Alien. Not only is the set design second to none but it was the movie that got me into horror as a genre. Aliens is a fun movie but it’s mostly just that to me. I think Alien 3 is totally fine and not nearly as terrible as people say.
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Firstly, I haven’t seen Covenant and I’ll probably check it out once it is out of theaters. Therefore I cannot take it into consideration or comparison against what I have seen of this franchise.
Frankly with how stark the shift feels to me between Alien and Aliens I don’t feel like setting them side by side and evaluating which one I like better.
However - gun to my head - favourite remains Alien. I think just because of the feeling I had seeing it for the first time. The glimpses at its universe and how lovingly garbage all of the technology really looked. To me, having seen it for the first time 10 years ago it kinda gave me a ‘oh that’s where this aesthetic comes from’ moment every time I saw any of the technology.
I feel like, to me at least, just getting an impression of that universe is more interesting than having it mapped out.
Also since I have always been kinda in the ‘I don’t care as long as the atmosphere is captivating’ corner, I don’t think the original’s atmosphere has been matched by any of the others in…captivatedness…sss or something.
I’m definitely a Prometheus apologist - after the two awful AVP movies they at least tried something different. Venturing instead into this place of mythology and big old questions about existence. I was annoyed that Covenant retconned most of Prometheus to become more of a straight Alien film. The way they handled Shaw really annoyed me. She represented all the big questions posed by Prometheus, she was a heroine in an Alien movie that didn’t just go down the Ripley route. Whilst Ripley was always inspired to survive, Shaw was inspired to ask why. Her being written out of Covenant felt like a severe case of franchise correction - it reminded me of how they so unceremoniously killed Newt and Hicks in Alien 3. I guess you can boil it down to people who get their hopes up in Alien films or have a degree of faith usually get killed.
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Like Danielle, I think Alien is a damn near perfect film. It might be my favorite movie ever.
For anyone interested, here is an awesome article about the many typefaces used in the movie and the incredible attention to detail in the production design: https://typesetinthefuture.com/2014/12/01/alien/
Also, I count me among the few who really like Alien 3.
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Alien by a wide margin. It’s one of the most tense experiences in all of cinema.
Haha I see you.
What I was going to write there, was that I largely liked Convenant as something that was building upon the tone and questions of Prometheus. Like many, I had a lot of issues with the latter’s plotting and script, but I appreciate its willingness to do some weird things and ask big questions.
Covenant keeps a lot of that, but moves toward more conventional horror tropes in how it handles aliens within it. All of that is certainly well-done, but I feel like the seams show a bit when it transitions between the two styles of movies.
On the ending, I’m of two minds. I think there’s an argument that the switch was supposed to be so broadly telegraphed for the audience to the point that it wasn’t really a reveal to the viewer. I think that makes a lot of sense, since it adds to the dread of knowing the reveal is coming. But I wish it would have been a little more obvious, so that we knew it wasn’t trying to trick us. Either way, it’s kind of impressive that such a mean-hearted, nihilistic movie got made as a blockbuster.
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This is incredible and I am now obsessed with this excellent blog, thank you!
I like Prometheus a lot, in a way it’s Galaxy of Terror with a bigger budget. If I had to compare it to a straight horror movie I’d compared it most to The Church where it has its own things going on but is also having a conversation with derivative ripoffs of classic sci-fi movies. That it does that while on top of it expanding the Alien setting without actually answering a whole lot and and being mostly about an android and how it deals rather than being more about the humans or the various creatures, like it’s ambitious as hell.
Covenant is less ambitious on the surface, but it’s still a movie with a lot of the big ideas of Prometheus about creation and the concept of having to live up to one’s father and one “having” to create a legacy to be a worthy person and how destructive and/or creative those drives can be, while being a slasher movie and a Hammer mad scientist film at the same time and also building the continuity of a 30 year old franchise without actually explaining too much about it so there’s still some mystery.
Like I’m just really glad these movies got made because it’s rare to see such super cynical anti-corporate, anti-patriarchy I guess. There’s a strong parallel drawn between glamorized destructive ideals of masculinity and glamorized destructive ideals of capitalism throughout the series. I love that these movies get this level of budget and marketing and have those themes played completely straight and have some brilliant horror moments in them. They all have an extremely nasty sense of humor too. 
The polarizing reaction to the CG in Covenant has been interesting because Prometheus straight up looks flawless. Covenant less so but it has a way higher variety of stuff going on in it so I can cut it some slack. The only time the creature effects looked a bit weak to me was towards the very very end, and I was actually really impressed with points where some of the creatures are moving and running and fighting organically while also gradually growing in size at the same time. There’s also this moment where one of the creatures stands fully upright while another character briefly interacts with it that looked straight up amazing to me (the cast sells the fuck out of this in a few scenes which really helps). It’s interesting to see what stuff in Covenant people find good or bad looking because we see a few different creatures in like the full spectrum of being well lit on a ship, being in a dark room, caves, wooded areas, fields, full spectrum alien.
Something about Scott all of Scott’s movies is that he always likes to keep things movie. And with the exception of Kingdom of Heaven, the director’s cut of each of his movies is actually shorter than what we got in theaters.
Prometheus and Covenant both have a few really short bits of dialogue and scenes that aren’t there that add a lot, but what they also did for these movies was make stuff like that fake TED Talk and the advertisements for David, the Last Supper short scene for Covenant, etc. and never really planned on putting them in the movie. But for Covenant especially, those little extra things aren’t just marketing but are basically require viewing to add some more characterization to the film. I was really surprised that the Covenant stuff was cut/never intended to be in the final film.
I don’t really know what I think about that, like is it still just marketing if it genuinely adds to the thing it’s advertising beyond just having extraneous world building stuff? At the same time it’s like a movie that can’t stand fully on its own, and I can’t put the cat back in the bag and say because I can’t un-watch those extra clips to see if it can to me.
Regarding the downer twist at the end of Covenant, I liked how it was handled a lot because I was expecting it to be Walter, except David actually convinced him and Walter, being a new model killed him and took his place. It reminded me of Vickers in Prometheus and how at one point it’s asked if she’s a synthetic also, it doesn’t really matter because in both cases you have someone who is an asshole because they’ve been treated like this by their father for their entire lives. I read about test screenings for the movie and apparently there were a few versions of how that particular struggle played out to play with how much and how certain or not they would make it. They even had a way grimmer version where We/Daniels doesn’t find out at all and David doesn’t use a name while talking to MU/TH/ER, so we don’t know who decided to birth some embryos.
Even though I think Alien Resurrection is pretty stupid and love Alien, Aliens, and the work print of Alien 3 equally, I made this as a joke a while ago but over the past few days it’s actually been a great, like “it’s okay if the first two aren’t your favorite ones” conversation starter:
On an related note, I’d kill to have been a fly on the wall during Prometheus’ production.
Executives: This captain role, I mean do we even need this character? He barely does anything and-
Scott: furiously sketching storyboards of cuttlefish popping out of people
Executives: Okay we can keep the character but we got Idris Elba so you have to give him something more to d-
Scott: Awesome great name let’s canonically make his character’s first name Idris too.
Executives: …
Scott: The climax of the film is God getting facefucked by an aborted octopus.
Executives: …
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Aliens!!! It’s got the best characters and I really hate to give James Cameron a compliment; but I don’t have a choice - he directed the hell out of that movie! I’m a huge fan of the first 3 films, and Prometheus, nevertheless I can’t pretend that it doesn’t have some seriously dumb moments - let’s touch this random space worm - still I dig diving deeper into the lore. I would like some answers though. Resurrection sadly doesn’t do it for me, and this is coming from a Ron Perlman Fanboy. Sigourney is great in it, because well she’s always great, however I think everything else about it is pretty much trash.
Hands up, everyone who doesn’t care about a through-line for these movies and treats each of them as their own nightmare with their own nightmare logic
Anyway; Alien is obviously the best one, Alien 3 is tonally its best sequel, Resurrection has a special place in my heart for being the first one I saw, my relationship with Prometheus is as complicated as it comes and i’m nowhere near done with spending time with it, and while i enjoyed Covenant i basically cannot recommend it to anyone. This isn’t a ranked list and I’m leaving Aliens out of it because I don’t wanna fight anyone about this franchise
(Also i am told there are Alien vs Predator movies? Still haven’t seen them)
AvP1 is basically a PG-13 version of the first Resident Evil movie, it stinks.
AvP2 also stinks for a lot of reasons. It’s basically an earnest, shittier version of Killer Klowns from Outer Space.
Prometheus, because it held my attention all the way through with great visual design and atmosphere, while Alien left me bored for 3/4 before almost getting good.
drops mic and calmly walks away, never to be seen again
DO NOT SEE AVP…especially Requiem. also sorry for yelling
Alien is one of my favourite films, in this series and in general. It’s a great horror film, I loved the characters in it, and I think the xenomorph’s design was best suited to that setting. One alien, dark corridors, tight spaces, and lots of exposed tubing and wiring. You could teach a class on building tension based solely on this film. The lore is interesting, too, and I’ve always been fond of the director’s cut, in which the xenomorph can turn its victims into the facehuggers’ eggs. I was hoping Prometheus or Alien: Covenant would expand on this and integrate it back into the canon since bio horror is sort of the theme of those films, but no dice.
[details=My thoughts on every other film between Alien and Alien: Covenant.]Aliens is a much weaker horror film, but as an action film, it definitely excels. I just like action movies a lot less than horror. Still, it’s well-directed and well-written, with even more great characters - Vasquez was my bi awakening, tbh - and the first scene with the xenomorphs, in which half of the marines are killed, has a fantastically designed set. Very quotable, too. I struggle to think of a film with a greater quantity of iconic lines.
Alien 3 is fine; I could have done without the killing of great characters off-screen and that gross junkyard scene, but I liked the return to ‘single alien, dark corridors’-horror of the first film. Alien: Resurrection is a film I unironically adore, it’s ridiculous, Ron Perlman is in it, Sigourney Weaver is a total babe, and it’s pretty gay. If Alien is one of the best horror films, then Alien: Resurrection is perhaps the best horror-comedy. I’d take it over Shaun of the Dead, and I love zombie films.
Alien vs. Predator was… not great. I don’t really care about the ‘canon’ of these films, to the point where I’d say the need to tie Prometheus into the rest of the series is one of its weaknesses, but damn does AvP mess with the canon, especially regarding Lance Henriksen’s human character/s. I liked Lex, though. I think she was more interesting than the other bog standard leads of mid-2000s horror-action films. Nice to see a woman of colour in a leading role, as well. AvP: Requiem is pretty damn irredeemable. I liked… seeing Ms. Yutani, I guess? That’s the only thing good I have to say about it.
Prometheus was a solid film. I liked Elizabeth Shaw, (Covenant spoilers) and I am annoyed that they killed her off-screen, I even liked the other crew members besides David. I thought Charlize Theron’s character was interesting and she’s great in just about everything she’s in, and Idris Elba’s character had a lot of good scenes (his final scene and the scene where he’s talking with Theron, especially). Even if (Covenant spoilers) it doesn’t go anywhere and David just wipes them all out, the concept of exploring the race who sent out the distress signal at the beginning of Alien is appreciated. I loved the proto-facehugger, too.[/details]
So, Alien: Covenant. The set designs, the atmosphere and cinematography, most of the CGI, those were all pretty solid. There were some great body horror moments, too. But I kind of despised the story and the writing and what was done with nearly every single character.
[details=Here there be spoilers.][spoiler]David is… not compelling enough to be an antagonistic force for two films of this series. I appreciate an evil android, and in Prometheus his experiment with the black goo in Shaw’s boyfriend’s (husband’s?) drink was the sort of thing I can dig in a villain. I could even get behind that continuing through to Covenant, though as I said before, I could have done with Shaw at least getting an on-screen death instead of unceremoniously being killed between the films.
But hoo boy, did I lose interest in this once it escalated to the genocide of the precursor race. The final twist of the film is okay, but a clone/same model switcheroo isn’t overly compelling and while the image of him with xeno and human embryos, surely about to do some good good body horror, is a great ending sting… I don’t think the film did enough to make me care. The human characters were sidelined hard to give more time to David and Walter, so I don’t have any stakes in this beyond caring that it is humans who are going to be experimented on. It’s the empathy for my species instead of the characters in the film that makes the ending interesting, which in turn makes it a bit less interesting.
And if I am honest, I just don’t love Michael Fassbender.[/spoiler][/details]
Also, I think this might be the first Alien film that has inarguable, canonical, on-screen LGBT characters and one of them is a patient zero for the bio horror spores, so we really don’t get much of them. But we do get to see Michael Fassbender make out with himself! Thanks for the #representation, Scott! I knew they were going to die, but I’d have liked to build up to it a little more, let them survive a while and perhaps die together ala Vasquez and Gorman. Or just live, why not? Then we could have two Alien films that end with men smooching.
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I fail to see what people find enjoyable about Covenant. It’s bad Alien movie and bad movie in general. It tries to be Frankenstein movie, slasher film and philosophic investigation of creation myths. And it fails in all of them.
All humans in this film are too stupid to be even in slasher (the wrong movie was called Suicide Squad). Philosophic question - what if we create intelligence and it hated us? -well, it will be bad. And that’s it. Frankenstein part is just there.
Film looks beautiful and may be deserve cookie for trying to be all the tings but in the end it’s just bad boring movie.
I was a lot more tepid on Covenant, but you’ve echoed a lot of my thoughts as well. McBride was a surprise for me, as he stepped up for a dramatic role much better than I was expecting, so good on him.
[spoiler]The idea that we’re going to have to wait at least for a third film to see the culmination of David’s character arc, when Shaw’s was terminated off-screen, is pretty absurd. Especially since, given the themes of the series so far (Covenant and Prometheus), the only possible conclusion is “the xenomorphs kills the hell out of David”.
The only consistent theme between the films so far is the destruction of creators by their creation. Having the xenomorph’s existence explained as being David’s influence means he’s going to be a giant white smear on the floor by the end of the next film. And there’s zero reason they couldn’t have done that in Covenant.[/spoiler]
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I’m firmly of the opinion that Aliens is the best movie in the series, if only because every movie would be massively improved by the inclusion of Sigourney Weaver kicking mad ass for 10 solid minutes.
Though the fact that it’s the only Alien movie that has something even approaching a happy ending is also a big boost for me, and I’m perfectly happy pretending that Alien 3 and Resurrection were some kind of hypersleep induced fever dream.
Though I do have to admit, I really appreciate how Prometheus and Covenant try to create a deeper body of lore, and I think there’s an interesting story to tell there. It’s just a shame that Ridley Scott keeps flubbing the execution of it.
Oh, also; Isolation is the third best Alien movie, don’t @ me.
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Terminator 2 is the best Terminator, but Alien is the best Alien
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Insofar as Alien: Covenant goes, I haven’t seen it, but boy have I been listening to a lot of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” since I saw that trailer.
John denver looks like I did when I was 8.
