The Alien Movies Ranked: Worst to Best
The “Alien” movie franchise is filled with highs and lows but remains one of the best and most successful sci-fi-horror movie franchises in history and introduced one of the scariest movie monsters of all time.
Franchise Global Box Office Total: $1,292,782,569
Here’s my ranking of the Alien movies…SPOILERS AHEAD
6. Alien: Resurrection (1997)
ROTTEN TOMATOES: 54% CRITIC RATING | 39% AUDIENCE RATING
“Alien: Resurrection” is by far the worst film in the franchise.
The film takes place 200 hundred years after Ripley’s death in “Alien 3” and follows a team of scientists that have cloned Ripley to extract the DNA of the Xenomorph Queen embryo that was growing inside of her.
After successfully cloning Ripley and growing a new Xenomorph Queen, things quickly go downhill when the Xenormorphs escape from their cells and are running rampant aboard the space station.
Outside of getting to see Sigourney Weaver play Ripley again, “Alien: Resurrection” is just a mindless sci-fi/action movie that tries desperately to capture the feeling of claustrophobia and dread like the first film but fails to do so in any way.
P.S. The Newborn has to be one of the worst creature designs ever put to screen.
5. Alien: Covenant (2017)
ROTTEN TOMATOES: 65% CRITIC RATING | 55% AUDIENCE RATING
While “Alien Covenant” Is visually stunning and has another amazing performance by Michael Fassbender, the film feels like a carbon copy of the first “Alien”.
Outside of the introduction of the Neomorph and learning a little more about David’s experiments, “Alien: Covenant” sees another crew investigating a distress call on a remote planet, members of their crew are infected by an Alien pathogen, and the crew has to find a way to survive this new threat and escape the planet.
4. Alien 3 (1992)
ROTTEN TOMATOES: 46% CRITIC RATING | 46% AUDIENCE RATING
David Fincher’s “Alien 3” follows Ripley after crash-landing on Fiorina 161, as Ripley and the prisoners are being hunted by a new type of Xenomorph. (Xenomorph Runner - a quadrupedal host animal such as a dog).
Behind the scenes, “Alien 3” was plagued by scripting issues and major interference from the studio that Fincher couldn’t make the film as great as it could’ve been under his masterful direction. With that said, I really enjoyed the film’s claustrophobic elements as Ripley and the prisoners are being hunted in the prison and I really appreciated that the film had Ripley make the ultimate sacrifice to make sure that the Xenomorph Queen growing inside of her would never be born.
3. Prometheus (2012)
ROTTEN TOMATOES: 73% CRITIC RATING | 68% AUDIENCE RATING
Ridley Scott made his triumphant return to the “Alien” film franchise with 2012’s “Prometheus”.
The film follows Dr. Shaw and Dr. Holloway as they lead a group of Weyland-Yutani scientists on an expedition to LV-223 to uncover the origins of humanity.
I loved how Ridley Scott expanded the “Alien” universe with the Engineers, Michael Fassbender and Noomi Rapace turn in incredible performances, and the film’s cinematography and VFX are absolutely stunning and perfectly complement Scott’s vision.
2. Aliens (1986)
ROTTEN TOMATOES: 98% CRITIC RATING | 94% AUDIENCE RATING
James Cameron’s “Aliens” was the perfect follow-up to Ridley Scott’s “Alien”.
After floating in space for 57 years, Ripley's (Sigourney Weaver) shuttle is found by a deep space salvage team.
When communications with the colonists on LV-426 have been lost, Ripley and a group of colonial marines head to the surface of LV-426 to investigate but only finds one survivor, a nine-year-old girl named Newt (Carrie Henn), and a massive horde of Xenomorphs and their Queen.
1. Alien (1979)
ROTTEN TOMATOES: 98% CRITIC RATING | 94% AUDIENCE RATING
The film that started it all.
The film follows the crew of the commercial starship Nostromo as they’re awakened early from cryo-sleep to investigate a distress call from an Alien ship on LV-426. After a Xenomorph burst its way out of Kane’s chest, the surviving members of the crew have to find a way to stay alive as the Xenomorph hunts them down one by one.
From Ridley Scott’s direction, H. R. Giger’s haunting Xenomorph design, Derek Vanlint’s gorgeous cinematography, to the phenomenal acting from the entire cast, “Alien” still holds the crown as the single greatest sci-fi-horror film ever made.