Tier List
Alien Movies Tier List: All 7 Films Ranked (2026)
All 7 films in the Alien saga, from Ridley Scott's 1979 original through the Prometheus prequels to 2024's Alien: Romulus, ranked from S-tier to D-tier. Then settle Alien versus Aliens yourself with head-to-head comparisons.
The Complete Alien Tier List
No franchise has a harder act to follow than its own first two films. Alien (1979) is a horror film about being hunted in a corridor; Aliens (1986) is a war film about being outnumbered; and the five that came afterwards have spent forty years arguing about which of those the series is supposed to be. Here is every Alien film ranked into classic S/A/B/C/D tiers, prequels included. Think Prometheus is better than its reputation, or that Aliens beats the original? Settle it yourself in minutes with Shortlist.
Alien
(1979)A haunted-house film in a corridor, and still the most frightening thing the genre has produced. Ridley Scott shoots the Nostromo like a working ship rather than a set, H.R. Giger's creature is designed so you never quite see all of it, and Sigourney Weaver's Ripley became the template every sci-fi lead has been measured against since. The chestburster is famous; the silence around it is why it works.
Aliens
(1986)James Cameron does not repeat the first film, he changes genre on it: one alien becomes a war, and the horror becomes a siege. The Colonial Marines, the drop, the power loader and Ripley as a mother rather than a survivor. Weaver got a Best Actress nomination out of a summer action sequel, which almost never happens, and the Alien-or-Aliens argument has run for forty years because both answers are defensible.
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Alien: Romulus
(2024)The first entry in decades that a general audience and the die-hards agreed on. Fede Alvarez sets it between the first two films, on a derelict station, with a young crew who have no idea what they have found, and he shoots practical wherever he can. It is deliberately made of parts of the earlier films, which is its one real limitation and also the reason it lands.
Alien 3
(1992)David Fincher's debut, taken away from him in post, and he has disowned it ever since. It opens by killing Newt and Hicks off-screen, which is still the single most resented decision in the series. What survives is a bleak, bald, beautiful prison-planet film with no weapons in it, and the 2003 Assembly Cut is a markedly better movie than the one that opened.
Prometheus
(2012)Ridley Scott comes back to the universe and points it at the wrong question, gorgeously. The Engineers, the star map, Michael Fassbender's David as the best character anyone has written for this series since Ripley, and a self-surgery scene that people still wince about. The script asks scientists to behave like nobody has ever behaved in a laboratory, and that is the whole argument about it.
Alien: Covenant
(2017)The film that tries to be both a Prometheus sequel and an Alien prequel and cannot fully be either. Fassbender playing two androids against each other is genuinely great, the neomorph birth is the nastiest thing in the franchise, and then it spends its last act explaining the origin of a creature that was scarier unexplained.
Alien Resurrection
(1997)Ripley 8 as a cloned hybrid, a Joss Whedon script, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet directing it like a French comic book. There are real ideas here and a couple of unforgettable images, the cloning room chief among them, but the tone never settles and the Newborn is where most viewers get off. The consensus bottom of the saga.
How to Build Your Own Alien Tier List
You just built one. The card above took your taps and nothing else, no scores, which matters here more than on most franchises: the top of this list is a genuine two-way tie in the culture, and a 1-to-10 rating cannot express which of two near-perfect films you would rewatch tonight.
There are seven, and the two the card leaves out are the two that decide the bottom half. Shortlist ranks the full run head-to-head, keeps the list as the series keeps growing, and gives every ranking a share link for whoever needs to be told they are wrong about Alien 3.
Read more about the comparison-based approach in our movie tier list guide.
What Order Should You Watch the Alien Movies In?
Release order, for a first watch. Alien (1979), Aliens (1986), Alien 3 (1992), Alien Resurrection (1997), Prometheus (2012), Alien: Covenant (2017), Alien: Romulus (2024). The prequels are built to be watched by someone who already knows what a facehugger is, and Alien only works once.
Chronological order, for a rewatch: Prometheus, Alien: Covenant, Alien, Alien: Romulus, Aliens, Alien 3, Alien Resurrection. Romulus is set between the first two films, which is why it slots into the middle rather than the end, and Resurrection jumps two centuries past everything else.
Alien Tier List FAQ
What is the best Alien movie?
Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) are the only two answers, and which one wins depends on what you want from the series. The original is the better film as a piece of craft: slower, quieter, and built entirely on what it refuses to show you. Aliens is the better ride and the more rewatchable of the two. Most critics take the first, plenty of fans take the second, and neither camp is being unreasonable.
How many Alien movies are there?
There are 7 films in the main saga, released between 1979 and 2024: Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, Alien Resurrection, Prometheus, Alien: Covenant, and Alien: Romulus. Counting the two Alien vs. Predator crossovers makes it 9.
Are the Alien vs. Predator movies part of the series?
Not for ranking purposes, and that is why they are absent above. Alien vs. Predator (2004) and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007) are crossovers with a different franchise, they sit outside the continuity the other seven films share, and later entries have quietly ignored them. If you want them ranked, rank them against the Predator films, where they at least belong to the argument.
Do you need to watch Prometheus before Alien: Romulus?
No. Romulus is set between Alien and Aliens and works as a standalone survival film, so the first two entries are all the setup it needs. It does pick up threads from Prometheus and Covenant late on, and those beats land harder if you have seen them, but nothing in the plot requires it.
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The Reel
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