This act of self-sacrifice, it’s implied, resulted in all life on Earth: in short, there’s a bit of Engineer DNA in all of us, and vice versa.įast-forward a few billion years, and a team of explorers led by Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) follow an ancient star map to LV-223 – a moon they believe to be the Engineers’ home, but may actually be a military base. When Prometheus begins, we see a cloaked Engineer drink from a bowl of black goo in what appears to be a religious ceremony. These giants are Engineers – hairless, humanoid beings that appear to travel from planet to planet, creating new life. The prequel not only delves into the origins of the Xenomorph, but also the creature once dubbed the Space Jockey – that gigantic, biomechanical entity briefly glimpsed aboard a horseshoe-shaped craft in Alien. Prometheus – circa 4 billion BC to 2089 ADĪlthough released in 2012, Prometheus takes place decades before the events of Alien. What order should I watch the Alien movies in?

Here’s how the timeline looks in chronological order. Other threads, meanwhile, have been left tantalisingly dangling. Some plot threads reach right back to the creation of life on our planet. When crewmember Kane (John Hurt) was dragged back to the ship with a parasitic organism attached to his face, the birth scene that followed, as a screeching infant Alien burst from his chest, was one of the most shocking in 1970s cinema.ĭirected by Ridley Scott, Alien was essentially a slasher horror movie in space – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s raw terror was an influence – but the quality of its writing, acting, and stark direction elevated it above the ranks of B-movie schlock, and turned survivor Lieutenant Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) into a science fiction movie icon.Īlien’s success all but ensured more horrors would follow – and over 40 years later, the series’ timeline is a complicated one.

When the crew of the Nostromo touched down on the stormy moon LV-426 in 1979’s Alien, they had no idea of the horrors they were about to encounter.

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