2. Alien (1979)
3. Predators (2010)
4. Predator (1987)
5. Predator 2 (1990)
6. Alien vs. Predator (2004)
7. Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)
8. Alien Resurrection (1997)
9. Prometheus (2012)
10. Alien: Covenant (2017)
11. Alien 3 (1992)
I was waiting to post this until I'd seen all of them. I just watched Alien: Covenant today. I still have not seen 2018's "The Predator", but I doubt I ever will, so I just left it off the list. No big loss, from what I hear, it would be toward the bottom of the list anyway.
Some specifics:
Aliens is still one of my all-time favorite movies. But I've already gushed about it on several blogs already, so 'nuff said.
Alien still holds up as an excellent horror film. Smart, suspenseful, and genuinely scary.
Predators is the best Predator movie, even outshining the original. The action, special effects, pacing - it's just an all around good time.
The original Predator is basically "Alien set in the jungle," and that's okay. It still does a better job of being an Alien movie than the later Alien movies do.
Predator 2 is kind of forgettable, but I still enjoyed it.
AVP and AVP Requiem are pure fanservice. They don't even pretend to make sense if you're not a fan of both franchises. I wouldn't call either one a good movie, but "versus" movies don't have to be. Nobody went to see Freddy Vs. Jason expecting Shakespeare.
Alien Resurrection is just... okay. Nothing I'd watch over and over, but it's solid.
Prometheus and Alien: Covenant... Okay, here's the thing. In 1979, budding director Ridley Scott filmed an excellent sci-fi horror movie. It was his second film, and it put him well on his way to being one of the big names in movies. Now, I have a theory - Now that Scott is such a big name serious director, I think he's a little embarrassed that one of his most popular movies is basically a slasher movie.
Like I said above, Alien is a smart movie. But when you really look at it, it is basically Friday the 13th in space. There's nothing wrong with that... unless you're a pretentious director who doesn't want to admit he ever did anything lowbrow. So what if, instead of disowning such a well-known movie, he tried to lend legitimacy to it with a couple of heavy-handed prequels?
The Alien prequels try to hit you over the head with deeper themes about the origins of life, but the truth is, they're also still slasher films. Ridley Scott does what he does best - makes movies much slower than they needed to be, and tries to give them meaning. But I don't need Alien to have deeper meaning, I just want to watch xenomorphs eat people.
The worst part about the prequels is they don't fit the rest of the series. Alien can either belong in the same universe as its sequels, or it can belong in the same universe as its prequels, but not both. And the Cameron version of the Alienverse is much cooler than the Scott version. I hope I live to see the day when someone like James Cameron gets their hands on the franchise again.
Alien 3 is still crap.
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