shadow of doubt over the franchise's health. The 1979 classic really is as close to perfect as movies get, sporting an economical construction that leaves its audiovisual symphony with no note out of place—even the shabby ensemble dynamics of its first third register with clockwork precision. Also, you must admit that, as far as original movie monsters go, H.R. Giger's baby boy is pretty unbeatable – in terms of design, if nothing else.
Also also, don't watch the extended cut of this one. That sublime simplicity is lost.
Alien is streaming on Hulu, Fubo, and FX Now. You can also rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, and the Microsoft Store.
What about you, dear reader? How would you rank the Alien movies?
Reader Comments (9)
Great write-up. I especially appreciated acknowledging what Weaver is doing in Resurrection. It is a singular performance that she completely commits to. One of the things I love about her, and about what she brings to Ripley (and Ripley 8) is a fearlessness to make her unlikable. All this time I thought I was the only person who would have nominated her!
In '97 my ballot has her double nominated (again!) for AR and The Ice Storm (to steal from Groucho, "the biggest robbery since Brinks!").
I actually have a '97 Fox Alien Resurrection FYC "in all categories" ad framed in my home!
count me in as another huge fan of Weaver's performance in Alien Resurrection. She just slayed in these movies. So committed each and every time.
I haven't seen the Predator movies but my ranking goes like so
Aliens (86)
Alien (79)
Prometheus (12)
Alien3 (92)
Alien Resurrection (97)
Alien Romulus (24)
Alien Covenant (17)
For me so far...
1. Aliens
2. Alien
3. Alien Resurrection
4. Prometheus
5. Alien 3
6. Alien vs. Predator
Yes, Sigourney Weaver should've won Best Actress instead of Marlee Matlin. That performance is.... perfection.
I'd rank them like this
1 Alien - stone cold classic horror an unbeatable debut by Weaver,this was her first real role.
2 Aliens one of the best if not the best sequel ever,should have won Best Actress
3 Alien Romulus inc everything I love about the franchise,a,return to form,CGI Ash is poor.
4 Alien 3 somewhere out there is a better version but the assembly cut will suffice.
5 Alien Covenant entertaining when it sticks to horror and not the tedious David stuff
6 Alien Resurrection leans to hard into comedy but Weaver fab and that clones scene in stellar
7 Prometheus fine but too lofty ambitions robs the film of mystique,big no to Fassbender.
8 Alien Vs Predator entertaining especially the finale but poor characters .
9 Alien Vs Predator requiem Turn the bloody lights on.
You know what's interesting about ranking these movies? Pretty much any list (I'm sure there are exceptions out there) will have Alien and Aliens as #1 and #2, but what's interesting is to see who puts Alien at the top and who puts Aliens at the top. Both films are considered to be near-flawless versions of what each of them are, so it really just depends which one is doing what most appeals to you... personally, I put the James Cameron film on top, simply because I gravitate more toward the action genre than the horror genre, and also because of how fully fleshed out Ripley feels by that film... I do not deny, however, that the original Ridley Scott film is a masterpiece of the horror genre, I just prefer what the second film is doing.
I'm not sure I can rank the rest because I've only seen the three most recent entries (Prometheus, Covenant and Romulus) and only once each when they were each in theaters, so I would need to give Prometheus another watch (I did think it was quite interesting, but I don't remember much about it). I thought Romulus was a pretty well done version of the formula, but I think that may be the problem: it's a formula by now, so it no longer feels exciting.
Great post as usual, Claudio. I need to stop saying that. I look forward to all of your posts.
Richter Scale: totally agree with you about the rankings of the first two. I prefer the first one because the military aspects of the second put me off a bit, especially on recent rewatch. Still, both are stone-cold classics.
The only films in the franchise I despise are "Requiem" and "Prometheus." It's a monster film series, not some pretentious philosophical college thesis paper.
Richter -- very well put. I think that's it exactly as to why people rank ALIENS or ALIEN at the top but always those two. For me, though, it's not just because I gravitate to action more than to horror but that I also am so into actressing and Sigourney has so much more to do in the second film. ALIEN deserves kudos for establishing such a sturdy franchise but to me ALIENS is the perfect second film in that it builds on everything before it but is so much deeper and brings its own personality. In some ways I wish the original quadrilogy was never interrupted and the series would have just continued being emerging directors each getting one film to show off their stuff. For four films straight is was in a way more autuerial than formula.
1. Alien
2. Aliens
3. Resurrection
4. Romulus
5. Prometheus
6. Covenant
7. Alien vs. Predator
8. Alien 3
9. Alien vs. Predator: Requiem
I know I'm in the minority, but I love Resurrection. It's so weird, trashy, entertaining, the effects are great. It probably helps that I watched it as a kid and left a big impression on me.
Haven’t seen all the films yet
5-Covenant- this movie made me actively angry. No scientist even in a sci-fi film is this stupid. I feel like this movie only exists for Michael Fassbender to show off – he literally makes out with himself.
4- AVP- It’s stupid and campy, but it knows this and leans into it.
3-Prometheus- I appreciate Scott expanding the lore and exploring different themes with the series. Also Noomi Rapace is awesome.
2- Alien – the ultimate claustrophobic horror film
1- Aliens – everything is bigger and bolder and somehow it all comes together.
while I haven’t seen Requiem, star Reiko Aylesworth has mentioned this was solely a paycheck movie. Also I find it kind of weird that outside of AVP every film not starring Weaver has an actress made to resemble her, like they are trying to recapture the lightning in the bottle that was Ripley.