If Star Wars and Star Trek are credited with popularizing sci-fi, space and space exploration, then Alien and the following films should be credited with bringing space-horror into popular culture. While Star Wars and Star Trek have some horror elements they don’t lean into the dark, bloody, disgusting and body-horror elements like the Alien franchise does. The reason this franchise has survived so long, is it’s willingness to push the audience to the extreme. These films can’t be replicated. Time to rank ’em! (Spoiler warning for all the films in the Alien franchise)

1. Alien (1979, directed by Ridley Scott) – A genre defining masterpiece that invented space horror. The story is nice and simple with a group of space truckers who are coming back from a mining mission, are awoken by the ship’s AI and ordered to investigate a distress signal. While exploring the planet one of the crew members is latched on to by a facehugger and brought back to the ship. A baby xenomorph explodes out of his chest, grows to its adult form and size quickly and goes on a killing spree leaving a trail of bodies in its wake. Main protagonist Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is the only character who keeps her wits about her and displays courage and ingenuity fighting the creature. She eventually forces it out of the ship via an airlock and into the icy and infinite darkness of space. Ripley’s confidence in herself, decision-making and fearlessness are the bedrock of her character, in this film and going forward. Many, many, many horrible things are thrown her way and she always deals with them admirably, while kicking a bunch of ass throughout the film. She cemented herself as one of the best and most fearsome female characters in movie history.
2. Aliens (1986, directed by James Cameron) – A direct sequel to Alien, that goes for a more action orientated approach. Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is asked by the Weyland-Yutani board to accompany a group of space marines to investigate LV-426 (the planet from Alien), which is being terraformed by a colony of people. The outpost stopped checking in and this spooked the suits, who only want to protect their investment. Ripley, still dealing with PTSD from the first film, says no at first but relents when Carter Burke (Paul Reiser) assures her they will destroy any aliens if found. On the planet they find the colonists, in varying states of incubation, under the planet terraforming machine. All hell breaks loose and many marines are killed when a horde of fully grown xenomorphs attack. The landing ship is also blown up, stranding Ripley, Newt (Carrie Hein, a young girl and the only survivor of the colony), Burke, Bishop (Lance Henriksen, an android) and a handful of marines. They devise a plan to have Bishop trek to the satellite tower and remote pilot the other ship down to the surface to pick them up. They are attacked by the xenomorphs and only Ripley, Newt, Bishop and Corporal Hicks (Michael Biehn) make it to the ship after the others are killed. The foursome arrive on the main ship and are about to set a course for Earth, but the Queen managed to break free from her birthing tube and smuggle herself onboard. Hicks was incapacitated during the fighting and is no help. Bishop is then torn in half, so it falls again on Ripley to defend Newt and defeat the Queen on her own. She dons a ‘power loader,’ a kind of mechanical exo-skeleton used to move cargo and other heavy items, and lays the smackdown on the Queen. Eventually, she overpowers her and boots her into the stars. A sequel needs to be bigger and better than the original, Aliens hits both of those targets. The cast of marines is full of outstanding performances with all of them being a bit goofy or hyper-masculine, very different to the reserved and self-assured Ripley. Having the android help the humans, instead of trying to kill them, was a good swerve.
3. Alien: Romulus (2024, directed by Fede Álvarez) – The latest installment in the Alien franchise sees a group of disenfranchised young people living on a mining colony, where the sun never shines. They all want to escape and start anew in another solar system. The leader of the friend group, Tyler (Archie Renaux), figures out a way to scavenge the derelict space station floating above their planet with the help of his ex, Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and her, somewhat, functioning android brother Andy (David Jonsson). Kay (Isabela Merced), Bjorn (Spike Fearn) and Navarro (Alieen Wu) round out the group. Off they go to the station where they find what they’re looking for, a batch of cryo pods. Tyler, Bjorn (who hates androids) and Andy are locked in a room with a bunch of frozen facehuggers, who wake up once the temperature is raised. Rain and Navarro spring the trio free and are chased by a mass of the creatures with one attaching itself to Navarro. Cold air is pressurized and used to get the facehugger off, but she freaks out, along with her whiny, hot-tempered, synthetic-hating boyfriend Bjorn who races to the ship, takes off and leaves Rain, Tyler and Andy abord the space station infested with facehuggers. The ship appears to fly away, only to crash back into the station after Navarro has a chestburster explode out of her. Her dumbass boyfriend tries to kill a xenomorph, while it’s inside a vaginal-looking cocoon. He rams an electric shock baton into it’s orifice, seemingly frying it. Instead, it slowly drips acid onto him, melting his hand and digits, before splashing him in the chest, and finally killing the idiot. Tyler’s sister, Kay, who’s pregnant, escapes and almost meets up with the trio before being dragged away by a xenomorph. Andy, under a new primary directive, ushers everyone to a lab where a tar-like substance, similar to the black goo in Prometheus, has been developed by the scientists on board. The substance is supposed to make humans into “perfect beings.” Andy then grabs the bio-weapon and fights his way back to the ship with Rain and Tyler, who finds and rescues his sister but is killed himself. Andy, Rain and Kay eventually make it back to the ship and leave just as the station crashes into the planetary rings. Kay, about to go into the cryo pod, all of a sudden gives birth to an egg that becomes a monstrous, disgusting looking humanoid thing. The creature slaughters it’s “mom” and then severely damages Andy. Rain battles against it, and in the end, contains it to the cargo hold, jettisoning it into the rings. It was an interesting choice to go with a younger cast, but it ultimately works as the audience can feel their desperation oozing through the screen, which is why they take such a great risk in going to the station in the first place. The younger cast also pulls off brash mixed with naivety very well. None of them really thought through the plan fully. The relationship between Rain and David provided to be intriguing and the heart of the story, as he was programmed to do what’s best for Rain, but by the end of the film he had been reprogrammed to do what’s best for him.
4. Prometheus (2012, directed by Ridley Scott) – After the massive flops that were Alien vs. Predator and AvP: Requiem (no need to rank them, as they STINK) original director Ridley Scott took back control of the franchise. This film is a prequel to Alien and tells the story of a group of archeologist’s who interpret cave drawings found on Earth as an invitation to the stars, so Weyland-Yutani organizes an expedition to the planet. Things go horribly wrong and almost everyone is killed but not by aliens, as they don’t play a large role in the film. The engineers, who made a small cameo in Alien, are the extra-terrestrial menace. Black goo, from a vase, also turns a couple of the crew into zombie-type monsters. Not something you’d expect from an Alien film. There is also a scene where the main protagonist, Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) has a c-section to remove a squid-looking alien from her stomach. A truly memorable and disturbing scene. The visuals from this film were immense and the engineers make for an interesting antagonist, even without talking or shedding light on their plan. Shaw and David (Michael Fassbender) deliver excellent performances, but the rest of the cast were only mildly interesting, including the reveal that Wayland (Guy Pearce in heavy old-man prosthetics) had been aboard in hopes of asking the engineers how to stay alive forever. It’s also too bad Charlize Theron (Vickers) and Idris Elba’s (Janek) characters weren’t fully fleshed out.
5. Aliens 3 (1992, directed by David Fincher) – Unfortunately, this is the film where the franchise nosedive began. Ellen Ripley’s ship from Aliens crash lands on Fiorina 161, a male-only penal colony. Newt and Corporal Hicks are killed off-screen, while Ripley is rescued and nursed back to health by Dr. Jonathan Clemens (Charles Dance). A distress message is sent from planet Fury to Earth for the Weyland-Yutani corporation, informing them of the situation. Weyland-Yutani message back saying they will sent an extraction team that will be there in a week. Ripley demands an autopsy be performed on Newt, as she fears an alien may be inside of her. No creature is found. At her burial, as Leonard Dillion (Charles S. Dutton) recites a eulogy, a new xenomorph is born, this time out of a dog. It goes on a killing spree before being contained in a vault. Walter Golic (Paul McGann), a mentally unstable individual who saw his friends torn apart by the monster, has a subsequently break from reality, and escapes from his confinement to free it. For a split-second you think he’ll be spared, but the alien doesn’t care about people and kills him. Ripley finds out she is carrying a new queen inside of her and goes to Dillion to ask him to kill her. After a brief argument, he relents and says, “yes,” but only after she helps him kill the current xenomorph. They come up with a plan to trap it in a mold and fill it with molten lava. Everyone dies except for Ripley and Morse (Danny Webb) with the alien exploding after being boiled by the lava and then doused in cold water. The Weyland-Yutani team shows up and want Ripley to come with them. She knows they only want the queen inside of her, so she throws herself into the lava sacrificing herself. The setting and Ripley’s sacrifice are the most interesting parts of the film. Most of the franchise takes place in cold, dark space, so it was refreshing to be on an almost volcanic planet. The claustrophobia of the ship interiors is replicated nicely with the tunnels of the facility. Ripley having to adopt a new look (buzz cut) in order to blend in with the prisoners was a nice touch too. Although, it was a little out of the blue when she and the doctor end up having sex, as Ripley hadn’t had much romance in the series up to this point. The CGI is atrocious.
6. Alien: Covenant (2017, directed by Ridley Scott) – After the success of Prometheus, a sequel was in order. Ridley Scott was again in charge and set the events of this film 11-years after Prometheus. A group of colonist are awoken after a solar flare damages their ship, killing their captain. Oram (Billy Crudup) takes over with the majority of the crew being suspicious of him due to his extreme religious views, something that should’ve been explored deeper. While making repairs, Tennessee (Danny McBride) hears a strange message in his visor. It ends up being a voice recording of someone humming John Denver’s, “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” The crew assemble and debate whether or not to investigate the source. Daniels (Katherine Waterson) objects and wants to continue with the original plan of going to Origae-6, but is overruled by Oram who takes a “leap of faith” and charts a course to the planet where the signal originated from. While exploring the planet, a couple of the security crew inhale spores from a plant, grow increasingly sicker and finally have a neomorph burst from their back. Some of the ground crew is killed and the lander explodes but the survivors escape when David (Michael Fassbender), the android from Prometheus, rescues them. It’s a little weird because the crew brought their own android, named Walter, and he looks identical to David. A much more robotic personality to David’s very human appearing nature and tone. David leads them to his shelter and fills them in on what happened on the planet. What he tells them is a lie though, and it’s revealed he caused a mass extinction event of the planet’s population, weaponizing the black goo from the previous film, before experimenting on Elizabeth Shaw to produce the alien eggs in the basement. Only Daniels and Lope (Demian Bichir) escape after Tennessee flies the extra ship down to the planet. Daniels goes toe-to-toe with the fully grown neomorph, crushing it in the jaws of a loader. Back on the main ship, a neomorph bursts through Lopes chest with Daniels and Tennessee having to fight and blow it out of the airlock. As they enter their cryo pods, Walter, now revealed to be David, has smuggled two facehugger embryos on-board. An interesting idea, as most of the crew are married, but falls flat as none of them are very compelling. The story itself is also fairly bland.
7. Alien Resurrection (1997, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet) – What a terrible film, maybe the worst in the series. The plot is OK, it’s the characters and performances that let it down badly. It takes place 200 years after Aliens 3, as group of scientists are trying to clone Ripley and cross her DNA with an alien, in an attempt to create an unholy hybrid. The experiment is semi-successful, but a breech in contamination causes a ship-wide evacuation. Most of the crew are slaughtered, including the buffoon of a General in charge. A smaller band of mercenaries, who were delivering human cargo, have to fight their way back to their ship. Ripley joins up with them as they make their way through the alien-infested hallways. The research ship, now on autopilot, sets a course for Earth. The remaining humans, and android, realize this and know they must destroy the ship before it can release it’s alien cargo onto an unsuspecting population. The group make it to back to their ship, but Ripley gets separated from them and taken to the nest, where the Queen gives birth to a hideous half-alien/half-human monstrosity. The hybrid goes berserk and rips off its mother’s face before chasing Ripley back to the smaller ship. Ripley then uses her acidic blood to blow a hole in a window, sucking the hybrid slowly out into space. The movie ends with Ron Pearlman’s character Johner calling Earth a “shithole” and the research vessel exploding in spectacular fashion over, what looks to be, Africa. Just a taste of the many head-scratching decisions in the film. The main reason this film falls short is the lack of humanity Ripley displays. Yeah, she shares DNA with the aliens, making her sympathetic to them, but it defeats her character after the previous films show us how caring she was towards the other crew members. The emotional, almost motherly relationship she had with Newt in Aliens really hammered home her humanity. Her performance in Alien: Resurrection is too cold and uneven. Don’t even get me started on the rest of the cast, not a one was compelling.

The Alien franchise is at it’s best when they keep it simple. A group of people investigating a signal or station, are unaware of the dangers lurking in the darkness, come face-to-face with the ultimate killing machine and have to fight and survive. Alien and Aliens do this perfectly, while also building the world and lore. The recent, more action-packed films are kind of a bust, as they skew too far into a different genre and try to overexplain the lore. At it’s heart the franchise is space-horror and needs to stay within those confines, like Alien: Romulus did, in order to flourish in future projects.