How to watch the Alien movies in order (chronological and release date)
Aug. 5, 2024Here’s how to watch all the Alien movies in order and the entire Alien timeline explained!
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
WithAlien: Romulusheadingto streaming platforms very soon, making the Alien series nine films long, you may be asking yourself, how do you watch all of the Alien movies in order? From Ridley Scott’s underappreciated Prometheus to David Fincher’s less loved threequel, the Alien saga has zig-zagged through multiple timelines and storylines since the original movie terrified audiences more than 40 years ago. But not to worry, as we have compiled a guide on how to watch the Alien movies in order both chronologically and by release date so you can get started on your goey extraterrestrial marathon quicker.
Often regarded as one of thebest sci-fi moviesof all time, Alien kicked off the franchise with Sigourney Weaver and her team fighting off Xenomorphs the good old-fashioned way, and the star returned for quite a few more movies after that. But the saga has since expanded with Michael Fassbender taking us back in time with Prometheus and Covenant, Romulus taking place between the original and the sequel, and hey, even The Predator got involved at one point or another.
But every movie in the series includes the same three secret ingredients; gore, space travel, and of course, aliens. So without further ado, here’s how to watch all the Alien movies in chronological and release order.
Alien vs. Predator
This became the face-off movie Alien vs. Predator. Cameron wasn’t happy about this idea and decided to work on his own sequel instead, with Paul W. S. Anderson stepping up to the mark. By this point, Anderson had plenty of experience in genre-melding horror thanks to the first Resident Evil film (aka one of thebest video game moviesever made).
Alien vs. Predator follows billionaire businessman Charles Weyland as he investigates an icy pyramid, which just so happens to contain an Alien Queen. As it turns out, the whole thing is part of an ancient ritual to lure humans into birthing Xenomorphs so that travelling Predators have something exciting to hunt.
Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month!
Year:2007Director:The Brothers Strause
Alien vs. Predator wasn’t great, as you can tell from our ownAlien vs Predator: Requiem review. But it did well enough at the box office to justify another one, set immediately after the first movie’s revelation of the birth of hybrid ‘Predalien’. The Predators send a particularly badass member of their own species to Earth in an attempt to kill the hybrid, with lots of humans inevitably caught in the crossfire.
The Brothers Strause replaced Anderson in the director’s chair after forming a strong relationship with Fox on other blockbusters. But the response to the movie was rough. It ended up on several lists of the worst films of 2007 and got a pair of Razzie nominations.
The sibling directors had made noises about making another Alien movie and the box office numbers were decent, but the strength of the critical backlash led Fox to put the creatures back into storage – for a few years at least.
This carried them through to the society of The Engineers, who were seemingly responsible for humanity’s creation, but had chosen to destroy their offspring. Scott and screenwriters Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof packed the film with religious imagery and highfalutin literary allusions, which somewhat put off those who were hoping for a balls-to-the-wall horror movie akin to the first film.
On that basis, the response to Prometheus ended up being quite mixed, although we still gave it a four-star rating in ourPrometheus review. While Scott did eventually get to make a sequel, his plans for a wide-ranging prequel franchise were more or less dead.
Unfortunately, Covenant got caught between two stalls. It’s like the philosophical elements and the blood-and-guts body horror in Covenant are from different movies trying to co-exist awkwardly. The plot is the usual setup – a team of scientists arrive on a planet and subsequently discover some form of parasitic alien – and originality is in short supply.
Scott, at the time, said Covenant was the start of a three-movie arc that would lead straight into Alien, but a combination of soft box office, middling critical notices – like in ourAlien: Covenant review– and theDisney-Fox merger seems to have put an end to his plans.
Year:1979Director:Ridley Scott
Here’s the good stuff. Ridley Scott’s original horror movie, set in approximately the year 2122, is unburdened by complex mythology. It’s just a terrifying tale about the blue-collar crew of a spaceship forced to fight for their lives when something deadly gets aboard. That’s not to mention Sigourney Weaver’s iconic performance as Ellen Ripley.
Every element of Alien works perfectly, from its slow build of tension to the all-out carnage of its second half. HR Giger’s designs for the chest-burster and the xenomorph have never been bettered for the sheer fear factor.
With all of this in mind, it’s no surprise that the film was an enormous success and is often considered one of thebest horror moviesof all time. It’s also completely unsurprising that a movie so influential and successful fired the starting pistol on a franchise that’s still running decades later.
In true legacy sequel style, Fede Álvarez’s Alien: Romulus chooses to ignore the other sequels in the franchise and wedges itself right after the original movie. As we break down in ourAlien: Romulus ending explained guide, the film centers around a group of rebels who are tasked to find the DNA from that Xenomorph that Ripley blasted into space during the 1979 movie.
The Weyland-Yutani Corporation is trying to “save humanity” by creating the perfect organism, and we even get some references to Prometheus as well. However, this is an Alien movie, so obviously, things don’t go well, and soon, the group is being picked off one by one. Alien: Romulus does leave the door open for a potential sequel as well, and technically, there are still 37 years before the next Alien movie in our timeline, so it’s possible we get another addition in the future, too.
Keep your eyes on this page as we update you with all the latest details. But for now, you can read more about Fede Álvarez’s film with ourAlien: Romulus review.
Alien: Romulus is now available to rent on Amazon Prime Video and will be ready to stream on Hulu in the US from November 21. A UK Disney Plus date has yet to be announced.
Year:1986Director:James Cameron
More than 50 years after the events of Alien, Ripley awakens from hypersleep and tries to warn the authorities about what she’s seen. There’s now a terraforming colony on LV-426, so the presence of aliens would be a big problem. Along with a team of Marines, Ripley returns to the surface and discovers that she, of course, was right all along.
Year:1992Director:David Fincher
David Fincher is a household name in Hollywood today, but in the early ‘90s he was best known as the music video director behind songs like Madonna’s ‘Vogue’. Alien 3 was his feature debut and it went so terribly that he has since disowned the entire thing, saying in 2009 that “to this day, no one hates it more than me”.
Immediately after the events of Aliens, Ripley is the sole survivor of an escape pod crash, landing in the middle of a maximum security prison full of violent inmates. Unwittingly, she has brought the embryo of an Alien Queen along with her – inside her body.
Alien 3 had been through multiple iterations before it landed with Fincher and the general perception is that the movie’s myriad flaws weren’t really his fault. Fortunately for him, he’d moved on to the project that would cement him as a truly gifted movie visionary: one of thebest thriller moviesof all time, Se7en.
Year:1997Director:Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Ripley’s death at the end of Alien 3 seemingly stopped more Alien sequels, but Fox inevitably wanted more from the franchise. Weaver wasn’t especially keen to return, but she liked the idea of a slightly twisted version of the character whose DNA had been combined with aXenomorph.
This makes Ripley’s loyalties a little harder to discern as the story goes on, with military scientists using human hosts to breed Xenomorphs for them to study. French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who had a background in sci-fi cinema, was brought in as director.
The result was a film that did better than its predecessor with critics but still failed to hit the heights of the first two movies. Weaver wasn’t against the idea of making another appearance in an Alien film – and she’s still open to it to this day – but Fox decided to focus on the Alien vs. Predator crossover series. That didn’t exactly go brilliantly.
Since the Disney-Fox merger, there have been numerousupcoming moviesand Alien TV shows in development. Most famously, District 9 director Neill Blomkamp spent several years working to put together Alien: Awakening, set after Aliens, which could well have involved the return of Sigourney Weaver.
But new Aliens movies are on the way as according to Fox President Steve Asbell,Alien: Romulus is getting a sequel. “We’re working on a sequel idea now. We haven’t quite closed our deal with Fede [Alvarez], but we are going to, and he has an idea that we’re working on,” said Asbell toThe Hollywood Reporter. The sequel will follow Rain and Andy, but other than that, no other details have been announced. “We know there’s going to be aliens. We know there’s going to be great horror set pieces,” said Asbell. “But I fell in love with both of them and I want to see what their story is.”
The series does have an immediate future on the small screen withAlien: Earth, from Fargo creator Noah Hawley. We don’t know a great deal about that show, other than the fact it’s a prequel to Alien set in the near future and on Earth. It stars Sydney Chandler as a woman with an adult body and a child’s consciousness, which is a fascinating and unconventional idea. The rest of the cast includes Timothy Olyphant, Essie Davis, and Alex Lawther.
Before you check out the new Alien movie, here’s our list of all themovies and TV shows to watch before Alien: Romulus. We also have a list of the 30greatest Alien factsif you love a bit of sci-fi trivia.
Tom is a freelance film critic and entertainment journalist with bylines at Yahoo, The Guardian, Polygon, The Ringer, and many more. He loves horror movies, musicals, and pro wrestling—but not usually at the same time.
On its 10th anniversary, Christopher Nolan reflects on Interstellar’s continued popularity after watching it for the first time in a decade: “It was a very special thing to see”
Netflix’s new #1 movie is a sci-fi thriller that stars Megan Fox as an AI robot - and it has a pretty divisive Rotten Tomatoes score
Kraven the Hunter review: “The insistence on an R-rating helps save this, with a decent helping of bloodthirsty action”
