Some are amazing like Alien, Aliens, and the first Predator. Some are pretty good modern takes like Aliens: Prometheus and Aliens: Covenant. The synth David played by Michael Fassbender is one of the most interesting and well acted characters on recent cinema. I’m definitely looking forward to some sort of sequel to Covenant.

One of the movies is downright awful (AvP: Requiem, doesn’t thematically fit either Aliens nor Predator). Alien 3 had some poor decisions that really constrained the narrative and has pacing issues. Alien Resurrection is quite corny (Sigorney Weavers acting in it, in particular all the sniffing and licking lol) and doesn’t really fit the Alien theme, it’s more like Firefly with Aliens in it. Predator 2 is funny in an B-movie action way (the Predator is shown getting stuck by lightning and roaring for the express purposes of looking cool). Surprisingly Predator 2 remains lore accurate despite being a bit of an action movie trope-fest.

The other franchise formats are interesting as well. The original AvP classic 2000 video game was remarkable playing as the Alien since you could climb walls and ceilings. The more recent Alien: Isolation is great at story telling and atmosphere but I hit some unfortunate game breaking bugs where I couldn’t progress :(. Aliens: Fireteam Elite is a nice little co-op shooter but they hobbled the design by only having 3 players in a game that should really have about 6 players to make effective use of all of the classes (like Killing Floor 2).

I have no idea where I’m going with this, but yeah I’ve been on a bit of an Aliens kick.