Ranking all of the Alien franchise movies from Aliens to Prometheus

The latest entry into the Alien universe drops on Friday with Alien: Romulus hitting theaters. The Fede Alvarez (Don't Breathe, Evil Dead) reboot has gotten good reviews, debuting with a Certified Fresh rating of over 80% on Rotten Tomatoes. Up-and-coming stars Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla, Civil War), Archie Renaux (Upgraded, Shadow and Bone) and David Jonsson (Industry) lead the horror-thriller that sits on the timeline between Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986).

While Alien and Aliens are highly regarded -- the pair of movies won three Oscars and earned lead Sigourney Weaver a Best Actress nomination for the sequel -- the same cannot be said across the entire Alien universe.

In preparation for Romulus, we watched all of the Weyland-Yutani adjacent movies, including Ridley Scott's prequels Prometheus (2012) and Covenant (2017) and the Alien vs. Predator movies. Here's how they all shook out.

8. Alien 3 (1992)

This movie is awful. Within 30 seconds it undoes essentially everything they worked towards in Aliens, killing off two wonderful characters in Newt and Hicks. It's a movie that's full of wholly unlikable people, rambling story-telling and terrible CGI. Also, it's boring. The best thing I can say is that Charles Dance is pretty good.

Also, if you're going to be an aggressively bad movie on all fronts, don't also include a pretty graphic, drawn out and unnecessary death of a dog.

7. Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)

If it weren't for Alien 3's wanton disregard for all of the world building and character development, this would be last. Really, it's a tie for last as I'd give both zero stars. AVP: Requiem is gruesome just to push the limit, and nothing says that more than the audacity to use a maternity ward as a set piece late in the movie. Terrible.

6. Alien: Resurrection (1997)

Resurrection has some entertaining parts, but overall it's meh. Clone Ripley is a let down, and there are a LOT of just utterly creepy scenes with failed clone attempts and human-alien hybrids. Ron Perlman is a nice add, as is Brad Dourif playing his best character type of Really Weird Guy.

It's a forgettable movie overall.

5. Alien vs. Predator (2004)

This movie is fine! It's not the worst, and it's certainly not the best. Alien vs. Predator knows what it is and executes it pretty well. I wanted to see a bunch of aliens fight a bunch of Predators, and you know what this movie has? A bunch of aliens fighting a bunch of Predators. It's definitely silly at times -- how does the handsome archaeologist figure out the movements of the temple so fast? -- but that's kind of what works with this one.

4. Alien: Covenant (2017)

A colonizing mission deals with disaster when a ship malfunction wakes the crew earlier than expected and they end up deciding to respond to a space transmission of "Country Roads" (no, really). For some reason, everyone keeps responding to unknown messages in space, something they should really stop doing.

Unsurprisingly, things go TERRIBLY for them as spores turn some of them into horrifying monsters. Michael Fassbender not only reprises his role of David from Prometheus, but he also plays naive Walter, a more updated version of robot.

Alien: Covenant is above the good/awful line, even if the Ridley Scott prequel films don't really have great continuity.

3. Prometheus (2012)

My biggest beef with Prometheus is that it can't seem to decide if it truly wants to be an Alien prequel or not. The idea of people traveling the galaxy to meet their "makers" only to find out they're just truly awful is a wonderful premise, and there are some truly scary moments. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) using the medical machine to excise an alien from her abdomen and Fifield (Mission Impossible's Sean Harris) are two of the more lasting horror scenes.

Sure, everyone makes really bad choices at every step, but Idris Elba, Charlize Theron and Guy Pearce bring some solid star power. Oh, and Fassbender's first turn as an android is very, very good.

2. Alien (1979)

Please don't yell at me, at this point it's personal preference. Alien is a top-notch horror flick, using a confined space and small crew to make this even more terrifying. Sigourney Weaver's Ripley is one of the all-time iconic action heroines, and the introduction of face huggers and Xenomorphs impacted the genre (and the sci-fi drama) forever.

The reveal of Ash (Ian Holm) as an android is a top-notch twist, and everyone remembers the impact of seeing that first chest burster pop out of John Hurt's Kane. Tom Skerritt is fantastic as Dallas, and it's just an incredibly great movie.

1. Aliens (1986)

Whenever anyone discusses the best sequels ever made, Aliens is always in the mix with Terminator 2, The Dark Knight and The Empire Strikes Back. James Cameron takes the horror of the original and adds in so much action. Ripley is back after floating through space for literal decades, we meet one of the (in my opinion) all-time movie villains in Carter Burke and get to hang out with the Space Marines. Bill Paxton's Hudson, Michael Biehn's Hicks and Lance Henriksen's Bishop are just some of the standout roles as the audience gets a chance to bond more with the characters than any of the other movies.

There is non-stop action, it is highly quotable ("Game over man. Game over.") and features a fight between Ripley in a loader and the queen Xenomorph. A literally perfect movie.

This article originally appeared on For The Win: Ranking all of the Alien franchise movies from Aliens to Prometheus