Alien: Romulus bursts its way into cinemas on Friday (August 16), the ninth film in the sci-fi/horror franchise – but how should newcomers tackle the xenomorph world in order? Read on for the comprehensive guide.

Fede Alvarez’s (Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe) new film stars Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla) and David Jonsson (Industry, Rye Lane) and follows a group of young space colonists who are confronted with a mysterious extraterrestrial threat while scavenging around an abandoned space station.

In a five-star review of Alien: Romulus, NME wrote: “With spot-on production design that really captures the worn-out feel of space travel that the Alien films so perfectly showed, the practical and visual effects, bringing that acid-dripping bitch back to life, are also superbly realised. With a gets-right-under-the-skin score from Benjamin Wallfisch, this is an Alien film for the ages. Finally, someone has made a movie that comes close to the brilliance of Ridley Scott and James Cameron.”

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Alvarez recently spoke to NME about working on the new film, sharing the advice that Scott, who directed the 1979 original, gave him.

“He said the director should not be editorial all the time because you lose objectivity with your film,” he revealed. “If you can stop looking at it for a while and come back to it, you will make it so much better. So I did that during the [Christmas] holidays. I took a month off from the movie and went away and came back… That was great advice he gave me.”

How to watch the Alien movies in chronological order

The Alien franchise covers multiple centuries of encounters between human and alien life and first materialised in the late 1970s when sci-fi/horror writers Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett collaborated on a script originally titled Star Beast.

Inspired by the success of Star Wars, Walter Hill’s Brandywine Productions bought the script and made the decision to hire the relatively unknown duo of Sigourney Weaver and Ridley Scott to star in and direct the film.

Thanks to the palpable tension that pervaded the film, the experimental creature designs of H.R. Giger and the word-of-mouth shock of the John Hurt chest-burster sequence, the film was a box office success, launching over four decades of sequels and spinoffs.

Every entry in the franchise so far is available to stream via Disney+, and for those wishing to watch the entire Alien saga in canonical chronological order, here is the complete guide:

• Alien vs. Predator (2004): Technically, the story of the xenomorphs begins with the first crossover film with the Predator franchise. In 2004, an expedition to Antarctica to find the source of a mysterious heat pattern finds evidence of alien life, with humans being caught in the crossfire between the two malicious forces.

• Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007). Still set in our contemporary world, the follow-up crossover sees alien and predator hybrids and all out carnage in Gunnison, Colorado.

• Prometheus (2012). Ridley Scott returned to the franchise after over 30 years to launch this prequel, set in the late 21st century. Humans venture out into space in hopeful pursuit of mankind’s origins, but are soon confronted by their creators’ xenomorphic bioweapon. Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender and Idris Elba breathe life into mythological backstory of the alien creatures.

• Alien: Covenant (2017). The sequel to Prometheus, once again helmed by Scott, is set 11 years later on a colony ship heading for a seemingly uninhabited planet, where they come across the results of Fassbender’s android character David’s terrifying experiments.

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• Alien (1979). Set in 2122, shortly after the events of Covenant, the original Alien finds the tough crew of the Nostromo discover mysterious eggs on a remote planet, which go on to wreak havoc on the personnel, one by one.

• Alien: Romulus (2024). The new film is set between the original two films and features a team of space colonists scavenging a derelict space station, which they do not realise is inhabited by the Xenomorphs.

• Aliens (1986). James Cameron’s epic, action-packed sequel to the ‘79 original is set 57 years later and follows the sole survivor Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) as she joins a mission to investigate the same remote planet. It leads to an unforgettable standoff with the Xenomorph Queen.

• Alien 3 (1992). The first feature film from director David Fincher, Alien 3 picks up in the immediate aftermath of Aliens. Ripley’s escape pod lands on a prison planet, but has carried xenomorph eggs with it, leading to further carnage.

• Alien Resurrection (1997). Set a further 200 years later, Jean-Pierre Jeunet oversees a world where Ripley has been cloned by the military, but her DNA has morphed with the Xenomorph Queen.