The ultimate ranking of the Alien movies
Friday, 7 June 2024
“In space, no-one can hear you scream.”
So teased the tagline for a movie that elicited plenty of howls from cinemagoers in 1979 and launched a franchise whose latest instalment, Alien: Romulus, is coming to a movie theatre near you from August 15 – and dropped its first, full-length trailer earlier this week.
To help you prepare, Stuff to Watch has revisited the six flicks so far (we don’t consider the dual, dire, soulless, unholy Alien vs Predator mash-ups to be part of the series) and come up with our ultimate countdown of the xenomorphs’ big-screen outings – from worst to best.
All are available to stream on Disney+.
Alien: Covenant (2017)
Ridley Scott attempted to connect the dots between facehuggers old and new with this Australasian-shot adventure (Fiordland’s Milford Sound hosting the production for two weeks), which saw a new group of colonists (played by the likes of Katherine Waterson, Billy Crudup and Danny McBride) think they'd discovered paradise – a planet inhabited by a single synthetic.
“Yes, most of the cast perish in a gratifyingly gory fashion,” grumbled Stuff to Watch’s own Graeme Tuckett. “But we've seen it all before, and better, without the punishingly long interludes for Scott to bore us to tears with his dissertations on the monster's purpose and whakapapa.”
Alien: Resurrection (1997)
Just five years after actor Sigourney Weaver had made a seemingly irreversible decision to end the xenomorphs’ cinematic reign of terror, Fox cooked up this tale set some 200 years after her character Ellen Ripley’s apparent death.
The solution which also allowed Weaver to come back? Have military scientists clone Ripley in order to obtain the unborn alien that was growing inside her.
With French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Delicatessen) drafted in to provide his dark fantastical flair, Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Joss Whedon on scripting duties and an eclectic ensemble that included Ron Perlman, Dan Hedaya, Brad Dourif and Winona Ryder, the potential was there for something special, but a mostly enjoyable romp was marred by a truly polarising and pretty ugly finale.
Prometheus (2012)
Rather than a straight prequel, Scott’s return to the sci-fi universe he created more than three decades earlier was instead something infused with Alien's DNA.
We can see the beginnings of the evil mega-corporation Weyland-Yutani and the primordial ooze from which our xenomorph friends will evolve, but those expecting face-hugging, acid- bleeding action will be sorely disappointed.
However, Prometheus proved that Scott still knew how to pace a movie and his time establishing the atmosphere, character and universe was well spent.
Idris Elba, Charlize Theron, Michael Fassbender and Noomi Rapace star.
“While it lacks Alien's ferocious simplicity and focus, Scott's determination to see his often loopy ideas through gives his film a single-minded vigour rarely found in pictures of this scale,” wrote The Daily Telegraph’s Robbie Collin.
Alien 3 (1992)
Much maligned and derided on its initial release, David Fincher's (Se7en) atmospheric feature film-debut actually runs Scott’s original release pretty close when it comes to eliciting thrills and chills out of a fairly simple premise.
Charles Dance, Paul McGann, Lance Henriksen and Pete Postlethwaite are among the inhabitants of a penal colony planet who find themselves visited by not only Ripley, but also her arch-nemeses.
Although he was fired as director, much of Kiwi film-maker’s Vincent Ward’s story outline (including the shock ending the studio weren’t keen on) survived.
“A grimly seductive end-of-the-world thriller, with pop-tragic overtones that build in resonance as the movie goes on,” wrote Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman.
Alien (1979)
One of the great things Scott did with his original haunted-house- horror-in-space was populate the good-ship Nostromo with a collection of seasoned thespians, rather than Hollywood stars.
Weaver is the film's undoubted hero, while Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto and Harry Dean Stanton all get their moments, but John Hurt steals the show, thanks to one particularly memorable scene.
It was the combination of such regular shocks, a constrained setting full of dark corners and those magnificent H.R. Giger-designed beasties that makes this a rare frightfest that still holds up today.
“Alien will scare the peanuts right out of your M&Ms. It was about time someone made a science-fiction thriller that thrills … and just boils everything down to the pure, ravishingly vulgar essence of fright,” wrote Newsweek’s Jack Kroll.
Aliens (1986)
From the familiar Fox fanfare to Ripley’s final warning to the Alien Queen, which brought the house down, James Cameron’s bigger, bolder sequel is a perfectly calibrated thrill-ride and exactly the kind of immersive experience a blockbuster sci-fi action movie should be.
Featuring some of the finest tension-building and breathless action ever committed to celluloid, Cameron draws us into the story, the sometimes claustrophobic setting and the threat of danger from every angle – and refuses to let us go until the credits roll.
Arguably offering the template for Linda Hamilton’s transformation in Terminator 2, Weaver’s performance here is nothing short of remarkable. Forget Stallone, Schwarzenegger and their ilk, this is, hands-down, the best lead turn in a straight-out action movie. If you don’t believe me, remember Weaver was nominated for an Academy Award for her work here, one of six the film received in total.
An “express elevator to hell”, Aliens plays on our basic fears and is a magnificent exemplar of how to follow up a beloved film with something that shares the same DNA, but has a style and swagger all its own.
All six Alien movies are currently available to stream on Disney+. Alien: Romulus is scheduled to hit Kiwi cinemas on August 15.