Alien Movies in Order: The Ultimate Chronological Watch Guide

For the first four Alien movies, the timeline was blissfully simple: sequel ends, next movie picks up right after. Then prequels happened. And a mid-quel. And some crossovers the mainline films basically pretend never existed. If you want to watch everything in story order anyway, here’s the cleanest path through all the xeno chaos, with the weird choices and curveballs noted along the way.

1. Alien vs. Predator (2004)

   Yeah, the AVP films aren’t canon to the later Alien movies, and the prequels actively contradict them. But strictly by timeline, you start here. It’s set in 2004, with an unrated cut that opens with a prologue in 1904.

   Director Paul W.S. Anderson goes full ancient-astronaut: Predators have been visiting Earth for thousands of years, helping build early civilizations and returning every 100 years to run a rite-of-passage hunt. They bring xenomorphs, select human hosts for facehuggers, then hunt the creatures that burst out. This time, the hunt happens 2,000 feet beneath Bouvetoya Island, roughly 1,000 miles off Antarctica, inside what’s pitched as the first pyramid ever built.

   A Weyland Industries satellite spots a heat bloom from the pyramid waking up, which prompts terminally ill founder Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen) to lead an expedition. Inside: an alien Queen being jump-started to lay eggs. Is it a choice to set an AVP movie on modern-day Earth and imply xenos have been here repeatedly? Yes. Do I love the broader idea that xenos have existed out in deep space for ages and we just rarely bump into them? Also yes. Scott’s prequels, however, had other plans.

2. Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)

   Still 2004, picking up immediately after AVP. A Predator ship leaves Antarctica, but a Predalien hybrid bursts from a dead Predator and wrecks the ride. There are also jars of facehuggers on board because of course there are. The ship crashes outside Gunnison, Colorado, unleashing xenos and the Predalien across town while a lone Predator shows up to clean house.

   Fox reacted to AVP’s PG-13 with a hard-R sequel that’s mean as hell and, thanks to the near-black cinematography, often literally impossible to see. Plot threads include a maternity ward and a bullied pizza kid, if you were wondering how grim it gets. The stinger: Predator tech gets handed to Ms. Yutani (Francoise Yip), a tease meant to explain how humanity’s tech leaps forward between now and the future Alien films. The idea is we reverse-engineer Predator gear, head deeper into space, and, whoops, meet more xenomorphs.

3. Prometheus (2012)

   Now we jump to the far future, but first, an opening set at the dawn of time. An Engineer (a big humanoid alien) drinks some goo, dissolves in a river, and seeds life on Earth. Ridley Scott returns to the franchise laser-focused on an android named David (Michael Fassbender) and on origins: of us, of xenos, of everything. He also tries to sidestep the classic xenomorphs while explaining how they came to be. Casual.

   Most of the story is set in 2093. Tech-wise, this era has deep space travel, hypersleep pods that let others view your dreams, holographic displays, puck-like mapping drones, and human-looking androids. A star map sends the Weyland Corporation (Peter Weyland, played by Guy Pearce under heavy old-age makeup) to LV-223 aboard the Prometheus on a trillion-dollar expedition.

   On LV-223, they find dead Engineers (thousands of years old), one Engineer still alive, brutally dangerous local fauna, a black-goo bioweapon that mutates the crew, and evidence the Engineers planned to wipe out Earth. There’s even a mural that might suggest facehugger/xeno iconography, depending on your read. Instead of classic xenos, we get the trilobite and the deacon. They’re... not as cool.

4. Alien: Covenant (2017)

   Set in 2104, 11 years after Prometheus. The colony ship Covenant is hauling 2,000 settlers and 1,140 embryos to Origae-6 when a disaster kills the captain in his pod. The crew picks up a transmission of someone singing John Denver from a supposedly habitable planet that somehow didn’t hit their scans. They detour. It’s a trap, but the trap is artfully curated by David, who has been using that black goo to wipe out the local Engineer population and run years of biotech experiments.

   David’s tinkering yields neomorphs (spore-borne infections that burst from backs and mouths) and ovomorphs that work more like traditional xeno eggs, producing what the film dubs praetomorphs. Scott’s take implies David essentially created the xenomorph; some fans prefer to think he just iterated on something older. I’m in that camp.

   We also get David and his upgraded lookalike Walter (both Fassbender) having flute lessons and a kiss, because Scott was steering the series toward AIs as the main event. His scrapped trilogy capper would reportedly have pitted David against surviving Engineers, taken us back to LV-426, and then pivoted fully to machine-driven storytelling. Covenant underperformed, Disney bought Fox, and the David Plan went into cold storage.

5. Alien: Earth (2025– )

   Noah Hawley’s FX series makes a big swing: it’s on Earth in 2120, two years before the original Alien. Even if you toss out the AVP films, this still means xenomorphs get loose on Earth before anyone named Ripley shows up.

   In this era, five mega-corps run the planet and push deep into space. Weyland-Yutani dispatches the USCSS Maginot to collect and preserve alien life, and you can guess what they bring back. The ship crashes into New Siam, an area controlled by Prodigy, a company uploading terminally ill kids into synthetic bodies. One of those hybrids, Wendy (Sydney Chandler), learns to communicate with the xenos and even empathize with them. So yes: xenomorphs on Earth, potentially aligning with a synthetic girl. The show is ongoing, with at least one more season coming; we will see whether it stays in 2120 or brushes up against Alien.

6. Alien (1979)

   Finally, a stone-cold classic. It’s 2122. Watching the prequels first does create a funny tech problem: somehow we go from Prometheus/Covenant’s slick holograms and sleek UI to chunky CRTs and clattering keyboards here. The one place the tech does feel more advanced is in androids: unlike David/Walter, Ash passes so perfectly for human that the crew doesn’t realize he’s synthetic until it’s too late.

   The Nostromo is hauling 20 million tons of ore back to Earth when the company computer diverts them to a signal from a supposedly uninhabited moon. Company policy says investigate any transmission that might be intelligent in origin, so off they go to LV-426. There’s a derelict ship, a dead Engineer pilot, and a cargo hold full of eggs. You know the rest.

   Side note: if this is your first time through the franchise, I wouldn’t watch chronologically. Alien hits much harder if you meet the creature here, not after seeing it wrestle Predators and watching prequel variants bounce off cave walls.

7. Alien: Romulus (2024)

   This slots between Alien and Aliens in 2142, and Fede Alvarez and team smartly build the world with the clunky, analog vibe of those films. We visit a Weyland-Yutani mining colony that doubles as an HR nightmare: workers can’t leave without a travel permit, the quota to earn one is massive, and the company can hike it whenever they feel like it.

   A group trying to escape to a planet nine years away needs hypersleep pods to make the trip, so they break into an abandoned space station drifting near the colony and about to plow into the planet’s rings. Surprise: the station was running xeno experiments, and things went the way xeno experiments always go. Alvarez keeps some of Scott’s android-meddling-with-xeno-DNA threads and gives the movie its MVP in Andy (David Jonsson), a battered, obsolete synthetic rescued from the junk heap and reprogrammed as a loyal companion to miner Rain (Cailee Spaeny).

8. Aliens (1986)

   Ripley survives the Nostromo, but her escape pod drifts for 57 years. She wakes in 2179 to learn her daughter lived a full life and died while mom was asleep. When Ripley tells Weyland-Yutani what happened on LV-426, they inform her there’s a terraforming colony there now. Then they send colonists to look for the derelict ship. Guess what they find.

   The colony is overrun by facehuggers and ruled by a Queen. When the company loses contact, they ship in Colonial Marines, a company rep, and Bishop, the most beloved android in the series (Lance Henriksen, which is why he was later cast as Charles Bishop Weyland in AVP). The result is a full-tilt survival war that expands the universe: the way a colony functions, the Power Loader and Daihotai tractor, the Bug Stomper dropship, the M577 APC, and the weapons set (M41A Pulse Rifle, M240 Incinerator Unit, M56 Smartgun, UA 571-C Sentry Guns). It’s all ridiculously cool, wrapped around characters you actually care about.

9. Alien 3 (1992)

   Infamously rough development, first-time feature director David Fincher, and a movie that greets you by killing off the survivors you rooted for in Aliens. Ripley crash-lands on Fiorina 161, a grimy ore refinery that doubles as a prison for antisocial male inmates. No weapons. Minimal tech. One xeno loose, born from a dog or an ox depending on which cut you watch.

   It’s bleak, nihilistic, and in love with making you miserable. Bishop is a wreck, though Lance Henriksen still pops up for a scene or two. If you’re here for warmth, you took a wrong turn.

10. Alien: Resurrection (1997)

    Jump to 2381. Weyland-Yutani is gone (apparently bought by Walmart), but the United Systems Military is just as obsessed with xenomorphs. On the USM Auriga, they repeatedly clone Ellen Ripley to also clone the Queen embryo inside her. Ripley 8 is the first success: physically adult, mentally a blank slate who has to relearn everything.

    Because she’s part xeno now, she’s stronger, faster, and her blood is acidic. She retains scraps of memory and has a telepathic link with the aliens. When the xenos inevitably break loose, she teams up with mercenaries and another android (Winona Ryder) to keep the species from reaching Earth. She also faces the Newborn, a bizarre human/xeno hybrid. Jean-Pierre Jeunet directs with a puckish, comic-book tone that splits audiences. The end leaves Ripley 8 heading back to Earth more than 250 years after the original Ripley left. Paris doesn’t look great. Maybe she makes it work.

Bonus: Predator: Badlands (2025)

Dan Trachtenberg’s third Predator outing (after Prey and Predator: Killer of Killers) plants a flag squarely inside the Alien universe, and he sets it beyond anything we’ve seen on the Alien timeline so he doesn’t stomp on existing continuity. There are no xenomorphs here, but Weyland-Yutani synthetics play a major role on the planet Genna, where they’re trying to capture a creature called the Kalisk for The Company. Translation: W-Y somehow survived that Walmart acquisition and is still up to the same nasty tricks.

"Very intentionally, it is the furthest into the future in both Predator and Alien. ... I wanted to make sure we were doing our own thing, and selfishly, I’d also done so much Predator in different time periods that I was excited for this to be in the future, even past Alien: Resurrection."

He hasn’t said exactly how far past 2381 this is, just that it’s out there.