Only the first two films are properly successful, and arguably in separate subgenres, and I'd not want to split them to award gold and silver.
Alien 3 remains an outlier for me. I've only seen it once - back in Los Angeles in 1992 on its original release - and disliked it so much then that I've never gone back. But I think it's probably ripe for a revision - on paper it's not ridiculous. I think the fact that it started from the position of ripping-up Aliens put it in my bad books from the off, but I don't otherwise have any major objections to where it goes.
Alien Resurrection, by contrast, got off on the wrong foot on paper - i.e. a pure exercise in extending the franchise at any cost - but ultimately doesn't do too bad in the end with its theme of motherhood. And, as a biologist, I always liked the way that its scientists were up-front in noticing the problem with Ripley's memories there, and honest in not having an answer for this.
12 years on from my original review, Prometheus is still massively problematic for me. On top of its lame retreading or out-and-out stupidity, it tries to completely rewrite the Alien as a mere weapon in a narrow humanity-centred narrative rather than an example of the nasty surprises that a vast universe could have in store for us. That it then does this in a cack-handed way with no consistency in logic or styling (something Romulus gets very right) just compounds the problem.
Alien: Covenant - as I checked yesterday - gets off to a similarly shitty start, but at least is inventively nasty, so has the edge over Prometheus for me. Although the flute scene is still pretty unforgivable.
Flash-forward to today, Alien: Romulus gets things back on track, particularly with its strong aesthetic callback to Alien / Aliens. A strong heroine, a nicely ambiguous android character (who I really liked), and some great visuals definitely help. However, while its plot is not ridiculous in its general logic, assimilating Prometheus’s black goo bullshit is a major misstep. It could have just stuck with Alien’s presentation of the company as a malign force that's ignorant about the Alien and complacent in handling it. But instead it ret-conns in Prometheus’ stupid themes and makes the company's technical prowess much greater than it should be if you take the first two films (the only really good films) at face value. In fact, by blending-in the black goo as something that company scientists have worked on to the extent of including it in a serum, the film is arguably incoherent - if you got this far with your science, why then have facehuggers in cold storage? But, Romulus, for all its flaws, is still better than Prometheus and Covenant.
Although, to be kind to both of them, both are still so much better than the lowest-common-denominator of the Alien vs. Predator films. Those take what's not a totally terrible idea - as the first comic clearly demonstrated - and make it terrible. Especially Requiem. For detractors, like myself, of the late Ridley Scott films, who see those as largely lazy cash-ins of what's easily one of his best films, the Alien vs. Predator films underscore what truly constitutes creatively bankrupt cashing-in.
Finally, it'd be very remiss not to mention Alien: Isolation here. While "only a videogame", it's a simply first-class example of its form, and makes a number of spot-on choices in how it deals with the canon. First, and most visibly, it leans strongly into the aesthetics of Alien, much like Romulus (which may be where the latter got the idea to do this from). But it also makes excellent use of androids, quite rightly frames capitalism - via the malevolent Company - as an underpinning enemy, is true to the "last person standing" narrative of the original films, and generally doesn't put a foot wrong. Most significantly, though this more of is a gaming thing, it makes an absolutely exceptional enemy out of a single Alien, with a great look and insanely good - and terrifying - artificial intelligence. And, as a hater of all things Prometheus, I can't not mention that it does precisely the right thing with all of that black goo bullshit ... and completely ignores it.
Approximating the above, we have something like ...
- Alien (1979), Aliens (1986)
- Alien Resurrection (1997)
- Alien 3 (1992)
- Alien: Romulus (2024)
- Alien: Covenant (2017)
- Prometheus (2012)
- Alien vs. Predator (2004)
- Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)
Arguably, the linear scaling of this ranking is too kind to everything after Alien: Romulus.
