The Alien franchise has been one of the most iconic and influential series in film and probably the only property to gather some of the best directors in Hollywood: Ridley Scott, James Cameron, David Fincher, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and Fede Alverez have helmed the mainline Alien entries. Alien also crafted one of cinema’s most iconic movie monsters, the Xenomorph, more commonly known as the alien. The franchise began in 1979, and in the 45 years since, the film has spawned four sequels, two prequels, two crossover films, multiple video games, and comics. The future looks bright for the Alien franchise as Alien: Romulus opened at number one at the box office in its opening weekend and gained positive reviews from fans and critics. Next up is a television prequel series for FX from Fargo creator Noah Hawley called Alien Earth, which is set to air on FX in 2025.
Across seven mainline entries and two crossover films with another franchise, the Alien movies show humanity leaving Earth and finding the horrors of what lies in the dark corners of space (“where no one can hear you scream,” as the legendary tagline reads). They explore humanity’s quest to understand creation and the cyclical nature between creation and destruction. When lost in the coldness of space, will humanity find its way home, or is it destined to destroy itself?
To follow humanity’s journey with the Xenomorphs throughout a story that spans 275 years, here are the Alien films in chronological order.
Update August 26, 2024: This article has been updated following the release of Alien: Romulus.
Alien Movies in Chronological Order
Alien vs. Predator (2004)
While it is debatable if the film takes place in the proper Alien timeline, if it is more connected to Predator, or if it is in its separate timeline altogether, Alien vs. Predator and its sequel do occupy an interesting place for the franchise. If treated as the starting point, it becomes the catalyst of the central drive for the Weyland-Yutani Corporation in the franchise. The movie is set in 2004, and it is one of the few Alien films to take place in the contemporary present day.
Alien vs. Predator follows a group of scientists employed by the Weyland Corporation who discover a pyramid in the Arctic. When they arrive, the humans find themselves caught in the middle of an ancient feud between the two titular monsters and eventually must team up with the Yautja hunters when they realize the threat the alien Xenomorphs pose to the planet if they are unleashed. The film ends with the alien force defeated and the fallen Yautja taken aboard his ship, but before the credits roll, an alien bursts out of the dead Predator’s chest, revealing a mandible variant of the classic creature, one of the scariest extraterrestrial monsters in movies.
Alien vs Predator introduced the idea that Predators have been coming to Earth for thousands of years and were worshiped as gods, and Predators looking to grow into manhood would hunt Xenomorphs, who were bred with ancient sacrifices. This ancient alien plot line is deepened in Prometheus, as it reveals an alien race, the Engineers, created humans themselves.
Putting the two films in the same universe suggests a vast canvas of alien life, with humanity a testing ground for multiple factions. While both Prometheus and Alien: Covenant try to establish that this is the first creation of the Xenomorph, ancient writings on the walls of the Engineer ship in Prometheus suggest the Engineers had created the creatures before, which allows room for interpretation that Alien Vs. Predator can still exist alongside the events established later on. Stream on Hulu.
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Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)
Picking up right after the events of Alien vs Predator in the year 2004, Aliens vs Predator: Requiem features the Predator-alien hybrid, named the Predalien, breaking loose on the Yautja ship and sending it crashing near the forest in Colorado and causing havoc on a small town. One lone Yautja hunter is sent to kill the creature while the townspeople try to escape with their lives. The movie ends with the alien force being wiped out with a nuclear bomb and the threat supposedly defeated.
The movie’s ending has big implications for the Alien franchise, as the movie’s final scene shows the Predator’s shoulder cannon in the hands of Ms. Yutani, whose Yutani Corporation will eventually merge with Weyland Corporation in the previous film to become the overarching central human threat of the series, the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. With the Predator’s weapon in their hands, it appears they now have knowledge of life beyond the stars and the technology to begin space colonization that will drive them for the next 100 years. Stream on Hulu.
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Prometheus (2012)
Jumping ahead in the timeline 89 years into the future of 2093, Prometheus follows the crew of the titular spaceship using a star map discovered among the artifacts of several ancient Earth cultures in a quest to understand the origins of humanity. The crew lands on alien planet LV-223 and uncovers an alien race that could threaten the entire galaxy. The movie ends with the only human survivor, Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace), and the severed head of the android David (Michael Fassbender) as they take the Engineer ship looking for answers as to why the aliens wanted to destroy humanity.
While the film avoided including a full-on Xenomorph, plenty of alien-looking creatures were featured throughout, and one eventually burst out of an Engineer’s chest, signifying what the real threat is. Released in 2012, Prometheus retroactively establishes plot points that will become major factors in the Alien franchise, with the relationship between creator and creation at the heart of it, something further elaborated on with the various androids. The movie also shows the Engineers (who were known as Space Jockeys to fans for years) and hints at the prototype for what will become the Xenomorph, here hinted as a biological weapon meant to destroy a civilization. Stream on Hulu.
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Alien: Covenant (2017)
Set 11 years after Prometheus, Alien: Covenant takes place in the year 2104 and focuses on the crew of a colony ship that lands on an uncharted planet investigating a distress signal and encounters the android David, now fully rebuilt, only to discover that they may have been lured into a trap and come face to face with David’s horrifying creation of a prototype Xenomorph. David reveals he created the creatures by experimenting with the deadly pathogen created by the Engineers that he himself used to wipe that master alien race out. David now sees humanity as a flawed creature, and his experiment is a perfect creation that can destroy humanity for good.
The film ends with David, having a whole ship of humans to experiment on, placing two of his alien embryos with the frozen human embryos before he begins examining humans on which he will conduct more experiments, likely an attempt to create his perfect weapon of mass destruction: the Xenomorph. The Engineers created humanity, humanity created David, and David created the creature that could be the cause of their destruction, thus perpetuating the cycle of death and destruction. Stream on Hulu.
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Alien (1979)
The first film released in the franchise, Alien takes place in the year 2122, about 18 years after the events of Alien: Covenant and 29 years after Prometheus. The plot of Alien features the crew of the Nostromo who, when they land on the planet LV-426, encounter the dangerous Xenomorph alien that begins killing off members of the crew in its various stages, from face-huggers to chest bursters to full-grown aliens. As a result, some of the most unforgettable scenes from the Alien franchise occur in this original masterpiece. The entire crew is killed, with only Sigourney Weaver’s strong Ellen Ripley surviving after having ejected the alien monster out of an airlock. She enters cryostasis at the end of the film, hoping to return to Earth, but her trip will take a tragic and unexpected turn.
The movie sees Ripley and her crew encountering the remains of the Engineers and suggests that in the time gap between Alien: Covenant and Alien, David perfected his alien monster into a new deadly force. However, due to the events in both the Alien vs Predator films and Prometheus, the Weyland-Yutani corporation is aware enough of the creature’s existence to look for it. This film also marks the importance of Ripley in the timeline, for she was the face of the franchise moving forward (or, in real-world order of release, was the face of the franchise for almost two decades). Stream on Hulu.
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Alien: Romulus (2024)
The latest entry in the franchise, Alien: Romulus, takes place between the events of Alien and Aliens in the year 2142. That places the events of this in-betwequel about 20 years after the events of Alien while it is 35 years before the events of Aliens. Alien: Romulus focuses on Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and her adopted brother, the android Andy (David Johnson), as they and a team of fellow miners working for the Weyland corporation on a planet with no hopes of a better future sneak aboard an abandoned space station known as Romulus in the hope of getting old cryo pods so they can escape to a new solar system. However, they soon find themselves on the ship studying and researching Xenomorphs, and not just any Xenomorphs, but the one that Ripley blasted out of the airlock in Alien.
Alien: Romulus looks to tie the entire Alien franchise together. It builds on the lore from Prometheus and Alien: Covenant and connects it to the storyline in Alien while laying the foundation for plot points in Aliens, Alien 3, and Alien: Ressurection. It features Rook, a new android that resembles Ash from the first Alien film, using a mixture of CGI, puppetry, and AI voice models to replicate Ian Holms’s likeness. The film ends with Rain and Andy going into cryosleep, setting up a sequel that could also take place before Aliens.
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Aliens (1986)
57 years after Alien, in the year 2179, Aliens begins with Ripley’s cryopod being discovered adrift in space. LV-426 has been colonized since she went into cryosleep, but once transmissions have been lost, Ripley agrees to return to the planet with a group of space marines to investigate. Once on the planet, they realize that it’s become overrun with Xenomorphs and must fight to survive, producing some of the most memorable scenes from any Alien film. Ripley finds one survivor, a young girl named Newt, and Ripley fights back against the creatures that killed her crew before they threaten to take away a new life for herself.
James Cameron’s action-packed follow-up to Ridley Scott’s film, Aliens introduces many important elements into the Alien mythology, the most important one being the Alien Queen, which is in the timeline audiences saw in Alien vs Predator but is further explained here. It also introduces the android Bishop, played by Lance Henriksen, who played the founder of the Weyland Corporation in Alien vs Predator, suggesting the android was designed to resemble the company’s founder, a storyline that is further detailed in Alien 3. Aliens is often considered one of the greatest sequels ever made and, for years, set a bar so high that no film in the franchise could live up to. Stream on Hulu.
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Alien 3 (1992)
Alien 3 takes place almost immediately after the events of Aliens and begins with an alien egg hatching aboard the ship, with a face-hugger being released. This causes a fire to start and for the ship to release the escape pod containing the cryo chambers of Ripley, Newt, Hicks, and the android Bishop. The pod crashes on a prison planet, Fiorina “Fury” 161, housing a colony populated by violent male inmates. Ripley and the Xenomorph are the only survivors of the crash, quickly undoing the happy ending of Aliens. Ripley later discovers that a second face-hugger was on board and that she was implanted with the embryo of an alien queen.
Showing why Ellen Ripley is celebrated, Weaver’s character sacrifices herself so that the Weyland-Yutani corporation can never get their hands on the embryo and turn it into a weapon. In many ways, Alien 3 could be seen as the satisfying if not bleak end to the journey, as the film closes out the central Weyland-Yutani story: Bishop II (Lance Henriksen) is revealed as Bishop’s creator and is killed before he can get the alien queen embryo growing inside Ripley. Yet even with the Weyland-Yutani corporation threat gone and Ripley finally at peace, the overarching story of humanity returning home still needs to be resolved. Stream on Hulu.
Alien: Resurrection (1997)
Taking place in the far future of 2279, 200 years after the events of Alien 3, Alien: Resurrection follows a clone of Ripley named Ripley-8 that was grown by the United Systems Military on the space vessel USM Auriga. The clone is mixed with Xenomorph queen DNA, and the scientist uses the clone to grow their own alien queen to study the aliens. When the Xenomorphs escape their captivity, Ripley teams up with a team of mercenaries to destroy the ship before it reaches Earth.
While Alien: Resurrection was not the final film in the series, later films went to tell prequel stories, making this the end of the journey chronologically. Yet with Alien: Resurrection ending with Ripley-8 having defeated the alien, the character is able to do what her predecessor couldn’t: return to Earth and start a new life. In a franchise that took place with humanity looking for answers among the stars, it only makes thematic sense for the final film to feature humanity’s return to Earth.
Alien Film Series by Release Date
While chronological order is a fun viewing method for examining how films made from different time periods can intersect with one another, there is also the way general audiences saw them: by release date.
Elements like the Alien Queen, which are introduced in Aliens, are explained in more detail than in Alien vs Predator, which was released later and suspects that the audience has a passing knowledge. Watching them by order of release date lets the audience know what the filmmakers knew at the time of these movies’ release. Aside from Alien: Resurrection and Aliens vs. Predator Requiem, the Alien franchise is one of the few horror movie series that has been firmly a summer movie franchise. Therefore, here are the Alien movies that were released.
Return to Chronological Order
