The question of whether Aliens or Alien is the better movie has been debated for decades, but the inquiry itself misses the point of both movies. Released in 1979, Alien was a massive hit for future Blade Runner helmer Ridley Scott. The tense, terrifying “haunted house in space” sci-fi horror told the story of a doomed crew who accidentally pick an extraterrestrial stowaway after visiting a creepy planet.
Released in 1986, Aliens was a massive tidal shift for the franchise that held on to the titular monster and star Sigourney Weaver but changed almost everything else about the series. Gone were the slasher horror elements (Alien 3 brought these back with a vengeance, to little fanfare), replaced by more action-oriented storytelling. Now, not only were there multiple Xenomorphs threatening the cast, but the heroes were also well-armed and trained space marines instead of the first movie’s luckless working stiffs.
Inevitably, fans soon began to debate over which was the superior Alien franchise outing, and there is still no clear critical consensus ranking one movie above the other. However, the clear change in genre between the action-heavy sci-fi (albeit with monsters) of Aliens and the intense, claustrophobic horror of Alien means that the two movies were not particularly comparable, despite both being installments in the same series. Alien, like the later prequel Alien: Covenant, was a small-scale horror where Aliens was a huge action extravaganza, meaning the two could not be meaningfully pitted against each other in the way that frequently cited “superior sequels” like The Godfather Part 2 and Scream 2 are compared to their predecessors.
Although the debate over which is the better Alien movie continues, the argument often ignores the fact that they are fundamentally different projects despite sharing a monster and heroine. As a result of this, the preference of individual viewers has more to do with whether they prefer horror or action than anything to do with each movie’s respective merits. Director James Cameron’s earlier The Terminator is closer in tone to Scott’s movie than Aliens, being a slasher that pits a sci-fi villain against a resourceful but under-equipped heroine. In contrast, Aliens diverges from the blueprint of its predecessor so radically that the two movies become all but incomparable, and debating their merits comes down to comparing separate genres rather than outings of a franchise.
This becomes harder for viewers to recall when later Alien movies such as Alien: Covenant and Alien: Resurrection mostly returned to the formula of the original, with small locations, limited casts, and a tone that leaned toward horror over action. These sequels are much more easily compared to Alien (as is the very similar, but far darker Alien 3), while in contrast, the first Alien Vs Predator movie is the closest that the series has come to bringing back the action-oriented tone of Aliens (albeit to far less critically-acclaimed effect). Most fans agree none of these later sequels can compare with Alien while few fans would compare Alien Vs Predator to Aliens in terms of quality, but the fact that the first two movies in the series have the biggest gulf in terms of atmosphere and genre remains unmentioned in many comparisons of the two very different outings.