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All the ‘Alien’ Movies, Ranked From Worst to Best
See which ‘Alien’ movies rank highest and which fall flat. Variety’s definitive list covers the best and worst in the franchise.
Merging the David (Michael Fassbender) mythology of “Prometheus” with a colonization mission that makes a detour to the home planet of the human-creating Engineers, John Logan (“Gladiator”) and Dante Harper’s script overindulges the previous film’s philosophical quandaries but allows Ridley Scott to deliver set pieces with an operatic scope that’s undeniable. If the handsome young cast is too freshly scrubbed to convincingly play motley, mine-dwelling urchins, Álvarez and co-screenwriter Rodo Sayagues (“Don’t Breathe”) pinpoint a halfway point between the technology and pacing of Scott’s 1979 original and James Cameron’s 1986 follow-up with such accuracy that audiences feel instantly transported back to that era. Giger’s designs of futuristic technology, not to mention the xenomorph itself, not only delivered a nightmarish, biomechanical foundation from which the entire franchise (and dozens of others) has taken inspiration, but re-envisioned a typically lurid genre — horror — as a limitless platform for suspenseful, psychological, even artistic exploration (though let’s not kick a hornet’s nest by calling it “elevated”).
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