From the creation of life in Prometheus to the 2381 century AD events in Alien Resurrection, the Alien franchise timeline is relatively complex. The franchise is based on human survival against an outer space life form named Xenomorph. The horror and action-filled timeline is filled with plenty of surprises within its movies.
Overall, the Alien franchise has released six canon movies that outline the timeline and story plot. Every film delves into a specific era and uncovers a new truth for the audience. The last movie of the franchise was released back in 2017 and people are still scratching their heads trying to understand the chronological timeline within these movies. Let’s see what the complete and organized Alien timeline looks like.
1. Prometheus
Prometheus was released in 2012, but it was the first movie that portrayed the origin of Xenomorphs. The film takes us back 4 billion years when a much-advanced race of aliens called “The Engineers” visited Earth. The movie features one of The Engineers drinking black goo in a ritual ceremony. After that, it disintegrates into the Earth. It is implied that this self-sacrifice of the alien resulted in the creation of life forms on Earth. Moving a few billion years forward, we see the origin of Xenomorph in the form of a monster titled “The Deacon” at the end of the movie. This creature is termed to be formed through the amalgam DNA of humans and Engineers. The Deacon is also the ancestor of the Xenomorph that is seen in the middle of the Alien Movie.
2. Alien Covenant
The 20th-century Alien Covenant takes us forward only a few hundred years. It summarized the events of 2104 AD. In the movie, it is uncovered that Engineers are now extinct all due to the black goo. Even though the film was dropped in 2017, it is a prequel to the events of Aliens and Alien 3. However, its story is pretty much the same where a group of humans is stranded on a distant planet and they survive against a creature similar to the Xenomorph present in Alien. It is assumed that the franchise would come up with one or more prequels targeting the era after 2104 AD to make its connection with the 1979’s Alien events.
3. Alien
The mission that started by finding a special cargo on LV-426 was converted into a race of mega-corporations to get their hands on the Alien specimen, which serves as a lethal killing machine. In the movie, we see a Juggernaut with Xenomorph eggs that crash-landed on Planet LV-426. The crew of Nostromo discovers the eggs, and that’s when the story starts. All the events taking place are dated to 2122 AD. The main protagonist in the film is Sigourney Weaver‘s Lieutenant Ripley.
4. Alien Isolation (Videogame)
Jumping up to 2137 AD Alien Isolation videogame plot features Christopher Samuels informing Ellen Ripley’s daughter about the missing flight recorder of Nostromo that was located in Sevastopol Station. Samuels offers Amanda Ripley a place within the team that was about to visit Sevastopol Station. She accepts the offer to find out about the fate of her mother. The team sets on its way to reach the station, only to find a Xenomorph monster on the loose there. That’s when the survival story plot starts in the game.
5. Aliens
Aliens served the same story plot as the Alien movie initially. The movie focuses on the 2179 AD events when Weyland Yutani sends another team to LV-426 named Acheron to get their hands on one of the eggs present in the Juggernaut. In the same movie, we see Ripley again after staying inside the hypersleep pod for more than 57 years. She is tasked to join a detachment of Colonial Marines where Burke lies about the real purpose of the visit.
6. Alien 3
Alien 3 serves a different plot than previous movies in the franchise, but it happens in the same timeline of 2179 AD. This movie takes away everything that Ripley gained previously. The protagonist crash lands on a prison planet Fiorina Fury 161. Later in the movie, it is disclosed that Ripley is carrying an unborn alien inside her, which makes her death inevitable. In the movie, she tries to prevent Weyland-Yutani from accessing the deadly alien eggs. Therefore, the Xenomorph is not the only villain in this movie.
7. Aliens: Fireteam Elite (Videogame)
The Aliens: Fireteam Elite events happen 23 years after Alien 3. The year is 2202, and the player answers a distress signal from the planet LV-893. On the planet, Colonial Marines find two different threats. One was a breeding facility for Xenomorphs, and the other a mysterious substance “Pathogen.” According to the game, this substance was being harvested from the ruins of the Engineer alien species present on the planet’s surface.
8. Alien Resurrection
The movie features the events of the year 2379 AD. In the movie, Weyland Yutani gets its hands on the alien specimen it wanted from day one. In the film we see Ripley return once again as a hybrid named Ripley 8 that is genetically engineered with Xenomorph blood in her. At the end of the movie, we see Ripley 8 return to the Earth while the Xenomorph gets sucked out into space. This can serve as the closure to the Ripley character or pave the way to more chaos related to Xenomorph in the Alien franchise.Prometheus
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