How To Watch The 'Alien' Movies In Release & Chronological Order

Cosmopolitan

a day ago

With Alien: Earth, a new FX series from creator Noah Hawley, comes the perfect excuse to watch all of the movies from the series that brought us Ellen Ripley, the Xenomorph, David the android, and a whole lot of deep space thrills and chills from some pretty impressive directors. To make it easier for you than any of the poor souls in these movies have it at any given time, here's what you need to know to watch the Alien movies in order.
Before we get started: there was also a time in the naughty aughties when the, err, alien species from Alien made an co-starring appearance in two crossover movies: 2004's Alien vs. Predator and 2007's Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. As far as I'm concerned, those movies are extra credit. If you're super invested in the extraterrestrial part of Alien, feel free to slot those babies in between 1997's Alien: Resurrection and 2012's Prometheus. Try to fight the urge to then, ofc, watch all of the Predator movies, including the 2022 Amber Midthunder vehicle Prey, and 2025's Predator: Badlands. Why so many movies!?!!
Without further ado, here are the Alien (no Predator allowed) movies in release order:
The first movie, directed by Ridley Scott, follows a crew of scientists who work for a company called Weyland-Yutani and answer what they think is a distress call from a planet on the way home to Earth. They inadvertently bring a deadly alien called a "xenomorph" back with them and have to fight the creature, company policy, and their own inability to listen to women (Ellen Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver) in order to survive. Despite the title and the setting, the O.G. Alien is actually more of a horror movie than a science fiction movie. It's essentially structured like a classic slasher flick, but instead of a haunted house or a cabin in the woods the people a mysterious killer is picking off, one by one until only the final girl is left, are on a spaceship.
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Many fans of the franchise, or of movies in general, prefer director James Cameron's sequel. It turns Ripley from a final girl into a full action heroine–but men still don't listen to her! Five decades after the first movie, Weyland-Yutani wakes Ripley up from cryostasis to ask for her help with the moon where she and her crew first encountered a xenomorph, because the company now want to terraform it and lost contact with the colonizers. When they land, they find only one survivor: a girl named Newt. Thankfully, this Ripley at least is backed by the military, instead of scientists and an evil corporate robot more concerned with following orders than human lives. Her compadres are as willing to kill the aliens as she is, which must help with the trauma. Some even survive!
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The third movie in the franchise also happens to be directed by a third major director: David Fincher, known best for Se7en, Fight Club, Gone Girl, and The Social Network. This is actually his first feature film. Alien 3 takes place immediately after Aliens as Ripley and [redacted] other survivors escape the moon. Will she finally catch a break, or at least a chance to process everything she has experienced? Absolutely not. She crash lands, with a stray xenomorph still on board her ship, onto a prison planet that does not even allow the guards to have weapons. They're angry, isolated, and totally defenseless. Talk about upping the stakes!
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Winona Ryder is in this one! This film is set 200 years after Alien 3, when Ripley is long dead. The title Resurrection, however, should give you a clue as to what happens next. Military scientists in the future clone Weaver's character and a xenomorph for study. Thanks to an experiment gone wrong, a group of mercenaries, and an unexpected glitch in the cloning process, a battle ensues as Ripley gets closer to Earth than ever before. Weaver was a co-producer on the movie and Joss Whedon wrote the screenplay. Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet followed this up with Amélie in 2001. Isn't that, to use some classic late 00s slang, so random?
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After the brief AVP duology/diversion, the Alien movies did what so many franchises tend to do: back it up. Prometheus is a prequel directed by Ridley Scott in a return to the IP. It takes place in 2089 and follows a crew commissioned by the founder and CEO of the Weyland Corporation played by Guy Pearce, and lead by an archaeologist played by Noomi Rapace, an early android named David played by Michael Fassbender, the captain played by Idris Elba, a corporate stiff played by Charlize Theron, and a cool scientist played by Logan Marshall-Green. What they find when they get where they're going is a major lore drop, Alien wise.
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The 2017 movie is infamous for Fassbender making out with himself. (It seems silly to say given everything that has happened since, but we needed something to smile about in 2017.) It follows a colonist ship in 2104 that answers a transmission from a mysterious, uncharted planet where David and the survivors of Prometheus landed between films. A lot of the action takes place on land in a jungle–a little like Alien meets Jurassic Park. (Just a little, though. Let's not be crazy! Xenomorphs make raptors look like puppies.)
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This spin-off, directed by Fede Álvarez, is set between Alien and Aliens while Ellen is taking a cryo nap. It got back to basics with a new haunted house story featuring Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn, and Aileen Wu as potential victims. Their characters, space colonists (again) running away from their home and contracts to make a new life for themselves on a new planet free from Weyland-Yutani, sneak onto a space station called Romulus to steal cryostasis equipment. Unfortunately for them, a cocoon containing a xenomorph (as well as a lot of unhatched eggs) recovered from theAlien spaceship happens to be in storage on the Romulus.
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Want to follow the ongoing story of a f*cked up world from beginning to end? The new FX series Alien: Earth is set one year before the events of Alien. As we mentioned above, movies like Prometheus, Alien: Covenant and Alien: Romulus are prequels to the original movies in the franchise. So, in planning your Alien marathon, it might be smart to watch these in "story" order a.k.a. "timeline" order or chronological order instead of the order they came out. Again, for extra credit, you can also include Alien vs. Predator and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem in the saga. If you do, start with them because they take place, like, waaaaaay before Prometheus even in 2004. They're basically period pieces now...yikes!