The Alien franchise is undoubtedly one of the best-loved sci-fi horror franchises in cinema, and watching all the movies in chronological order is an interesting way to approach the saga.
From Ridley Scott’s eery, claustrophobic masterpiece Alien, via James Cameron’s action shoot-em-up sequel Aliens, through the Alien vs Predator crossovers and the head-scratching prequels Prometheus and Covenant, it’s safe to say the franchise is at this point, pretty well fleshed-out.
Discover our pick of the best space and sci-fi movies and the best horror movies set in space.
But Alien is also the franchise that refuses to stay still. With all the staying power of a newly-hatched facehugger scrambling to find a host, it seems like new comic books, computer games and stories set within the Alien world are continually being released.
Case in point: a new Alien TV series is expected to arrive on streaming platform Hulu in 2025, and on 16 August 2024 we’ll see the release of the latest movie, entitled Alien: Romulus.
If you’re looking forward to the series and the release of Romulus, you may want to brush up on your Alien knowledge with a binge-watch of the series so far.
Here’s our guide to the Alien movies and how to watch them in order.
Alien movies by release date
- Alien (1979)
- Aliens (1986)
- Alien 3 (1992)
- Alien Resurrection (1997)
- Alien vs Predator (2004)
- Aliens vs Predator: Requiem (2007)
- Prometheus (2012)
- Alien: Covenant (2017)
- Alien: Romulus (2024)
Alien movies in chronological order
- Alien vs Predator (2004)
- Aliens vs Predator: Requiem (2007)
- Prometheus (2012)
- Alien: Covenant (2017)
- Alien (1979)
- Alien: Romulus (2024)
- Aliens (1986)
- Alien 3 (1992)
- Alien Resurrection (1997)
Alien movies chronological order and plots
Alien vs Predator (2004)
It seems strange that we begin our journey watching all the Alien movies in order with one of the more recent (and forgettable?) entries in the franchise.
Sci-fi fans were long salivating at the prospect of an Alien/Predator crossover, and AVP felt like it was some time coming.
Having already been seen together in comic book format throughout the 1990s, it was something of an inevitability that the meeting of Predator and Xenomorph would eventually make it to the big screen.
The first AVP movie begins with scientists discovering a unidentified source of heat below the surface of Antarctica, which is found to be a huge pyramid located beneath the ice.
A team is sent to investigate, and find that the pyramid is home to a species of hostile Xenomorphs, who promptly begin hunting and annihilating the unwitting scientists.
A group of Predators show up for a spot of sport and begin hunting the Xenomorphs as a means to fill up their trophy cabinet.
Bad news for the human scientists, who of course find themselves caught in the middle.
Alien Vs Predator presents some pretty cool ideas: notably that the Predators have been visiting Earth for millennia, having taught humans how to build pyramids and been subsequently worshipped as gods.
Since then, the Predators have returned once a century, using humans as hosts to produce more Xenomorph prey for their hunting bouts.
Alien Vs Predator is a decent movie, but has unfortunately gone down in cinematic history as something of a critical flop.
While there’s plenty of action and Xenomorph/Predator sequences to sate fans of both creatures, it fails to come anywhere near the best movies of the respective franchises.
Despite all the promise of finally pitting Predators and Xenomorphs onscreen together, the first Alien Vs Predator movie was panned by critics, and retains a fairly low score on online aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes.
Yet, most likely through the allure of finally seeing the two giants together for the first time, AVP was a financial success.
Aliens vs Predator: Requiem (2007)
The second AVP movie begins where the first left off: the Predators lift-off from Earth in their spaceship, only for a Xenomorph to erupt from the chest of their fallen comrade, Scar.
The newly-born Predalien (Predator/Xenomorph hybrid) matures and kills the Predators on board the ship, causing it to crash in a forest near a small town in Colorado.
As you would expect, chaos ensues as the Predalien and facehuggers escape from the Predator ship and begin getting up to their old tricks.
The only Predator survivor from the crash manages to send out a distress signal, before being finished off by the Predalien.
That signal reaches the Predators’ home world and is picked up by Wolf, a veteran Predator warrior. Wolf travels to Earth to begin the clean-up operation.
On the human side of things, we’re introduced to an ex-convict called Dallas and his brother Ricky, as well as a US Army soldier, Kelly, who’s returning home from active service.
Needless to say, AVP: Requiem plays out much like the first movie: humans caught in the middle of a battle between the two extra-terrestrial species.
Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem grossed less than Alien Vs Predator at the Box Office, which is probably a sign that by this stage the novelty had worn off, and AVP’s failure to satisfyingly deliver the goods had not enticed cinema-goers to return for the sequel.
This also likely explains why there wasn’t a third movie in the AVP franchise to round off a nice, neat trilogy.
A third AVP movie might have focussed on Ms Yutani, who discovers the Predator’s plasma pistol at the end of Requiem, in a scene that seems to hint at an origin story for the evil Weyland Yutani Corporation of the Alien movies.
The inclusion of Lance Henriksen as Charles Bishop Weyland in the first Alien Vs Predator movie is another nod intended to tie the AVP series in with the Alien canon and lend it a familiarity for fans.
Ultimately, however, much like the first AVP movie, Requiem was generally panned by critics.
That being said, it’s a more action-packed affair than the first, and for that reason is potentially more worth viewers’ time.
Prometheus
Yes, we’re still two films away from the first appearance of Ripley. If you’re watching the Alien movies in chronological order, the prequels come after the AVP movies.
Prometheus and its sequel, Alien: Covenant, are where the Alien timeline gets messy, if you want to consider the Alien Vs Predator movies part of the canon.
While the Alien Vs Predator movies take place in the (relatively) present day, Prometheus begins in the year 2089 and introduces characters known as the Engineers, who are thought to be the creators of humans.
The story begins with two archaeologists discovering a star map that leads to a distant moon known as LV-223, which they interpret as an invitation sent by the Engineers.
A crew is sent to investigate, and travels to LV-233 in stasis on the ship Prometheus.
There they encounter a strange, alien life form and attempt to discover who the Engineers are, and what they might reveal about humanity’s origins.
Prometheus features a few tropes familiar to Alien viewers, such as ‘impregnation’ by an alien species, an untrustworthy android assistant and general sci-fi terror.
But at the time of the movie’s release, Prometheus was billed as being an Alien prequel, leading many audiences to expect an appearance of the Xenomorphs in some shape or form.
As it is, the Alien Xenomorphs that we know and love from the rest of the franchise do not make an appearance in Prometheus, earning it something of a ‘love it/hate it’ reputation among viewers.
Ultimately, Prometheus was a relative box office success and was positively received by critics.
Alien: Covenant
Covenant continues the Alien prequels by picking up where Prometheus left off.
The story begins in the year 2104, 11 years after the events of Prometheus, and a ship called Covenant is on its way to planet Origae-6 with a large population of human colonists in stasis, along with a supply of human embryos.
The ship is headed by Walter, an android that looks like the unnerving android David from the previous film, who awakens the crew from stasis when the Covenant is hit by a neutrino burst.
They receive a call from a nearby planet that’s described as being a perfect world, and the crew decide to land there instead of continuing their journey to Origae-6.
They discover, unsurprisingly, that this new planet is anything but paradise, and two of the members become infected by inadvertently inhaling spores distributed by local flora.
Much chest-bursting and alien action ensures, and Prometheus android David makes a reappearance, being established as the creator of the new hostile organisms populating the planet.
This makes a strong case for David having been the creator of the Xenomorphs that we know from the Alien franchise, but if you search for answers online, you’ll find a healthy debate regarding this issue.
Like Prometheus, Alien: Covenant was largely praised by critics, but was something of a financial disappointment for the studio.
Alien (1979)
For some, the true Alien canon is the Ripley Saga, so-called because these are the films that follow the exploits of Ellen Ripley, protagonist and all-round badass.
The film opens with the commercial spaceship Nostromo making its way back to Earth with its crew in stasis.
The ship’s intelligent onboard computer, known as Mother, wakes the crew from their sleep after detecting a transmission from a nearby moon.
The crew protest, but are reminded of the company’s policy about investigating any transmissions that appear to be of intelligent origin.
They land, go exploring and find a spaceship containing the corpse of a large humanoid alien.
The crew also discover an expansive chamber containing a mass of large, alien pods.
One of the crew is smothered by a spider-like creature that hatches from a pod, and is taken back to the ship.
Eventually the creature – which would become known as a ‘facehugger’ in Alien parlance – detaches itself and all seems well.
During dinner, an alien bursts through the affected crew member’s chest and scuttles off before it can be captured.
What follows is a masterpiece in claustrophobic sci-fi horror, as the remainder of the crew attempt to track down the ever-growing alien being before it annihilates them all.
There’s nothing that can be written about Ridley Scott’s masterpiece that hasn’t been written before.
It’s a masterclass in suspense, containing many memorable pieces of dialogue and iconic scenes, its influential tendrils still feeling their way through contemporary sci-fi cinema.
Aliens
If Alien was an eerie, claustrophobic sci-fi horror movie, Aliens might best be described as laser-blasting action adventure.
Ripley wakes after 57 years in stasis, having been rescued from the escape pod she is seen climbing into at the end of Alien.
She’s debriefed – and cross-examined – by the bigwigs at the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, who have trouble believing her story about strange eggs, facehuggers and alien creatures.
What doesn’t help Ripley’s story is the fact that the moon she and her colleagues landed on in the previous film, LV-426, is now a human colony.
When the corporation loses contact with the colony, Ripley begrudgingly agrees to join a group of Colonial Marines to travel to the moon’s surface and investigate.
Unsurprisingly, they find the moon infested with Xenomorphs, who have wiped out all but one of the human colonists: a little girl named Newt.
Their ship crashes during an attempted evacuation and Ripley and the Marines find themselves stranded, barricaded-in and being hunted by a swarm of Xenomorphs.
Alien and Aliens tend to jostle for primary preference among fans of the franchise: some preferring the slow-burning tension and creepiness of the first movie, others preferring James Cameron’s penchant for action and adventure in the second.
While Alien saw a commercial crew attempt to battle a single Xenomorph, Aliens sees a Marine Corp attempt to battle a whole colony of Xenomorphs.
Aliens also introduces us to the Queen Xenomorph and explores the biological cycle of the species, with fairly gruesome results, it has to be said.
Needless to say, in case you’re entirely unaware, Aliens was a huge financial success and is largely considered to be one of the greatest sci-fi films of all time: certainly one of the highlights of James Cameron’s long and illustrious career.
Our tip? Seek out a high-definition version of the Director’s Cut and watch Aliens on a big TV with a quality sound system. Turn out the lights and settle in. You’re in for a treat.
Alien: Romulus
The latest instalment in the franchise, Alien: Romulus is set to be released worldwide on 16 August 2024.
We don’t yet know what to expect, but we do know that Romulus is going to be part of the canonical Alien timeline, set between Alien and Aliens, meaning if you’re watching the Alien movies in chronological order, this latest entry interrupts the Ripley Saga for a moment.
However, currently there’s no suggestion of any reference being made in Romulus to either Alien or Aliens.
From what we do know, it seems Alien: Romulus will play out like you might expect: a group of space colonists board a derelict space station and happen to cross paths with a host of Xenomorphs.
Watching the trailer for Alien: Romulus, it feels like this is a back-to-basics Alien movie, which will please any fans who watched Prometheus and Covenant and couldn’t help feel a straight-up Xenomorph story might have been more entertaining.
The Romulus trailer makes it seem like the new movie will be claustrophobic, dark and pretty terrifying.
This is heightened by the fact that the project is directed by Fede Álvarez, best known for the suspense horror Don’t Breathe (2016) and the utterly outrageous 2013 Evil Dead remake.
Alien: Romulus will premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival on 15 August 2024 and be released worldwide the following day, 16 August.
Alien 3
Back to the Ripley Saga now with Alien 3, which picks up after the events of Aliens.
Ripley is the only survivor, and her escape pod crashes on a planet that’s home to a penal colony filled with violent prisoners.
And Ripley’s not alone. She’s unwittingly carrying a Xenomorph embryo inside her.
A facehugger that hatched onboard the Marine Corp’s ship makes its way into the penal colony and attaches itself to one of the inmate’s dogs, ‘birthing’ a Xenomorph/dog hybrid that begins terrorising the prison.
Ripley learns she’s the host of a Xenomorph Queen and convinces the inmates to help her hunt down the Xenomorph and dispose of the embryo inside her, before it’s too late.
Alien 3 certainly divides opinion as it’s a much grimier, darker and frankly grimmer affair than Alien and Aliens.
The fact that it’s set onboard a prison, the fact that Ripley is carrying a Xenomorph embryo: numerous elements combine to give Alien 3 much less of a ‘blockbuster action movie’ feel.
It also explores the sinister intentions of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation and their desire to harvest the Xenomorphs to turn them into biological weapons.
Alien 3 is heavily stylised and features some memorable performances from a great cast, but anyone looking for a repeat of the first two movies will likely disappointed.
That said, Alien 3 does stand well on its own; its downfall was perhaps how much its tone jars with what had come before it, especially where audiences were seeking more of the same from the franchise.
Alien Resurrection
The last movie in the Alien franchise, chronologically speaking, is Alien Resurrection, set way far in the future, 200 years after the events of Alien 3.
After her death at the end of Alien 3, DNA from Ripley’s blood samples is used to create a Ripley clone onboard the spaceship Auriga, where scientists are experimenting with Xenomorph DNA.
And because Ripley was carrying the Xenomorph Queen inside her, the clone Ripley – known as ‘Ripley 8’ – also contains Queen DNA.
This makes her something of a ‘Super Ripley’: stronger, faster and a force to be reckoned with.
A group of mercenaries board the Auriga to deliver human subjects in stasis. These kidnapped victims are to be used as hosts to enable the scientists to develop new Xenomorphs in captivity.
The Xenomorphs manage to escape, the majority of the ship’s staff are either killed or flee and Ripley 8 and the mercenaries band together to make it off the ship in one piece.
Alien Resurrection feels much more like the first two Alien films, tonally at least.
This is more of a fun sci-fi action adventure than Alien 3, and the colourful mercenaries who join forces with Ripley 8 are a big part of that.
There are also interesting genetic questions at play, as Ripley 8 ultimately seeks to find out more about the cloning process that brought her back from the dead, and what happened to the previous 7 clones.
We also see a half-human-half-xenomorph hybrid that believes Ripley to be its mother, with terrifying consequences.
Ultimately Resurrection is a return to the feel of the first two movies in the franchise, even though it doesn’t come close to matching the brilliance of either Alien or Aliens.
That said, if you’re watching the Alien movies in chronological order ahead of the release of Romulus, this is a nice positive note to end on.
Have you watched the Alien movies in chronological order? Which is your favourite? Let us know by emailing contactus@skyatnightmagazine.com