by Jeff Alan, Contributing Writer
I’ve never been a huge horror movie person. But despite my cowardice of anything remotely scary, the Alien films have intrigued me since I was a kid. I was curious about the origin of the alien (me calling it “alien” before finding out they called it a xenomorph), what planet it came from, and how the crews in each film somehow kept finding them, and it took me many years before I finally braved watching one of these films, which was Prometheus when it released.
I thought I would finally get some answers if I saw it. But since then, my curiosity about the world these movies are set it only grew larger and larger. So to face my fear and to take a deep dive into this series of films, I decided to take on the challenge of watching the entire Alien franchise and give my honest analysis of each film.
Some spoilers ahead!
Alien (1979)
This is where it all starts! As I sit and watch the movie, I’m somehow reminded of Star Wars in a way, but mostly by the good the effects of space and the ships moving through it. And when compared to Alien, which came out nearly three years later, they didn’t exactly take Star Wars’ lead and make the effects better. But enough of my nitpicking. Alien excels in building the tension of what the mysterious eggs and facehuggers are, and when the xenomorph is fully grown, there are truly terrifying moments to witness! Granted it wasn’t as “scary” as I thought it would be, but I’m fairly certain it’s because I’m desensitized by modern horror films, and that they only had so much to work with to make it scary in 1979. But at the time of this film releasing I’m sure it was a sight to see (or not see, depending on your scary tolerance).
Rating: Liked It
Aliens (1986)
It’s at this point that I think the Alien franchise really jumps up to another level! In Aliens, we see Ripley forced to go back to the place where it all began 50 years later due to being in cryo-sleep since the events of the last film. And this film raises the stakes considerably for not only her, but humanity as well. The action set pieces are well done and the practical effects of the xenomorph are even better than they were in the first film! We see some truly iconic moments in this one, like Ripley operating the yellow exo-suit and Bill Paxton’s yell of, “Game over, man! Game over!” And in this film, we are given a closer look into the alien itself by witnessing its queen and how dozens of eggs can be laid to produce the hoard of xenomorphs that take out the entire colony of humans sent there to inhabit it. Overall, a well done film. I wonder if it has anything to do with James Cameron taking the reins…
Rating: Loved It
Alien 3 (1992)
Alien 3 ups the ante even more with David Fincher at the helm, bringing more violence, scares, and most notably, blood to the franchise. This is where the younger and more squeamish me would have officially checked of the series because of my distaste for gratuitous blood portrayal and gore in scary movies. But viewing it as an adult, and after being exposed to way worse scenes than these, it doesn’t faze me too much. But this may be my second favorite of the franchise so far, with Ripley’s story seemingly coming to a close, and there being more iconic moments from the films that I’ve only ever see snippets of before. What is also nice about this is that as the films go on, we see more and more details looks at the xenomorphs, which is what originally fascinated me about the franchise. Looking at every grizzly detail of this creature was something I always wanted to see more of, and to see a further evolution of the xenomorph is something of a treat as well. A great ending to a would-be trilogy.
Rating: High Side of Liked it
Alien: Resurrection (1997)
As I enter a film that possibly didn’t even need to be made at all, I wonder what its purpose was in being made in the first place. Clearly it wasn’t because the story was so good they just HAD to tell it. The first glaring problem being that 200 years later, they have the technology to not only clone Ripley, but somehow get her DNA when she had the xenomorph queen embryo in her; and they’re able to replicate that scenario. Ripley was incinerated at the end of the previous film, so when would they have gotten that DNA ? We see even more xenomorph blood and violence, which I think sets the stage for the franchise’s future violence, we see an even more ghastly and horrifying evolution of the xenomorph, which I was not expecting to see, and we get a conclusive ending to the Alien timeline. With the furthering of technology at the time, they opt for more CG effects as opposed to the practical effects, which I think brings the quality of the xenomorphs movements down. But because it’s done it this way, we get better looks at the aliens, which I do like to see. There’s not much else to mention about the rest of the film. There’s nothing else particularly special about it. It provides the horror elements that the fans surely wanted to see, while giving a hard conclusion to Ripley’s story, which is all I needed it to be.
Rating: It Was Just Okay
Alien vs. Predator (2004)
Just for the fun of it, I wanted to throw the AvP movies on the list, even though they are not canon to the rest of the franchise. I think it’s a little bit of a shame that they aren’t, because I like the sort of world building that this one gives us, with how the xenomorphs and the predators have had their feud for thousands of years. But when you consider what Prometheus sets up later, you see it doesn’t quite make sense. Not to mention the Easter egg of Charles Weyland being the same actor who portrayed Bishop in Aliens, presumably setting the stage for his likeness to be the future inspiration for the android in their future. Plus, I think this movie was riding the coat tails of the so-called “success” that Freddy vs. Jason had among the horror fandom. But apart from the world building, there isn’t much that interesting about AvP. The action is mid-level and we get some good realistic movement with the xenomorphs, but all of the human acting is paint-by-numbers, and much like the other Alien films, all human characters, except one, are completely expendable.
Rating: It Was Just Okay
Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)
The next chapter in the all but forgotten Alien movies that are no longer canon to the rest of the franchise, AvP: Requiem picks up immediately after the previous film and has the xenomorphs and one lone predator duking it out after crash landing in a small Colorado town. But with this film, we see the xenomorph expand even further, with the introduction of the xenomorph/predator hybrid, or “Pred-alien,” as I remember kids in my school calling it when the film released. This film has a MUCH different tone and style than the first AvP film, making it darker (literally and figuratively), gratuitously gorier, and increasingly cringier to bear when it comes to the human characters. It throws all this garbage of human story in it when it really doesn’t need it at all to be interesting. In fact, I think if you took out the majority of the human stories in this film and focused solely on the two alien species fighting, then it would probably make for a better movie. But on a plus side, we see more xenomorph versus Predator action in this than the previous. But it doesn’t excuse the fact that it’s still a mess of a film that leads to a closing Easter egg that never pays off. I think there is a case to be made that these films COULD be connected to the rest of the larger franchise, but when you think about the lingering questions and headache of how the xenomorphs made it to Earth in the first AVP after the events of Prometheus and Covenant, maybe it is best to let these just fade into obscurity.
Rating: Didn’t Like It
Prometheus (2012)
And now comes the film I waited patiently for nearly all of my young life to see. Prometheus, the prequel film to all Alien films that was going to tell the story of how the xenomorph came to be. Well, almost. Ridley Scott returned to the franchise to direct this film after the box office and storyline trainwreck of the AvP films. In the beginning of the film, we see human scientists in the year 2089 (around 30 years before Alien) discover ancient drawings of what they believe is an invitation for the humans to travel through space to find the home planet of their Creators, only to be brought to the planet and find something else instead. This does tread on the ground I wanted to see for all these years, by explaining that the Engineers (the beings that created humans) had not only toyed with creating us, but experimented with creating other species as well. And curiosity of which the android David maliciously grows more and more fascinated with as well. The film’s effects are outstanding (being an even eight years after AvP: Requiem released) and the acting is fantastic, given the amount of star power. It winks at you, gives you just enough Easter eggs to get you interested in seeing more (like the Engineers’ ship being the exact same ship found on LV-426 in Alien), and then cuts to black just when you think you know what’s going on but the longer you think about it, the more you realize you aren’t even close to the story.
Rating: High Side of Liked It
Alien: Covenant (2017)
Covenant takes place 10 years after Prometheus ends, with a colonization team discovering a new planet on the way to another habitable one, intercepting a transmission that they feel inclined to investigate. It leads them to David, who has experimented over and over with the substance found in Prometheus to finally create the xenomorph in all its terrifying glory. The effects and graphics are just as good in this as it was before, and the acting is on point as usual, with a new cast of talented actors taking on the scary saga. Prometheus had some scary stuff, but Covenant brings scary to a new level, with a few new frightening iterations of the xenomorph before it becomes its true self. And even when we do see the full-fledged alien, the CGI of today’s day and age give it movement and character that seriously makes it hard to watch (in a good way) when it charges and takes down humans in the bloodiest way it can. But at the end, the lingering questions continue as to how the alien species ends up on LV-426 at the beginning of the very first Alien, an answer at this rate which I don’t know if we well ever find out.
Rating: High Side of Liked It
This was a really fun experiment for me, not only to visit a franchise I was too afraid to watch, but to learn more about the things that have made me so curious for most of my life. I will agree with the notion that the AvP films make no sense in the overall canon of the franchise and should definitely be forgotten, and that the prequels are the true origin of the franchise. I also love that each film (canon and not canon) has a link between them, being that the xenomorphs’ evolution is contingent on what host the facehugger attaches itself to, which can determine what the offspring will look like, harkening back to David’s experiments with creating the perfect species.
As we look ahead to Alien: Romulus coming out this week, I am a bit more curious as to how it will contribute to the mythos of the series. It’s claimed that this film will be set between Alien and Aliens, and it’s also been rumored that it will not have a connection to the prequels. Not much about this movie has been revealed yet, so I do hope that isn’t true, and we see the xenomorphs and facehuggers brought back into this story, connecting Romulus to the original films. And Romulus isn’t even the only Alien content we have coming, as it’s been reported before that FX and Noah Hawley have teamed for a TV series that is set to release in 2025, of which details are sparse. My hope is that there will be even more answers and connections in that series, and it will add to the mythos. As it stands right now, my curiosity regarding the franchise has not gone away, and I might even be more invested in the series now than I was before!
You can read more from Jeff Alan, and follow him on Instagram, Twitter, and Letterboxd