# Ranking the Alien films



## Morrus (May 22, 2017)

Well, more like picking your favourite. Explain why below!


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## ccs (May 22, 2017)

Really it's a tie between Alien & Aliens for me.  Ones a horror movie, the other an Action movie. 
But I could only pick one, so I chose the Action.

After that?  IMO it's just a series of increasingly bad sequels.  With the Predator ones being the worst.

*I haven't seen Covenant yet.  But given that it follows Promethius, & I liked that less than 3 & Ressurection, I'm not expecting much.  Though I doubt it'll be worse than the ones with the Predators....


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## Ryujin (May 23, 2017)

Aliens is #1 for me. No question. I like military SF, both written and on screen. I'm not so big on SF horror, but Alien is my #2. The rest that I've seen (which means not Covenant) I can take or leave except for Prometheus, which I can just leave.


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## Morrus (May 23, 2017)

It was Aliens for me, too. And that film is so quotable.

I have a couple of friends who can name every one of the marines (that's a harder job than naming the 7 Dwarfs).

Alien is #2. Then Covenant. I struggle to watch any of the others though.


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## Ketherian (May 23, 2017)

It's a really tough call for me. Alien was definitive - changing monster and suspense movies forever. The writing, the scene selection - it's all really good. Aliens had such amazing tech. And such lines that hinted at a huge universe! Then again there was AvP which was one of the best b-flicks I've ever seen. 

Aliens 3 and Resurrection are forgettable. 3 never quite managed to recapture what (I think) was an attempt at the suspense and terror of the first film; although the dog alien was really cool. I have no idea what they were going for with Resurrection, but ti did not impress.

Promethius was weird. I know it's supposed to be part of the Alien series, but to me it's just a very strange sf movie. I like it but I don't understand it. It certainly had me jumping and quite freaked out at what happens to one of the characters. But it's ponderously slow. The tech is beyond amazing; and it's part of every scene, and every character's plot. Good SF. Odd writing.

Covenant I've not seen.

AvP Requiem was a gore fest of a movie. It lacked the suspense of the first Alien movie, the skill of the first Predator movie, and the fun of the first AvP. It failed as a sequel.


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## Morrus (May 23, 2017)

Ketherian said:


> AvP Requiem was a gore fest of a movie. It lacked the suspense of the first Alien movie, the skill of the first Predator movie, and the fun of the first AvP. It failed as a sequel.




It was just your standard slasher horror flick, with an Alien and a Predator inserted.


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## Ryujin (May 23, 2017)

From the trailers, Covenant seems to be a spiritual child of the first movie. It looks like it has much the same beats as the original. Hopefully it stays in theatres for a while, because I otherwise won't have a chance to see it.


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## was (May 23, 2017)

..The only one that I haven't seen is Covenant.  From the rest of them, I'd put the original on top.


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## Legatus Legionis (May 23, 2017)

.


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## Robyo (May 23, 2017)

Aliens #1

Original Alien #2

Alien Covenant #3

I think I liked Covenant better over all than the original, but the original was much more, uh "original."


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## Jester David (May 23, 2017)

I like _Aliens_. But the first is such a great movie. A nice slow burn. A tight cast that you get to know before things get horrible. If you walk into it blind, there's some great twists and you really don't know who the "hero" is. There's some great moments of tension and horror and a lot of world building done with very little. It's a nice, tight movie that really stands on its own.


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## jonesy (May 23, 2017)

Aliens is one of my all time favourites. I've seen it more times than all the other movies in the franchise put together. It's just fun.

And that is why I still think that Alien is the better movie. It's such a perfect build up of suspense.

The sequel, while fun, is just a regular action movie. There's a ton of those. Maybe not as well made as Aliens, but still a lot.

But Alien? there are very few movies that do horror that well. So the first one's the winner.


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## Jhaelen (May 23, 2017)

For me it's clearly Alien - the movie that started it all. It's also one of only two movies I've watched countless times (the other being Bladerunner). It was revolutionary in so many ways!
Aliens, while being a good action movie, didn't do as much for me. 
And as for all the others: a resounding meh!


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## billd91 (May 24, 2017)

For me, it's also clearly *Alien*. Freaky and suspenseful as hell. 
*Aliens* comes second and makes for a good follow-up to the first. 

Everything else trails behind with probably *Prometheus* and *Alien: Covenant* coming in the middle for some interesting ideas and characters.


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## UselessTriviaMan (May 24, 2017)

Yep, add mine to the pile of votes for the original *Alien* movie. It is still ranked as the #2 greatest horror movie of all time (right behind _*Jaws*_), even after all these years.

*Aliens* is a very close second. It set a high bar for sequels, and for action movies in general, and it's just so full of awesome quotable lines.

Covenant is, for me, in third place. But it's a very distant third, and everything else in the series is really not worth rating.


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## RangerWickett (May 24, 2017)

Aliens is, in my mind, the best movie, with an actual character arc. 

Then Alien, for the style and horror and characters. 

Then Resurrection, which while the directing isn't great, it's fun and again has great characters. 

Then Alien3, assembly cut.

Then Covenant, which never really differentiated the characters except for main lady, cowboy hat, and religious guy. It had good action, but was weak around that. 

Then Prometheus, for dumb people.


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## Ryujin (May 24, 2017)

Prometheus could have been a much better movie. Parts which explained characters' actions were slaughtered wholesale. I'd call it a failure of direction and editing.

Where they went wrong:
https://filmschoolrejects.com/the-8...de-sense-in-the-original-script-a52def9655d4/

What should be the 'original' script:
https://archive.org/stream/pdfy-9NMTSgzvy2U3U-oz/Alien-Engineers-ORIGINAL-PROMETHEUS-SCRIPT_djvu.txt


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## MarkB (May 24, 2017)

Heh - Alien and Aliens neck-and-neck currently, with the others not spared even a single vote between them. That's fair.

Alien3 lost me at the start when it undid the victory Ripley had achieved at the end of Aliens while she was still asleep. It was also at that early stage of CGI where the less-talented effects companies hadn't cottoned onto the fact that making your CGI seamless with the live-action footage was more important than making it look cool.


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## Hand of Evil (May 24, 2017)

There are only two Alien movies...Alien and Aliens, all the others just don't come close.


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## Wednesday Boy (May 25, 2017)

I liked 3 the best but I haven't seen it since I was young and thought stupid action movies were the height of cinema, so my impression could be way off.  I was not impressed with Resurrection, Prometheus, or Covenant.


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## Robyo (May 25, 2017)

MarkB said:


> Alien3 lost me at the start when it undid the victory Ripley had achieved at the end of Aliens while she was still asleep.




This so much! Thank you. And so, whatever happened to the Sulaco? Was it attacked/infested while everyone was in stasis? So Ripley was already asleep in a pod on the lifeboat? I can dig that last one (since the pod room at the end of Aliens is not like the one in the beginning), but just too many other questions...


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## Istbor (May 25, 2017)

Such a good movie.  So quotable.  

Game over man! Game over!


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## Erekose (May 26, 2017)

I voted for Alien with Aliens second for the reasons others have given - I think it's fair to say it's a slam dunk for those two as the best Ines of the franchise. I'm more interested in reading why anyone feels one of the other films is better - not to argue a point but just so that I might see something new in those films that I haven't seen so far!


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## Morrus (May 26, 2017)

My only issue with Aliens is the way James Horner used the exact same soundtrack for both that film and _The Wrath of Khan_. It can be quite distracting once you notice it.


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## Gladius Legis (May 28, 2017)

1) Aliens
2) Alien (close second)

The others don't exist, AFAIC.


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## Kobold Stew (May 28, 2017)

I rewatch Aliens more than Alien, but Alien is the better film. 

The cast is amazing (is there anything with Ian Holm that isn't awesome?) and, importantly, the action is unexpected: Tom Skerritt gets top billing, which is a serious fake-out. Art, design, dialogue, suspense, sf awesomeness, and a truly horrific alien.


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## Deset Gled (Jun 5, 2017)

I went with Alien, but it's actually a tie with Aliens.  Then a tie between Resurrection and Covenant.  Followed by Prometheus, AvP, Alien 3, and AvPR.  I enjoyed them all, though (even the bad ones).

Moving ahead we need to split the Alien movies from the AvP movies, as Covenant clearly breaks the existing continuity between the two series.



RangerWickett said:


> Then Prometheus, for dumb people.




This makes me sad.


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## JeffB (Jun 12, 2017)

Alien.

CoC in space.


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## thehrrf (Jul 2, 2017)

Alien made you jump.

Aliens makes you think.

The sequels, all eleventeen of them, make you shake your head.


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## ShinHakkaider (Jul 11, 2017)

The theatrical cut of ALIENS is easily my favorite James Cameron film and it's hands down one of the best seige films committed to celluloid. The pacing of that film is relentless even during the setup in the first half. Between the emotional trauma that Ripley is clearly suffering from, the realization that she's going to have to go back out there and face her fear to the point where everything goes pearshaped after landing on LV-426 it's just one bad situation getting worse and worse. ALIENS is my favorite of the ALIEN films much in the way that EMPIRE is my favorite STAR WARS film. While ALIEN introduced both Ellen Ripley and the XENOMORPH to us ALIENS defines and fleshes out both of them to a greater degree where we can really appreciate Ripley as a hero and the Xenomorph as an extremely capable and intelligent movie monster in it's own right. 

ALIEN is a great horror movie. It's essentially NINE LITTLE (fill in the blank here since both versions of the title are fairly derogatory) in space, except SO MUCH WORSE. ALIEN does a few things very well, first it establishes that even in space in the far flung future there's still going to be working class people churning out a living doing the bidding of thier corporate masters. People have said that almost nothng happens in the first 30min of that movie. I'd argue that the first 30min are probably the most important as it establishes the characters relationships to each other personally and professionally. Particularly Parker and Brett's casually adverserial realtionship with Dallas and Ripley and Ash's detached (and evasive) demeanor to Ripley (and everyone else). We find out later that Ash is new to the Dallas and the rest of the crew which makes sense but totally feeds into what happens later in the film. What I realised upon subsequent viewing of the film was that the crew was kind of already on edge having been on a long salvage and eager to return home and the appearnence of the Xenomorph just exacerbates things in the WORST POSSIBLE WAY.
ALIEN is a Sci-Fi horror masterclass in tension building. Ridley Scott and his DP use light and shadows and the set itself to create a sense of constant dread even when the Xenomorph ISNT EVEN ON THE SCREEN. A prime example of this is Brett's search for the Xenomorph in the bowels of the Nostromo. ALIEN is an almost unpleasant viewing experience on the big screen because if youre uninitiated after the first half of the film youre looking at every shadow or weird looking shape on the Nostromo sideways hoping that it's not that damn Xenomorph....


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## ShinHakkaider (Jul 14, 2017)

Robyo said:


> This so much! Thank you. And so, whatever happened to the Sulaco? Was it attacked/infested while everyone was in stasis? So Ripley was already asleep in a pod on the lifeboat? I can dig that last one (since the pod room at the end of Aliens is not like the one in the beginning), but just too many other questions...




Watch ALIENS to the very end of the credits. Near the very end you can actually hear the skittering of a facehugger from the right to left audio channel. I first noticed it on all of the home video editions of the movie (on Laserdisc, DVD and BluRay) and thought that maybe it was something FOX added in for the home video version. Kind of like Universal added "TO BE CONTINUED" to the end of the home video versions of BACK TO THE FUTURE (On VHS and LD, it's not on the DVD versions that I own) when they knew they were making a sequel. 

But I've seen ALIENS twice in the big screen again in the last five years (once at the IFC Theater and once with my son at the ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE) or so and the sound of the skittering facehugger is there on the 35mm film print.


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## Robyo (Jul 14, 2017)

ShinHakkaider said:


> Watch ALIENS to the very end of the credits. Near the very end you can actually hear the skittering of a facehugger from the right to left audio channel. I first noticed it on all of the home video editions of the movie (on Laserdisc, DVD and BluRay) and thought that maybe it was something FOX added in for the home video version. Kind of like Universal added "TO BE CONTINUED" to the end of the home video versions of BACK TO THE FUTURE (On VHS and LD, it's not on the DVD versions that I own) when they knew they were making a sequel.
> 
> But I've seen ALIENS twice in the big screen again in the last five years (once at the IFC Theater and once with my son at the ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE) or so and the sound of the skittering facehugger is there on the 35mm film print.




Thank you! I have watched Aliens a million times, but I guess I never paid attention to the Facehugger skitter at the end credits. Another reason to watch the movie!


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## Mister Andersen (Jul 18, 2017)

_*Aliens*_  because it's the most enjoyable of the films. 

Absolute least favourites are _*Covenant*_ and _*Prometheus*_ --the return of Ridley Scott to the franchise feels like is very much like akin to the Star Wars prequels: sub-par story telling ruining what other people have made of the setting we were originally given. 

_*Covenant*_'s script is a poorly put together ghost train filled with build ups with no pay off, convolutions that do exactly nothing except pad the screen time, and like far too much popular sci-fi absolutely depends on people being astoundingly bad at their jobs*. Its weird, and broken, and there isn't a single correct choice made by any character at any time to the point that the characters are so relentlessly stupid there's not even satisfaction in their deaths. It's an uninspired meat grinder on rails, cut from the from the same stupid as _*Prometheus*_ that gives us a setting with astoundingly complex androids but no drones (well apart from the tunnel charters, which were pitifully misused), and the only twist comes from ignoring every bit of lore that's come before (even the crew of the previous ship wore environment suits). 


*: Where to begin? The titular ship for a start stores its cryopods on meathooks, a single failure point which fails repeatedly in the opening minutes leading to several deaths. 
Its interstellar comms system is incapable of detecting a transmission that the comparatively tiny one in a suit can (a meaningless plot point that has no significance or is ever relied on again). 
There's only a single landing craft for an entire colony of people --  even the _Sulaco_ carried a spare for just a single platoon -- which instead of having its med bay easily accessible from the main entry point chooses to stick it down a long corridor where you'd never be able to fit a stretcher. 
The basic set up of the film has the crew so reluctant to return to cryosleep that with no no hurry to get anywhere they have to go down RIGHT NOW without even pausing to map the surface which would have shown them the massive dead city. 
The David series was so upsetting that Weyland chose to make the Walter series in its likeness to facilitate a supposedly surprising switcheroo


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## RedMoonRoleplaying (Aug 11, 2017)

1. Alien
2. Aliens
3. The rest

Absolutely adore the esthetic and feeling from the first movie.


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## wicked cool (Aug 21, 2017)

rewatched Alien covenant over the weekend 
My original viewing I ranked this movie as one of the better ones however i've changed my mind and actually asking the community on key part of the movie

1-why does Shaw rebuild David
2-the john Denver song-is she infected/an alien at this point and its david controlling her or is she greyed out due to not being in movie
3-never explained how he infected her and is she dead when he launches virus on planet?
4-is the end of the movie leading to alien? 
5-David lands on the planet but then is trapped there? Its an entire planet so did the engineers not have ships or other technology?   

General question-the alien hive from aliens has not been used since. Has scott given an indication he doesn't approve. We have this huge list of mediocore/bad sequels and it would seem so simple for the studio to step in and say lets get back to how 2 was made 

Still truly shocking that  movies made in 1979 and 1986 are far superior. I'm beginning to want a restored version of aliens like lucas did with star wars and am hoping that Scott retires. 
The cast was fine for covenant and Prometheus however character actions make no sense (no helmets,trusting david in covenant, playing with alien life). This shows a total lack of wisdom for 2 crews and yet the same director in alien 1 his crew has more sense.
Bring on the director for planet of the apes, wonderwoman,conjuring/anabelle or one of producers of game of thrones. Compared ot those you have watered down action, scares and clearly the director of wonderwoman could really prop up a woman heroine.


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## Deset Gled (Aug 24, 2017)

I'll have a go at a few...



wicked cool said:


> 1-why does Shaw rebuild David




Why wouldn't she?  She's completely alone, and would benefit from both the physical and mental assistance of another person, even if it is a robot.  At the very least she needs David to translate the Engineer language, and probably needs his help using some of their technology.  Also, David saved her life in Prometheus, and was created specifically to serve humans.  While she may have some reasons to not completely trust him, she has no reason to assume David would kill her.



> 2-the john Denver song-is she infected/an alien at this point and its david controlling her or is she greyed out due to not being in movie
> 3-never explained how he infected her and is she dead when he launches virus on planet?



No idea.  That's not the story the movie is telling.



> 4-is the end of the movie leading to alien?




Leading there, sure.  Slowly.  Not a direct path.



> 5-David lands on the planet but then is trapped there? Its an entire planet so did the engineers not have ships or other technology?



The Engineers had many planets.  Obviously some must be very high tech.  Some, like LV-233 in Prometheus, had only a single site where a ship could be found.  Others, like Earth, had no technology left behind at all; just biology.  Either the planet David found is a planet with life forms but no advanced tech, or there is a cache of tech hidden somewhere on the planet that David couldn't find.  Either explanation is completely consistent with what we've seen of the Engineers.



> General question-the alien hive from aliens has not been used since. Has scott given an indication he doesn't approve.



It's still open to go either way.  David created the eggs, eggs make facehuggers, facehuggers make xenomorphs.  It's possible David would create life that couldn't reproduce without him, but also possible he planned the next phase.  It's equally possible that David doesn't know for sure what will happen next and the hive/queen phase is an unexpected mutation.  Remember, it's all an experiment to him.



> We have this huge list of mediocore/bad sequels and it would seem so simple for the studio to step in and say lets get back to how 2 was made
> 
> Still truly shocking that  movies made in 1979 and 1986 are far superior. I'm beginning to want a restored version of aliens like lucas did with star wars and am hoping that Scott retires.



You hate all the Aliens sequels and want more of what Lucas did to Star Wars?  Words can't even describe my reaction.  No, just no.

Also, to answer some of the earlier questions:



> Its interstellar comms system is incapable of detecting a transmission that the comparatively tiny one in a suit can (a meaningless plot point that has no significance or is ever relied on again).



The suit was outside of some interference that was near the ship.  It was put in to explain why the signal wasn't picked up earlier.  Really easy to explain and never relied on again simply because it wasn't significant.



> There's only a single landing craft for an entire colony of people -- even the Sulaco carried a spare for just a single platoon -- which instead of having its med bay easily accessible from the main entry point chooses to stick it down a long corridor where you'd never be able to fit a stretcher.



There may have been another landing craft in the colony ship, just not one that was remote control-able like on the Sulaco.  Given that it's years earlier and not a military ship, I find this easy to accept.  I also didn't see any architecture problems like you did.  Probably won't get a chance to review until the DVD comes out.



> The basic set up of the film has the crew so reluctant to return to cryosleep that with no no hurry to get anywhere they have to go down RIGHT NOW without even pausing to map the surface which would have shown them the massive dead city.



Why do you assume they had the ability to map the surface in such detail, or that it would look that way from above?  The stone temple/city area we saw actually had a number of structures jutting up around it, so the open meadow/lake they landed in would probably look like the best landing area from most scanning techniques.



> The David series was so upsetting that Weyland chose to make the Walter series in its likeness to facilitate a supposedly surprising switcheroo



David was a prototype.  A very successful one, that clearly took a ton of effort to design.  Using the same mold is an obvious choice; you would have to work harder to explain why they should change it.

Alien Covenant was not a perfect movie.  No movie is, and this wasn't the best of the series by far.  But I think a lot of folks are asking way to much out of it and don't give it the credit it's due.  A lot of these complaints are nitpicking a lot of minor issues that don't come close to some of the errors in the "good" films of the series.  Ditto for Prometheus.


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## wicked cool (Aug 25, 2017)

I love xenomorphs as much as the next guy but in my opinion the franchise (for the most part) has not improved since Aliens 1986. last 2 have been better than the rest (I liked the idea of crossovers and wanted the terminatorsvs predator vs xenomorph) however the last 1 did poorly in theaters and theres a reason why. Its not just nitpicking (nothing worse than picking nits fyi). 

1)The acting/scripts have been horrible in the most of the recent movies. the scientists are idiots and so are the soldiers.
2) Covenant has really no real scares. Lots of gore but there was no point where I jumped out of my seat of wondered what was around the corner like I would In what is considered good horror movies for todays standards (conjuring etc). theres a reason why IT is projected at 60 million opening weekend
3) David (fassbender is a great actor) has gone into superhero territory. Hes brilliant and stronger than 10 men and I feel like they have lost the android aspect of the ones in alien 1 and 2. 
4) I would argue the heroines after Ripley have clearly not been as effective as Ripley and clearly not as smart. 
5) The action after 3 has gone down hill. Nobody is considering any of these to be great action films in fact I'm not sure if any crack the top 25 of the last 5 years

What improved is gore and special effects but we've dipped into jaws 3-4 territory and its clear that jaws 1&2 are the only 1s that stand the test of time.


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## Lord Mhoram (Aug 27, 2017)

I hold the original and Aliens about the same. And as I prefer action over horror, Aliens gets the nod. 

Everything else is a huge step down ( have not seen covenant yet).


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