Although all the Alien movies have their unique ups and downs, a look back on the series uncovers a few uncomfortable truths. Watching the Alien series in chronological order is an interesting experience. The franchise starts exceedingly strong with director Ridley Scott’s Alien, a space-set slasher that remains terrifying even 45 years later. James Cameron’s Aliens is equally iconic, but that sequel is where the uncomplicated praise ends. While the upcoming FX series Alien: Earth remains exciting, every subsequent movie in the series is defined by its problems as much as its moments of genius.
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1990’s Alien 3 is infamously dark and grim, but a few moments still manage to shine in director David Fincher’s hopeless vision. 1997’s Alien: Resurrection wasn't met with as much disdain as Alien 3 but, upon a re-watch, Ripley’s last adventure is her least tonally cohesive outing. 2004’s Alien Vs Predator is far from perfect, but it also isn’t as bad as many reviews suggested. Aliens Vs Predators: Requiem is unambiguously terrible, while 2012’s Prometheus is both interestingly ambitious and annoyingly overstuffed. Meanwhile, Alien: Covenant and Alien: Romulus bring their own highs and lows to the table.
10 The Alien Franchise Never Got Scarier Than Ridley Scott’s Original Movie
1979’s Alien Is Still The Franchise’s Most Tense and Suspenseful Movie
1979’s Alien is a masterclass in suspense filmmaking, so much so that it is hard to recall just how subtle the original movie is. It might seem absurd to call a movie famous for its “Chestburster" sequence “Subtle,” but the first half of Alien’s deliberately paced two-hour runtime is devoted to nothing but buildup. Scott’s patience results in a movie that is truly scary, something the series never managed in its later outings. There are plenty of jumps and gruesome moments later on but, for all Alien 3's hopelessness, it is Alien alone that truly gets under the viewer's skin.
Alien is the scariest movie in the franchise and even Alien: Romulus’s horrific deaths couldn’t change this. Much of the horror comes from the main characters, a group of ordinary working-class stiffs who have no way of defeating the monstrous evil they are up against. However, credit must also go to HR Giger's endlessly influential design work. The world of Alien looks like a nightmare to live inside, and Ripley’s ordeal feels pitilessly real in comparison to her later, more far fetched adventures. Thus, although the sequels brought a lot of their own qualities, none of them ever outdid Alien's fear factor.
9 The Alien Series Never Needed To Explain The Xenomorph
The Xenomorph’s Original Appearance Proves Mystery Made It Scarier
A huge part of what made the eponymous alien so scary in the original movie was its unexplained presence. The Xenomorph was at its scariest when viewers knew almost nothing about it, but the franchise forgot this fact somewhere along the way while writing endless sequels and prequels. Prometheus’ Xenomorph origin story was the worst offender here, and Alien: Earth show runner Noah Hawley was right to tell KCRW's The Business podcast that he wasn’t interested in the Xenomorph's backstory as a bioweapon invented “Half an hour ago.” However, another, more unambiguously beloved movie made this mistake much earlier than Scott’s divisive prequel.
8 Aliens’ Best Monster Reveal Complicated The Franchise’s Villain
The Alien Mother Started A Cycle Of Over-Explanation
There is no denying the fact that Aliens’ Alien Queen is as effective a creature design as the original Xenomorph and an ingenious way to up the ante after the original movie. Once director James Cameron multiplied the number of Xenomorphs that were attacking Ripley this time around and gave her some serious firepower to defend herself, the sequel always needed a bigger, more substantial villain. The Alien Queen works in this regard. However, she also brings up a lot of questions about how the Xenomorph life cycle works, and it is subsequent attempts to answer these that drag the series down.
7 James Cameron’s Aliens Threw The Alien Franchise (And It Never Recovered)
Cameron’s Injection Of Action Ruled But Also Redefined The Franchise’s Tone
While Cameron's Aliens works as a standalone movie, the Alien Queen’s covoluted impact on the series proves that its influence hasn't been entirely positive. The same can be said for Cameron's addition of action into the mix. Aliens’ action-forward tone is a clever departure from the claustrophobic pure horror of Alien, turning a survival horror story into something more bombastic. However, the sequels never knew what to do with this change. Revert to Alien’s quiet, lone-location horror, and you end up with a humorless affair like Alien 3, but lean into the wilder aspects of Aliens and you risk defanging the monster's threat.
6 Alien 3’s Biggest Problem Was Ripley
Alien 3 Might Have Worked Without Its Famous Heroine
The tortured production of Alien 3 has been well documented, but the sequel’s biggest problem was one that all of its many drafts shared. The grim, self-contained story of the prison ship's inhabitants struggling and ultimately failing to defeat the Xenomorph might have worked if it wasn't a direct followup to the fun, thrilling adventures of Aliens. If Alien 3 didn’t star Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley, it might have been a solid space-set horror movie, and the decision to utilize only one Xenomorph as the villain might have functioned fine. However, this wasn’t the route the filmmakers took, and the rest is history.
5 Alien Vs Predator’s PG-13 Rating Was A Mistake
Alien Vs Predator Was Too Sanitized To Satisfy
1997’s Alien: Resurrection had some fun high points, but was too messy and unfocused to leave an overall positive impression. However, its reputation was bolstered when the next movie in the series earned the worst reviews of the franchise so far. 2004’s Alien Vs Predator was endlessly anticipated, and the cinematic showdown between two of the titans of sci-if horror seemed like a match made in heaven. However, the inexplicable decision to make Alien Vs Predator a PG-13 movie killed the spinoff before it had a chance to succeed. Both franchises were always R-rated, making this a truly inexplicable failure.
Alien Vs Predator was a failure primarily because its family-friendly rating abandoned the style of both franchises.
What made this so frustrating was the fact that Alien Vs Predator isn’t the worstPredator sequel and the movie might have had potential with a gorier, less sanitized story. Director Paul WS Anderson brings style to the movie’s latter half, the Antarctic setting is suitably remote and creepy, and the battles between the two titular monsters work fine when they finally happen. Unfortunately, plodding pacing, combined with a complete lack of scares, shocks, or memorable deaths, makes Alien Vs Predator a failure primarily because its family-friendly rating abandoned the style of both franchises.
4 Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem Was The Worst Movie In The Series
The Alien Vs Predator Sequel Got Almost Nothing Right
Since Alien Vs Predator’s PG-13 rating did so much damage, it would seem like Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem’s far gorier story would automatically be an improvement. However, this 2007 sequel is the worst movie in the Alien franchise by far thanks to its predictable plot, mean-spirited writing, inexplicably dark lighting, and lack of imagination. Setting Xenomorphs free in a small town sounds like a recipe for terror, but Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem fails to find any memorable moments in this story despite having two of the genre’s greatest monsters at its disposal.
3 It Really Is Too Late For Alien Vs Predator 3
Alien Vs Predator Just Isn’t An Exciting Title Anymore
Thanks to the failure of Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem, it is hard to imagine a world where Aliens Vs Predator 3 would be an exciting idea. Both 2022’s Predator prequel Prey and 2024’s Alien: Romulus managed to reboot their respective franchises with self-contained standalone stories that were well received, but this still wasn’t enough to erase the problems of both Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem and its 2004 predecessor from the collective cultural memory. Now, it is too late for Aliens Vs Predator 3 thanks to these earlier failures, and no sequel plans can change this.
2 Prometheus’s Lore Dragged Down A Solid Alien Prequel
Ridley Scott’s 2012 Movie Tried To Do Too Much
Prometheus promised to finally make sense of the Alien series, but ironically, the movie’s attempts to untangle the franchise’s knotty canon were its least interesting moments. If Prometheus were not part of the Alien franchise, it could have been fun to see the ever-ambitious Ridley Scott tackle big questions about life, creation, and humanity via a space-set story. However, Prometheus was never quite certain whether it wanted to be a thoughtful, philosophical sci-fi like Ad Astra or Interstellar, or a gory, gruesome genre piece. As a result, the finished film never quite satisfies in either mode.
1 Alien: Romulus’s Limited Ambition Was A Good Thing
Fede Alvarez’s Standalone Horror Was Dragged Down By Franchise Links
After Prometheus got too ambitious for its own good, Alien: Romulus was a return to form for the series. However, this latest outing also exposed a fatal flaw in the franchise formula. Alien: Romulus was at its weakest when the movie tried to revisit earlier outings, quoting Aliens in one cringeworthy scene and bringing back the late Ian Holm’s Ash for another lengthy sequence. This smacked of desperate fan service and felt, much like Prometheus’s unnecessary lore, like an attempt to make sense of the franchise’s overarching story when an alien-centric horror story never needed this sort of plotting in the first place.
Alien: Romulus is currently available to stream on Prime Video, AppleTV, and Fandango at Home.
The original movie hints at some disturbing goings-on in Weyland-Yutani and Aliens ably built on this by revealing the corporation’s shady side in more detail. However, projects like Alien: Romulus and Prometheus fall when they get too reverential and treat the original movies like the franchise’s Rosetta Stone. Alien: Romulus is at its most enjoyable when the movie worries less about its place in the series and more about entertaining the audience, centering effective set-pieces over endless Easter eggs and unecessary links. Going forward, the Alien movies need to forget their past if they are to have a more watchable future.
Source: KCRW's The Business
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Alien (1979)
R
Sci-Fi
Horror
- Director
- Ridley Scott
- Release Date
- June 22, 1979
- Writers
- Dan O'Bannon , Ronald Shusett
- Cast
- Sigourney Weaver , Tom Skerritt , John Hurt , Veronica Cartwright , Harry Dean Stanton , Ian Holm , Yaphet Kotto , Bolaji Badejo
- Runtime
- 117 Minutes