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With everything the Alien franchise is—and everything it can be-ranking the movies becomes something of a challenging exercise. What do we want out of an Alien movie? Is it just efficient playing of the hits, with Facehuggers hugging faces and Chestbursters bursting? Or do we want these films to speak to something greater, something that might go beyond the aliens themselves and threaten to make them irrelevant in their own franchise? There’s not really a wrong or right answer, which speaks to the power of the series. Nevertheless, we’ve tried to look past personal preference and view the franchise as holistically as possible for our attempt to put them all in order, from worst to best. In space, no one can hear you scream, but hopefully down on Earth, you can read this ranking.
7: Alien: Resurrection (1997)
One of the reasons why Alien is so enduring is how timeless the franchise feels. The original film was made in the ‘70s and is set in the far future, and yet the Nostromo’s leaks and janky chains, not to mention the bizarre pseudo-mechanical design of the Xenomorph, make the film feel old and new at once. Resurrection, the fourth installment in the series, does not feel timeless. It feels like it was made in 1997 and written by Joss Whedon - because it was. Set two centuries after the previous installment, Resurrection has a quippy group of mercenaries teaming up with a clone of Ellen Ripley when things go south at a secret military Xenomorph research station and they have to fight their way out. Although there’s plenty of violence and an earnestly upsetting human-alien hybrid, Resurrection can’t help but feel like any number of generic, gnarly millennium-era sci-fi efforts. Sigourney Weaver returns as the clone, and while she gives the role her all, she lacks the soul of the Ripley audiences got to know in the past three movies, leaving Resurrection feeling like a cheap copy, too.
6: Alien3 (1992)
David Fincher has disowned Alien3, his directorial debut, citing studio interference and behind-the-scenes troubles that resulted in a vision that was not his own. He’s perhaps being too hard on himself, as there’s still a lot to appreciate in the movie, which places Ripley, the ultimate action movie heroine, in one of the most horribly macho environments imaginable: a futuristic space prison colony. Ripley, rudely deprived of the happy ending she seemed headed towards at the end of Aliens, has entered yet another level of extra-terrestrial hell. She rises to the occasion, as do Sigourney Weaver and Fincher with his already keen sense of direction, but Alien3‘s issues can be traced back to where it sits in the franchise's history. It’s the entry in a franchise tasked with following up a perfect horror movie and a perfect action movie. It’s no wonder it struggled to live up to its predecessors when trying to establish its own identity.
5: Alien: Romulus (2024)
Its big set pieces would be more interesting if they weren’t essentially a revamp of the game, Alien: Isolation. Its visuals and narrative directions would be more exciting and scary if they weren’t essentially revamps of all the other movies boiled down into a mixed goop. I like when Alien: Romulus delves into Rain and Andy’s complicated dynamic and when it has moments of Álvarez-style bloody cruelty. Cailee Spaeny is as reliably good as ever and I agree with others, David Jonsson absolutely steals the show. They’re individually and together the highlight here for sure. I don’t like how Alien: Romulus pulls up at the last second, preventing itself from landing in a spot of pure bleak doom like it could have. Its attempt at hopefulness feels mostly unearned and a bit eye-rolling when the journey to get there includes, among plenty of other problems, an uncanny and incredibly unappealing deepfake. Even if it’s an attempt at meta-commentary on the ghoulish nature of greed, it. does. not. work. I’d like to think I’ll look at the film more kindly after the sharp sting of disappointment fades. This was one of my most anticipated of the year after all. But truthfully, I’m not sure that’s possible when the new things that the film has to say are so very, very few and far between. There’s not much here to chew on that hasn’t already been chewed on in previous franchise installments. And really, who wants to stand around with pre-chewed mush in their mouths?
4: Alien: Covenant (2017)
Prometheus has enjoyed a pretty widespread reappraisal since its release, but back when it was initially released, the film was viewed as something of a misfire, especially from fans who wanted, well, aliens in their Alien movie. You can feel that tension in Alien: Covenant, which name-drops the traditionally titular aliens again following Prometheus’ omission. In terms of sheer terror, Covenant might be where the franchise peaks. The Xenomorph’s attacks are violent, extremely gory, and disorientingly hectic. Yet there’s a central tension in the film that Covenant can’t quite overcome. Sure the Xenomorph attacks are thrilling, but the movie has so much exposition that the nature of the horror is different. On some level, a thing that goes bump in the night is scarier than an elaborate origin story for what the thing is. Michael Fassbander is easily the best part of this movie, returning as David from the previous entry while also portraying a new android named Walter simultaneously. Though it becomes clear that Ridley Scott is more interested in robots than he is in aliens. The individual parts of Covenant are all good—some are even great. It's just torn between being an Alien movie and a Prometheus sequel in a way that disservices both. Still, would love nothing more to see him get to complete his prequel trilogy.
3: Prometheus (2012)
Ridley Scott’s return to the Alien franchise was a big deal, especially since it would be with a prequel to his own masterpiece. Prometheus focuses on the mysterious Engineers race that since the first film has been closely associated with the monsters. As we follow a scientific expedition, the film quickly gets marooned in a kind of pseudo-mysticism that’s somehow pompous and silly at the same time. Still, Michael Fassbender’s suavely threatening performance as this installment’s android and a new gross-out vision of pregnancy — a franchise perennial — make Prometheus worth a look.
2: Aliens (1986)
One of the greatest sequels ever made in any franchise or genre, Cameron’s film absorbs the visual language and mythology of Ridley Scott’s original and reimagines it not as the same sort of pure horror but a character-driven action movie. Weaver deservedly earned an academy award best actress nomination for playing Ripley, who becomes a badass heroine precisely by embracing her maternal instincts (and femininity) in a way the first film studiously avoided. Not only does it burnish Cameron’s delightfully pathological focus on strong female roles, but the film recognizes the multidimensionality of all of its characters, from Bishop (Lance Henriksen) — repairing the reputation of synthetic humans after Ash’s villainy in Alien — down to the seemingly most simplistically-minded Marine. Though not as scary as Scott’s film, each of its set pieces are more thrilling than the last, especially when accompanied by James Horner’s iconic score Smart, inventive and perfectly paced, Aliens is just as much a masterpiece as Alien, only a different kind.
1: Alien (1979)
How many horror films, or sci-fi, qualify as exquisite? It’s a word that defines Ridley Scott’s Alien and a few others. Every image is painterly, whether Scott’s photographing the ornate mechanical interiors of the spaceship Nostromo or chronicling the gory, blood-spattered end of a member of the crew. Artist H.R. Giger’s designs of futuristic technology, not to mention the xenomorph itself, not only delivered a nightmarish, biomechanical foundation from which the entire franchise (and dozens of others) has taken inspiration, but re-envisioned a typically lurid genre — horror — as a limitless platform for suspenseful, psychological, even artistic exploration (though let’s not kick a hornet’s nest by calling it “elevated”). Opposite all of that meticulous production design, the film’s thirtysomething cast, led by Weaver with a convincing balance of doubtfulness and grit, gives its dangers a scrappy, blue-collar relatability that makes audiences actually care who’s being killed. And then there’s Scott, presiding over it all with virtuoso precision and thoughtfulness, creating an experience that terrifies and astonishes in equal measure.
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By Danny Manna @Cinemanna24
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