Time to catch up on some long overdue sci-fi, so here’s our handy guide to what’s on! An Alien always makes for a terrific movie hook, whether it’s a world where they’re running rampant like in Guardians of the Galaxy or a world where they’re literally hunting us out one by one, like in the entire Predator film Series.
“Alien” is not only one of the best sci-fi movies ever made, it’s one the best movies ever made. Experience the ultimate in sci-fi terror with Alien films, centered on officer Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and her battles with an extraterrestrial lifeform, commonly referred to as “the Alien” or Xenomorph. The series began with Alien (1979), which follows warrant officer Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and her crew, who encounter the eponymous Alien. The story of her character’s encounters with the Alien creatures became the thematic and narrative core of the sequels Aliens (1986), Alien 3 (1992), and Alien Resurrection (1997).
Ridley Scott’s newest chilling a prequel installments, composed of Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017), follows the exploits of the David 8 android and the creators of the eponymous creatures referred to as the “Engineers”. This bringing you ever closer toward discovering the mysterious origins of the deadliest creatures in cinematic history!
Several offshoots have been spawned from the series, most notably the Alien vs. Predator films, which merge the storylines of the Alien and Predator series. The Alien vs. Predator franchise shows a series of deadly encounters between humans and two hostile extraterrestrial species: the Aliens, which are dangerous parasites, and the Predators, who are technologically advanced warriors who hunt and fight other dangerous life forms for sport and honor.
So if you’re planning to watch the Alien series in order. Below is a guide to the best order to watch the Alien films. From the early entries to the recent Alien movies, this guide covers all movies of Alien in order of release.
How to Watch Alien Movies in Chronological Order
1. Prometheus (2012)
Sets some 30 years before the events of Alien, scientists Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie Holloway discover a star map among the remnants of several ancient Earth cultures. Accompanied by David 8 and hoping to discover the origins of humanity, the journey aboard the spaceship USCSS Prometheus and arrive on the distant planet LV-223 in the Zeta2 Reticuli system, the same region of space in which the planetoid LV-426 from Alien is found.
There they discover the ancient remains of an advanced civilization, called the Engineers (the same race as the dead pilot from the derelict ship in Alien), who were developing biological weapons in the form of a pathogenic mutagen that could have driven the human race extinct. The horrors they encounter result in the loss of the crew except for David and Shaw.
2. Alien: Covenant (2017)
Sets eleven years after the events of Prometheus, the colony ship USCSS Covenant, carrying thousands of colonists and hundreds of human embryos in cryo-stasis, makes its way towards the planet Origae-6. The crew is awakened by a neutrino blast and intercepts a transmission sent from Shaw, which they decide to trace to an apparently habitable Engineer homeworld (referred to as Planet 4), devoid of all non-floral life.
When several crew members are infected by the same mutagen encountered by the Prometheus crew and give birth to a new breed of Alien, the Neomorphs, the android David 8 rescues them. It is revealed that he brought Shaw to the planet, where he killed all non-floral life and began experimenting on Shaw’s corpse to engineer his own breeds of Aliens. His motivations to replace human life with Aliens are made apparent, and with the birth of yet another new breed of Alien, a terraforming expert named Daniels and the remaining crew are forced to flee from the world.
After disposing of the Aliens chasing them, the crew members return to the Covenant and are put back into cryosleep by someone they believe to be their shipboard synthetic, Walter. Only when Daniels is put in her cryopod does she realize that Walter has been replaced by the identical David. With the crew, colonists, and embryos at his mercy, David contacts Weyland-Yutani back on Earth, stating that while the majority of the crew was killed in the neutrino blast, they would continue to Origae-6.
3. Alien (1979)
Set 19 years the events of Alien: Covenant (2017), Alien (1979) follows the commercial mining spaceship USCSS Nostromo, which is diverted to a desolate planetoid by a cryptic signal from a derelict alien spacecraft.
Inside the alien ship, the crew discovers thousands of egg-like objects. A creature, released from one of the eggs, attaches itself to a crewman’s face, rendering him unconscious. The others break quarantine to return him to the Nostromo. The parasite dies and the crewman wakes up, seemingly unaffected.
Soon afterward, an alien organism bursts from his chest and grows rapidly into a large lethal creature, which the surviving crew attempt to kill. The Nostromo is destroyed in an unsuccessful attempt to kill the creature, and Ripley is the only survivor in the ship’s lifeboat.
4. Alien: Isolation (2019) [Web series]
Alien: Isolation takes place 15 years after the original film and follows Amanda Ripley, daughter of Ellen Ripley, as she accompanies a Weyland-Yutani team being sent to retrieve the flight recorder of her mother’s ship, the Nostromo, recently located by the crew of a salvage vessel Anesidora and being held aboard the Seegson corporation remote Sevastopol space station in orbit around the KG-348 gas giant, on request of Christopher Samuels, an android working for the Weyland-Yutani corporation, so that Ripley can have closure regarding the fate of her missing mother.
Ripley, Samuels, and Weyland-Yutani executive Nina Taylor travel to Sevastopol on board the Torrens courier ship, only to find the station damaged and its communications offline. After attempting to spacewalk over to the station to investigate, their EVA line is severed by debris, and Ripley is separated from the others and forced to enter the station on her own, encountering hostile androids, humans, and an unknown alien organism.
5. Aliens (1986)
The terror continues in this chilling, critically acclaimed sequel as Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), the sole survivor of the Nostromo’s deadly encounter with the monstrous Alien, returns to Earth after drifting through space in hypersleep for 57 years.
After 57 years in hypersleep, Ripley awakens aboard a medical space station orbiting Earth. She recounts the events of the Nostromo but is disbelieved by her superiors in the Weyland Yutani corporation, which has now begun to terraform and colonize the planetoid from the first film. When contact with the colony is lost, Ripley is persuaded to accompany a squad of Marines to investigate. They discover the colonists have been wiped out after being directed by the company to secure the derelict ship reported by Ripley. There is only one survivor, a girl named Newt. The aliens vastly outnumber and quickly overwhelm the Marines, who fight for survival. Only a handful, including Ripley and Newt, escape.
6. Alien 3 (1992)
Sets right after the events of Aliens, the military ship USS Sulaco, carrying the survivors, catches fire. The occupants are ejected in an escape pod, which crash-lands on the refinery/prison planet Fiorina “Fury” 161. All onboard except Ripley are killed. Ripley, the sole survivor of the spaceship Nostromo’s encounter with a deadly extraterrestrial in Alien, and subsequent victor over the Alien Queen after an epic battle in the cargo hold of the military transport ship Sulaco in Aliens.
After escaping from the alien planet, the ship carrying Ripley crashes onto a remote and inhabited ore refinery. While living in the ore refinery until she is rescued by her employers, Ripley discovers the horrifying reason for her crash: An alien stowaway. As the alien matures and begins to kill off the inhabitants, Ripley discovers that her true enemy is more than just the killer alien.
7. Alien Resurrection (1997)
Sets 200 years after the preceding installment Alien 3, after her last adventure, a group of scientists has cloned Ellen Ripley along with the alien queen inside her, hoping to breed the ultimate weapon. But the resurrected Ripley is full of surprises for her resurrectors–as are the aliens they’ve attempted to imprison.
The United Systems Military hopes to breed Aliens to study and research on the spaceship USM Auriga, using human hosts kidnapped and delivered to them by a group of mercenaries. The Aliens escape their enclosures, while Ripley and the mercenaries attempt to escape and destroy the Auriga before it reaches its destination: Earth.
Alien vs Predator Movies in Order [Crossover series]
“It may be our planet, but it?s their war!” The deadliest creatures from the scariest sci-fi movies ever made face off for the first time on film. Whoever wins…we lose.
Inspired by the Dark Horse Comics series, the filmmakers of Predator 2 (1990) incorporated an easter egg in which an Alien skull was seen in a Predator trophy case. Expansions upon this shared universe between the Alien and Predator franchises followed through comics and video games, leading up to the launch of a film franchise with the release of Alien vs. Predator in 2004, followed by Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem in 2007.
The franchise depict a series of deadly conflicts between humans and two alien races: the ferocious, endoparasitoid Aliens, and the technologically advanced warriors who hunt for personal sport and honor, the Predators. Spin-off to both the Alien and Predator franchises, primarily set in the present day of the 21st century, the show depicts humankind’s encounters with alien species and how they influenced human civilization and weaponry, including the Colonel Marines, the United America, and those involved with the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, as seen in the Alien franchise of the future. So given below are the Alien and Predator movies in order to watch.
1. Alien vs. Predator (2004)
In 2004, a Predator mothership arrives in Earth orbit to lure people to an ancient Predator training ground on Bouvetya, an island about 1,000 miles north of Antarctica. A group of explorers led by billionaire and self-taught engineer Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen), the original founder and CEO of Weyland Industries, are drawn to a buried pyramid that is giving off a “heat bloom.” This “heat bloom” turns on an Alien egg production line at the same time that a sleeping Alien Queen is woken up inside the pyramid. Three Predators land on the planet and enter the structure, killing all humans in their way so they can hunt the newly formed Aliens.
Meanwhile, the scattered explorers are taken alive by the Aliens and given embryos. Two Predators die in the ensuing fight with an Alien, while the third joins forces with Alexa “Lex” Woods (Sanaa Lathan), the only human left alive, as they make their way out of the pyramid as it is destroyed by the Predator’s wrist bomb, and fights the Alien Queen who got away on the surface. The Queen loses because a water tower pulls her into the dark depths of the frozen sea, but not before she kills the last Predator. The Predator mothership in orbit takes off its cover, and the crew goes to get the fallen Predator. As a sign of respect, a Predator elder gives Lex a spear and then leaves. Once in orbit, it turns out that an Alien Chestburster was inside the dead body, making it a hybrid of a predator and an alien.
2. Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)
Set right after the last movie, the Predalien hybrid on the Predator scout ship has grown to full adult size and starts killing the Predators on board, causing the ship to crash in Gunnison, Colorado. The last remaining Predator sends out a distress signal that includes a video recording of the Predalien. This signal is picked up by a veteran Predator on the Predator homeworld, who then heads toward Earth to “clean up” the problem.
When it gets there, the Predator follows the Aliens into a section of the sewer below the town where they are hiding. He uses a corrosive blue liquid to get rid of signs of their presence as he moves along and a laser net to try to keep the creatures in place, but the Aliens still manage to get away into the town above. The Predator uses its remaining plasma caster to make a plasma pistol and hunts Aliens all over town, cutting the power to the town in the process. During an encounter with human survivors, the Predator loses its plasma pistol.
The Predator then fights the Predalien by himself, and the two of them kill each other just as the US air force drops a tactical nuclear bomb on the town, killing both of them along with the Predalien’s warriors and hive and the few humans who were still there. The plasma pistol is then taken to Ms. Yutani of the Yutani Corporation. This foreshadows a technological advance that will lead to events in the later Alien movies.
How many Alien movies are there?
The Alien film series consists of a total of SIX (6) movies. The series began with Alien (1979), directed by Ridley Scott, and was followed by three sequels: Aliens (1986), directed by James Cameron; Alien 3 (1992), directed by David Fincher, and Alien Resurrection (1997), directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Scott also directed a prequel series, composed of Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017), which follows the exploits of the David 8 android and the creators of the eponymous creatures referred to as the “Engineers”.
All Alien Movies in Order of Release Date
Here is the list of Alien films in order, they were released.
Original series:
1. Alien — May 25, 1979
2. Aliens — July 18, 1986
3. Alien 3 — May 22, 1992
4. Alien Resurrection — November 26, 1997
Crossover series:
1. Alien vs. Predator (2004)
2. Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)
Prequel series:
1. Prometheus — June 8, 2012
2. Alien: Covenant — May 19, 2017
Television series:
1. Alien — TBA
Web series:
1. Alien: Isolation – The Digital Series — February 28, 2019
Where to Watch Alien Movies?
You are able to stream Alien films in Order by renting or purchasing on Amazon Prime because it is pretty much solely available to watch on Amazon Prime, you may be able to Rent and buy on Vudu and Apple TV.
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