ALMOST 50 years ago, Ridley Scott changed the face of horror and science fiction in cinema when his film Alien violently burst out of Hollywood’s chest. Since then, an entire franchise has spawned around the film to create an enduring mythology.
On Aug 15, Alien: Romulus will be released in Malaysian cinemas. The seventh film of the franchise, it will be helmed by Fede Alvarez. As he will inevitably turn Romulus into a blood-soaked gorefest in space, here are all the films in the 45-year-old franchise, ranked from best to worst.
Alien
A spaceship called Nostromo lands on a moon named LV-426 after detecting a distress signal. A crew member is attacked by an unknown lifeform that attaches to his face. Not long afterwards, he dies in the now legendary chest-bursting scene as the remaining crew members including Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) attempt to survive against a dangerous new passenger on their ship.
In its bare simplicity, the film that started it all holds the top spot in the franchise. Alien is a classic piece of cinema that introduced the Xenomorph, an enduring icon of primordial horror designed by H.R. Giger and pop culture and cinema’s first action heroine with Weaver’s Ripley.
Aliens
Where Alien was purely a science fiction-horror film, the second film by James Cameron was the trifecta of horror, science fiction and action.
Cameron’s The Terminator came out two years before this film and what made that film thrilling and fun was exported to Aliens and both films share that same DNA strain, in which regular humans are pitted against an insurmountable non-human foe.
Ripley becomes a fully realised action heroine and she is flanked by colourful Colonial Marines soldiers. Before things escalate and even during the movie, the characters are humanised with their jokes and banter. No one is boring to watch in Aliens.
The parasitic Xenomorphs also receive an upgrade from the first film’s lone alien to well over 100 creatures running amok in this film, which subsequently elevates the action such as the sequence of the aliens converging on the Marines to Ripley’s fight against the Xenomorph queen.
Alien Resurrection
In terms of chronology, Resurrection takes place after Alien 3 but in terms of quality, this film ranks slightly higher.
Revealed in its opening scenes, Resurrection’s Ripley is a clone created from the original Ripley’s DNA. Due to the Xenomorph Queen’s DNA accidentally combining with the latter, this version is extremely strong and shares certain abilities that Xenomorphs have.
In other words, Resurrection features a more superpowered Ripley and that’s a plus over Alien 3. Another reason this film is better is due to how it was not eviscerated in the cutting room floor like the latter.
Alien 3
The first sign to the franchise’s decline and one of the earliest cases of film studios meddling with film production from changes to the script, direction and editing. Though he directed the film, David Fincher has on multiple occasions disowned Alien 3 as his film.
The interference is visible in many versions of the film released over the past 30 years. Scenes and the general story makes no sense, either due to clashing with each other or edited into illogical places.
One version of the film, called the “Assembly Cut”, restored many of the deleted scenes and is closer to Fincher’s original vision. It is considered the superior version that theSun (and many fans of the franchise) would recommend watching.
Prometheus and Alien Covenant
Returning in the director’s chair, Scott approached Prometheus with an attempt to answer the question that no one asked, which is where the Xenomorphs came from by weaving in religious themes.
In Covenant, the question is finally answered but the film suffers under the weight of balancing two different personalities.
On one hand, it is a continuation of the story to Michael Fassbender’s David android and it also has him playing an updated model named Walter. Both characters are part of Scott’s narrative involving the nature of human existence, our creation, where we come from and are heading towards.
On the other hand, the film also desperately wants to be an Alien film with all the shooting, explosions and Xenomorphs gleefully tearing humans apart. The jarring shift is most visible in the film’s last 30 minutes, when it abandons its heady themes to warp into the typical “We need to kill this alien on board our ship” action sequence.
Alien vs Predator and Aliens vs Predator: Requiem
Though the two Alien vs Predator (AvP) films feature both the Xenomorphs and the Yautja Predators, they exist in a separate universe from the Predator and Alien franchises.
These crossover films are ranked the worst for a variety of reasons, from badly written characters, one-dimensional stories, to how Requiem is literally so dark that it is impossible to see anything unless viewers artificially increase their television brightness.
Finally, as the AvP films skew heavily towards the Predators, they add nothing new to the Alien mythology other than Requiem’s Predator-Alien hybrid. If this article was about ranking the Predator franchise, these two would rank much higher.
All films are available to stream on Disney+ Hotstar.
