Alien Series Tier List

Xenotaris

Inspired by the Godzilla series and Kong series tier list topic. Remember In space no one can you scream and soon the hunt will begin.

https://tiermaker.com/create/alien-and-predator-franchise-as-of-2022-1238190

How would you rank the Alien/Predator movies?

Xenotaris

Dark Nebula

Here's mine

Xenotaris

O I need to edit mine now

EliteFreakozoid

Alien might be my favorite movie of all time. This tier list is in order within the tiers, so the further left the movie is the higher I rate it.

I have a stupid soft spot for Resurrection. I fully admit that it's not a GOOD movie, but I have a lot of fun watching it. Absolutely incredible cast that is fundamentally wasted on such a nonsense movie but it's such dumb fun in a way the AvP movies were never able to recapture, even though they should have been peak dumb fun. Plus, the design of the Newborn is nightmarish in a way that's completely different from the horror of the rest of the franchise.

Xenotaris

ah, I like Resurrection just a slight more than AVP 04. The only thing AVP 04 has over The Predator is that the Yautja are hunters and not evil scientists but teaching oomans how to build is still out of character for them.

Xenotaris

I haven't seen Prey yet, so its position in my list will change once I have finally watch the movie

Cutie Hugsploder

I also have a big soft spot for Resurrection. not a good movie, but so many great actors clearly having a great time and the alien newborn is one of my favorite designs. too bad it wasnt in a better movie. I really want to put Prometheus Higher because it had so many great ideas. if they released a cut of the movie with some of the deleted scenes included or someone made a fan edit I would definitely put it in B or maybe even A, but as it stands it just has a lot of issues that hold it back. I dont have much to say about predator 2 other than it is kind of just a fun time but isn't nearly as memorable or well made enough to go higher than B for me. Prey was suprisingly great but some of the dialogue, not fully polished CGI at times, and a couple scenerios I think felt forced keep it from being S tier. I think it was really close to being the best predator movie but unfortunately definitely falls a bit behind the original. I think the rest speak for themselves. 

Xenotaris

Cutie Hugsploder

How come Alien 3 is lower than AVP?

Xenotaris

done editing my choices

Cutie Hugsploder

at the end of the day I think its just really dull and the cgi is so ugly and takes away from the charm and why I love these movies so much. I do think ripley and the criminals and their dynamic is a lot better than the acting in AvP but at the end of the day I would rather watch the dumb but more entertaining (sometimes more entertaining because its bad) AvP movie. I still really like the set design and art direction of that movie and it keeps it higher than AVPR for that reason. they did somehow manage to make the characters in AVPR even MORE unlikeable than in the first movie lol.

Xenotaris

Not sure if I agree but to each their own

Dark Nebula

"the cgi is so ugly and takes away from the charm"

Fun fact: the runner alien was actually a rod puppet that was filmed in front of a blue background (for some shots it was a dude in a suit). The reason it looks so rough is because of the bad compositing, which is a shame because the puppeteering is pretty good.

https://youtu.be/jOPdNfOc3h0?t=71

Cool Godzilla

Xenotaris What is the movie name that you put on A, the right one?

Cutie Hugsploder

Dark Nebula yeah that is true. I remember watching a ton of behind the scenes stuff on the dvd box set of all the movies I had before I loaned it to an ******* friend. I like the suit but the bad composite does **** it up. I just use "CGI" as a blanket term for any non practical effect. I should watch 3 again. definitely the one I have seen the least because I just dont remember enjoying it as much but maybe it deserves another chance since I havent seen it in 10 years.

Cutie Hugsploder

Cool Godzilla Alien covenant. 

Cutie Hugsploder

side note. all the special features on DVD's were awesome and it seems like we have lost that on blu rays and that is a huge bummer.

Xenotaris

Cool Godzilla

Alien Covenant, I know a lot of people dislike Alien Covenant because Ridley Scott wanted David to be the creator but I think David merely made his own xenomorph offshoot basing them off of the Engineer's xenomorphs. 

I also liked the Neomorphs, now the human characters... I thought they were okay but I don't watch these movies for the humans.

Xenotaris

Cutie Hugsploder

But Puppetry IS a Practical Effect along with man-in-a-suit, animatronic, stop-motion and go motion. CGI means Computer Generated Imagery 

Cutie Hugsploder

the puppet is practical but the composite isn't. I know its not cgi. I was using the term improperly. 

Xenotaris

Cutie Hugsploder

Its okay. Alien 3 had alot of things going for it, mostly atmosphere and a sick new Alien design. Unfortunately my only beef with Alien 3 is them killing off Newt and Hicks then later Ripley.

Cutie Hugsploder

Xenotaris, I dont think david creating the necromorphs is peoples main problem with that movie. I don't mind that at all. David is the best part of that movie. I also like the neomorphs too honestly. The problem is the movie completely undercuts the ending of prometheus by killing off the inhabitants of the space jockey home world and therefore not answering any of the fun questions prometheus set up and also making david a weird genocidal maniac, which I felt messes up his arc from prometheus. the characters are also extremely generic and uninteresting other than david himself. I feel like prometheus got made fun of because of some valid reasons, and some very dumb reasons so ridley scott totally abandoned everything that made it interesting for Covenant and ended up taking away almost everything that made Prometheus interesting. 

Cutie Hugsploder

Killing Newt was a bummer. I should say I still enjoy the movie, just not as much as the others I put above it.

Dark Nebula

I like alien 3 for what it is. The runner alien was a nice addition to the lore. I'm not a fan of killing off Newt and Hicks at the very beginning. 
Alan Dean Foster wasn't a fan of it either, so while writing his novelization of Alien 3 he wanted to keep Newt alive, but have her trapped in her damaged capsule that can go off at any time, and Ripley would have to fight to remain alive in order to sustain her. He also wanted other things for his adaptation to differ from the film, such as giving each prisoner a backstory, but the film producers rejected all of his planned material and told him to stay close to the film script and wasn't allowed to alter the storyline.
If only the film was like this.

Xenotaris

Dark Nebula

Yeah, If only Alan Dean Foster wrote the screenplay to Alien 3, the movie would have definitely been on Tier A

EliteFreakozoid

Yeah, Prometheus and Covenant both feel like massive wasted potential to me. I don't really have a problem with David creating the Xenomorphs, I have a problem with how that clashes with existing lore. I'm not an expert by any means, but wasn't there artwork of more traditional Xenomorphs in Prometheus where the black goo was being kept? Wouldn't that imply that xenomorphs (or at least very similar creatures) already existed prior to David "creating" them?

Honestly, I could be misremembering. The order of operations for David to have created them feels off. I think a lot of sci-fi properties feel like they have to keep establishing more and more lore, as if that should help their story feel more grounded and believable, when in reality it just leads to messy storytelling. Alien's believability stemmed from characters that felt real in a setting that felt like a natural future. The xenomorphs didn't need to be explained, the space jockey didn't need to be explained, Ash didn't need to be explained, and Weyland was fine to be a capitalist company that makes money by exploiting workers at any cost. As soon as you start dragging all of those things into higher-concept sci-fi, the cracks start to appear. It's obvious that the lore introduced in Prometheus and Covenant wasn't always a part of the story, just stuff they're adding on now because they think it's cool with little regard for how it reflects on the existing canon.

Xenotaris

EliteFreakozoid
Actual that's not capitalism, that's corporatism. There is a difference between the two, Capitalism favors competition and dislikes monopolies, Corporatism favors monopolies and dislikes competition. Just a little nitpick.

But yeah, I understand your point about existing lore. But Origin stories are fun though.

Cool Godzilla

Oh thanks