Alien (1979) vs. Aliens (1986): Movie vs. Movie Issue #7

Alien (1979) vs. Aliens (1986): 

which one is better?

Alien and Aliens are two of the greatest films ever to feature extraterrestrial creatures (as well as two of my favourite films of all-time). Though Aliens is a direct sequel, it was helmed by someone completely uninvolved with the original (James Cameron, who wrote and directed), and as a result, ended up being quite different from the first film. In fact, Aliens is more of sci-fi-action-thriller, as opposed to Alien, which is both sci-fi and horror. But, despite being fairly different from the original, Aliens is also considered one of the best sequel films of all-time. 

Fans of the series and general movie-goers agree, Alien is a classic film, and Aliens is the only other entry in the franchise to come close to being as good or better than it. But is it better? Which film is the best?

I’ve gone back and forth on this question many times over the years, but now it’s time to fully analyze both movies and determine which one is superior, the sequel or the original. Step aside, Predator, it’s time for Alien vs. Aliens!

Plot: 

For a long time, I always thought of Aliens as having a totally different sort of story than Alien, but really, if you break down some of the big plot points, the stories for both movies are quite similar.

Alien is a straight-forward story about seven crew members aboard the commercial spacecraft Nostromo, who are instructed by the company they work for to investigate an S.O.S on a desolate planetoid (later named LV-426 or Acheron). There, they find a strange derelict ship filled with alien eggs, one of which hatches a facehugger that attaches itself to crew-member Kane. The android science officer, Ash (they don’t know he’s an android yet, spoilers!), lets them back on board, and Kane spawns a chestburster, which quickly grows into a full-sized alien (the species has become known as the xenomorph, thanks to a quick line of dialogue from Aliens) and hides in the ship. 

The crew try to hunt it down and kill it, but they’re no match for the superior creature. It comes down to just Flight Officer Ripley, who self-destructs the ship in an effort to terminate the xenomorph and gets away on the shuttle (along with Jones, the cat that lives onboard), but the creature stows away on the shuttle with her. She manages to get rid of it using the airlock and a spear gun (for what reason is a spear gun on board? Don’t question it), then goes into hyper sleep. That’s basically the entire movie boiled down to 203 words. 

Aliens is quite a bit more complex. I won’t even try to give a full summary, but essentially it’s about Ripley joining a team of marines on a mission to investigate why the company (now called Weyland Yutani) lost contact with a human colony that had been established on LV-426 during the intervening years between the Nostromo’s investigation of the planetoid and Ripley’s rescue from the shuttle 57 years later. What the marines find is not just one xenomorph, but a whole hive of them. The team becomes trapped in the colony and have to escape, and it comes down to just Ripley once again, only this time instead of having to rescue a cat and reach a shuttle before a ship explodes, she has to rescue Newt, the only survivor from the original colony population, and reach the drop ship (piloted by the android Bishop, who isn’t evil like the first movie’s android) before the reactor in the colony explodes. And instead of fighting a single Alien like in the first movie, she fights a Queen Alien in a power loader suit, to the same results as before. 

What makes Aliens seem so different from Alien is not so much the story content but more to do with the differences in scale and character dynamics. Aliens is Alien but on steroids. More aliens! More people! More action! And that last one is the other major difference, the action element. 

This is why it makes it hard to compare the two movies. Alien isn’t an action movie, so it can’t be faulted for having less-impressive action compared to the sequel. In contrast, can’t Aliens therefore not be faulted for being less scary than Alien? This is where it gets tricky, because no, Aliens is not as scary as Alien overall, despite having the same horrific creature in greater numbers.  

Let me break down a key scene to show how Aliens is absolutely on par or better than Alien (in terms of being scary and exciting), purely on a scene-to-scene basis. A scene that stands out to me as being exceptionally terrifying is when Newt and Ripley are trapped in the room with two facehuggers, and Ripley has to figure out a way to get help before the facehuggers implant them with chestbursters. We, as audience members, perfectly understand the stakes here, the sense of urgency and fright. Then, to add to the tension, the room is full of shadows and random clutter, so the facehuggers have lots of places to hide. And then, to top it all off, Ripley sets off the sprinklers, so there’s falling water and a red emergency light, which makes the scene look about as scary as possible. 

In the first movie, the facehugger just jumped straight into Kane’s helmet, then held on to him for a while, then dropped off. It was creepy looking and disgusting, but that was it. This time, the facehuggers are a real known threat, and they end up being way scarier for a longer time than the single one ever was in the first movie. But let’s consider the scene where Kane is attacked by the facehugger more carefully. The first time we see it, we don’t know what’s going to happen when that egg opens up, and the whole scene plays out very slowly, we’re peeking into the egg along with Kane…then BAM. It leaps out so fast we don’t even see it clearly and it makes for one of the best jump scares of all-time. But is this scene scarier than the one from Aliens? It could be argued either way. What’s better about the facehugger scene in Alien is how simple it is, and that’s the key factor here: simplicity.      

The idea of being trapped on a ship with no weapons and knowing just one horrific creature is trapped there with you is really scary. I get where James Cameron’s mindset was with the sequel. Okay, one was scary, imagine if there were even more, and the humans did have guns this time, but it still didn’t help! It’s a great concept, and it worked extremely well. But it didn’t make for a scarier or even equally scary concept to the first movie. It was exciting, yes, and still scary, of course, but speaking of the overall plot, no, it wasn’t as ground-breaking or terrifying.

It’s a tough call, especially because I absolutely love the plots of both movies, but there’s just something so satisfyingly simple about the plot of Alien, that I have to slightly favour it. James Cameron had a tough task in trying to live up to the sheer genius of the first movie, and he did a great job. But bigger isn’t always better, in terms of story. 

One point to Alien.  

Characters:

This is where I think Aliens has a leg up on Alien. Both movies have great characters, but let’s break down the casts a bit, starting with Alien.

One of the greatest strengths of Alien is depicting a working-class group of individuals who are meant to be just like everyday people. These aren’t super-intelligent highly-trained astronauts on a daring space mission, they’re just truck drivers in space, a phrase that’s been thrown around a lot when talking about the characters in Alien, but it’s true. They just work for the company and want to get paid, that’s all. 

When everyone first wakes up at the start of the movie and sits around for breakfast, the feeling that these people are co-workers instantly comes across, largely thanks to Ridley Scott allowing the actors to improvise their dialogue. They talk over one another and joke and comment on each other and it all feels real. Brett and Parker talking about the bonus situation, Dallas explaining why they woke up early, and Ripley and Kane asking questions about their new side-mission sets up the movie really skilfully, and from there, we see these folks in their working environment, before things take a turn for the worst and witness them switch from work-mode to survival-mode.

In Aliens, the same sort of switch happens, but there are a few key differences in terms of characterization. The first and biggest one is the advantage of Ripley’s story already having been told. If you saw Alien, then you already know what Ripley has gone through when she’s introduce at the beginning of Aliens, so there is built-in sympathy for her. But even if you haven’t seen Alien, she’s still introduced in a way that new viewers can feel sympathy for her, because as she explains to the board members what happened on the Nostromo and they quickly disbelieve her, Sigourney Weaver’s acting is so strong she makes you buy that this really did happen and they should believe her, so when they don’t, you feel bad for her. 

After Ripley’s reintroduction, we meet the marines along for the journey with her, and get strong impressions of them right away. In Alien there were only seven people, and one of them turned out to be a robot. In Aliens, there’s a robot (but that’s no secret this time), plus Ripley, plus sleazy company worker Burke, plus Lieutenant Gorman, plus the whole squad of marines, and then they find Newt…my point being there are way more characters this time, which means making them interesting and worth caring about it a much greater task. And yet, James Cameron did it. 

In Alien, we don’t get a lot of backstory about any of the characters. It’s more about the immediate threat and them trying to survive, but what’s so brilliant about Aliens is it brings back that immediacy and need for survival while also infusing it with excellent characterization and backstory. We find out Ripley had a daughter, Newt is the only survivor of the colony invasion, the marines have hunted other extraterrestrials before, the lieutenant is inexperienced, private Hudson acts like a badass until shit hits the fan, and so on and so forth. 

What it comes down to, for me, is Aliens has a greater number of memorable characters (Hudson, Hicks, Newt, Bishop, Ripley, Gorman, Vasquez, Burke) compared to Alien. Though both movies have great characters, it’s the wider range offered in Aliens that appeals more to me. 

One point to Aliens.   

Setting:

Even though Alien seems much smaller in scale than Aliens (which it is), both movies actually take place in about the same number of locations. Alien is mainly set on the planetoid/derelict ship and the Nostromo, and Aliens takes place mainly within the colony, but also has Ripley and the marines on the ship Sulaco, as well as the planet’s surface, and the colony is a little more varied than the Nostromo.      

    

Though Aliens has more variety in locations, I don’t find the settings as memorable, overall. The one that really sticks out is the Alien hive, with its absolutely massive scale and intricate details. Everything is wet and shadowy and where one wall ends and a xenomorph begins is impossible to tell. But, the colony and processing station all kind of blends together into an industrial backdrop, which might have been an attempt to replicate the same feeling the setting of Alien evokes, but it didn’t quite work as well as it did in the first film.

 

The two main settings in Alien are extremely distinct. Beginning with the derelict, it’s perhaps the most alien environment in any movie, and I mean alien in the sense that it truly looks otherworldly. H.R. Giger’s designs are stunning, and that vast room with all the eggs, like a gigantic metallic tunnel, is terrifying. As for the Nostromo, the design is so detailed, I feel like I notice a new point of interest every time I watch the movie. Yes, it often looks all the same throughout like the main setting in Aliens, but that works better to evoke the feeling of being completely trapped and claustrophobic, more so than in Aliens. Both movies have great settings, but Alien has the more memorable, distinct, and effective look. 

One point to Alien.

Creatures and Effects:

This is another tough category, because once again it’s not really a fair comparison. In Alien, there are many eggs, but only one opens up, then there’s one facehugger, one chestburster, and one adult xenomorph. In Aliens (if going by the special edition) there are several facehuggers, two chestbursters (one real, one in Ripley’s dream), dozens of xenomorph drones, and the queen. For quantity, Aliens obviously wins, but which movie has the more convincing creatures, and what about the other visual effects?

Alien had to live up to the high special-effects standards set by Star Wars two years prior to its release, and it certainly did. The shots of the Nostromo moving through space still look convincing to this day. By comparison, the shots of the Sulaco in Aliens look just as good (though there are fewer shots of it compared to the number of shots of the Nostromo) but for whatever reason, the effects for the dropships entering the planet’s atmosphere and landing on the surface have no aged well in either movie, though I would say it looks slightly better in Alien. 

Now for the creature comparisons. The eggs in Aliens look better than the eggs from Alien. In Alien, the one egg’s “petals” open extremely robotically, which I’m guessing was sort of the point, but it looks very stiff, and in Aliens, the eggs open more naturally, plus there are many of them and they all are to the same standard of quality. 

The facehugger in Alien looks pretty damn real. It’s wet, scaly, and breathing, and I think it still holds up today. In Aliens, when the facehugger is shown emerging from an egg in front of Newt in the hive, it’s slow and inferior to its reveal in Alien. But when the facehugger in Alien leapt out of the egg, it was scary because of the way it was rapidly edited and shot. The facehugger itself does very little except sit on Kane’s face and tighten its tail. In Aliens, the facehuggers have much greater movement and, like Stan Winston said in an interview, “it’s a character now.” But I can’t really say one facehugger looked and performed better than the other in this case, because the facehuggers aptly performed their roles in both movies and were equally convincing. 

The chestburster scene was, effects-wise, more advanced in Aliens compared to Alien. There was an equal amount of blood gushing in both, but it was in a darker setting in Aliens, so it wasn’t quite as easy to see, and it was a more violent eruption from the body, like a fist punching its way out. The bursting also happens quicker. But Alien still has the best chestburster scene of all, and not just because it was the first. The scene is perfectly edited (as evidenced by an alternate re-edited version which doesn’t feel as convincing), it occurs in full-light so you see it in all its horrific glory, and I think it still looks pretty believable today. Yeah, it’s kind of funny when the chestburster looks around and screeches then scurries over the table on a very obvious track, but it’s still a little better than the chestbursting scene in Aliens. 

As for the adult xenomorph, this is a big point of contention for fans. Some prefer Stan Winston’s design, with the ribbed cranium and empty eye sockets over H.R. Giger’s smooth dome, but others prefer Giger’s look. Instead of comparing looks, I’ll compare performance. If I’m being honest, half of the shots of the xenomorph in Alien look goofy to me. The ones that stand out badly: when it leaps out at Dallas, when it moves in front of the camera as it’s about to attack Lambert, when it whips around to knock over Parker, and when it tumbles around outside the escape shuttle. 

There are fewer goofy shots in Aliens, though still a few. In general, the xenos in Aliens perform more confidently, and, like the facehuggers, are capable of greater movement. Unlike the facehugger comparison, though, the xenomorph in Alien should have been able to perform its role better, but Ridley Scott chose to cut around it for a reason: it looked like a guy in a suit. James Cameron showed his creatures more because they were simply more convincing.

Beyond just the xenomorph in Alien, there’s the Space Jockey, which doesn’t do anything, but looks incredible and is forever tied to the Alien legacy thanks to novels and comic books and the movie Prometheus. However, it’s the Queen Alien that really makes Aliens rise above Alien in the creature and effects category. She alone, on a technical level, far surpasses anything from the first Alien. Again, it’s an unfair comparison, especially because the second film was a much bigger movie than the first and movie-making technology had progressed nearly a decade since it was made, but overall, Aliens has the greater number of effects that hold up today. 

Point to Aliens.

Tone/Genre: 

Some film buffs who are more critical of Aliens see its roots as an action movie rather than a horror movie as an argument for why it isn’t as good as the first movie and isn’t as scary, but to me, it’s a flawed argument. These movies master two different hybrid genres: Alien is a great sci-fi-horror movie, and Aliens is a great sci-fi-action movie. Sure, there are other genre elements thrown in to both, but when you boil them down, that’s what they are, so for that, I can’t say one is better than the other in this way. Just because Alien was distinctly sci-fi-horror didn’t mean Aliens had to be, as well. They both accomplish many of the same things, but Aliens also accomplishes the action aspect well, too, despite not accomplishing the horror aspect as well as Alien. 

One point to each.

Music:

Because Aliens has a different tone and pace than Alien, the music of course sounds quite different. The score for Alien by Jerry Goldsmith is haunting and slow, especially in its opening chords as the title slowly fades in over shots of space. It doesn’t have as many big moments as James Horner’s score for Aliens, but the Aliens soundtrack underscores the action parts with its big moments, using sounds like the marching drums as they are getting ready to leave the Sulaco and land on LV-426, or the loud percussion when the creatures attack them in the hive. In contrast, Horner’s score has less-effective haunting/slow pieces of music compared to Goldsmith’s. 

Both scores have become iconic, but in different ways. Parts of the Alien score were recycled in Alien Resurrection and Prometheus, while the only other movie to re-use distinct parts of the Aliens score was AVP: Requiem, though the signature part of the score has been used in many movie trailers. I love both scores, and think they are perfect for their respective films, but in the end, I have to side with the score that elevates the visuals more effectively, and that would be Jerry Goldsmith’s. Without the aid of his music, the movie wouldn’t have had quite as many unnerving scenes. Scenes like the power loader fight and the marines initially investigating the colony are still great without music. 

Point to Alien.   

Legacy:

I don’t award points in this section, but I almost wonder if I should deduct a point from both movies, simply for spawning an inconsistent, often confusing, and usually sub-par franchise. Ridley Scott wanted to end Alien with the creature killing Ripley, then imitating her voice into the ship’s recorder, which would’ve either ended the franchise right then and there, or set up a drastically different storyline. But, without Alien as we know it, we wouldn’t have had Aliens, which did a pretty neat job of exterminating the xenomorphs at the end and sending our characters off on a happy trip through space, leaving it open for more potential adventures, but not so wide-open that people would be groping for part three.

And yet, everyone was groping for part three because Aliens was so awesome. Then Alien 3 did come along, and it took a seriously dark path that officially ended the franchise by killing the last xenomorph and Ripley herself. But no, Alien Resurrection brought it all back for one more far-flung adventure. Okay, that had to be the end. Nope, the first Alien prequel came in the form of the crossover Alien vs. Predator, which was followed up by Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. Then Ridley Scott took the reigns of the franchise back in his own hands and did another prequel (which may or may not make the AVP movies canon), but this time, he explored the origins of the space jockey, with the stand-alone sci-fi adventure Prometheus. Now, we get a sequel to that prequel, Alien: Covenant, which finally reunites Ridley Scott with the creature he originally brought to the big screen all those years ago. Hopefully it’s the best movie in the franchise to have Alien in the title since Aliens.

No points awarded.

Conclusion:

This was a tough one. Normally with these “movie vs. movie” articles, I come to a strong conclusion, but not this time. I’m as big of a fan of Alien as I am of Aliens. Aliens used to be my clear favourite of the two when I was younger, then it was Alien for a while, now I can’t pick which one is my favourite. They both are. But if I’m going to pick one as being the better movie, I have to go back to the scoreboard. Alien scored one point more than Aliens, and here’s why.

When you break down both movies, the answer to why Alien comes out on top is clear, and it might sound like a cop-out-answer, but it’s just a fact: Alien came first. Alien launched the entire franchise—the iconic female heroine Ripley, the entire mythology of the xenomorph creature, the expansive futuristic world—and Aliens, while it did build on that mythology in creative and fantastic ways (the colonial marines, the terraforming, the Alien Queen), it didn’t produce as much original and iconic content as Alien.  

I completely understand both sides of the argument. In many ways, Aliens is better than Alien, and vice versa, and like I said, I’m not picking a favourite here, I love both. But I’m also not saying Alien is objectively better than Aliens, necessarily. What I will say: Alien is a more important film than Aliens, simply because without one, you couldn’t have possibly had the other. 

Alien wins. 

Thanks for reading, and be sure to stay tuned for my upcoming Alien: Covenant review!