Both are great. Both are classics. Both were directed by legendary filmmakers.


Straight up: which one do you prefer?


I'm going with Aliens. Alien is a very effective, tense sci-fi horror flick, but the sheer entertainment and magnitude of Aliens is just too hard to top.

Aliens.

I love both movies and they are both easily in my top 10-15 movies ever.

But Aliens is for sure my #1 movie, ever. I'm of course referring to the special edition one, with the 17(ish) minutes of extended scenes. It's an awesome action movie but what makes that work is they spend the whole first hour, pretty much, on character and suspense then let loose with the craziness.

Also, the score is beautiful and the lack of score is expertly used. The whole Ripley vs Queen fight at the end was scoreless and it worked wonderfully.

That moment when the Queen alien reaches for Newt and then the door opens and all sound drops out except the utterly amazing sound effect of the loader only walking, followed by the line of the movie (which is awesome as so many of them are golden to me): Get away from her you bitch.

Not to mention how awesomely hot Sigourney Weaver is, even with the 80's hair.

I could go on and on about this, really, but I'll wrap it up with how astonishing the FX hold up 22 years later (Jeez. This movie is older than I am).

I can honestly say the FX in here are better than a bunch of the movies I see today. It does help that today CG is used for pretty much everything and when you see crappy CG it's completely clear and removes you (or at least me) from the whole experience.

Carrie Henn was also a wonderful find and she not once annoyed me. Impressive for a child actor.

Okay, the end.

Aliens because its alot more epical. It reminds me of the jump from Terminator to Terminator 2 and First Blood to Rambo 2

Alien - A

Aliens - A-

The first one was just so damn suspensful.

The trailer for Alien, the one with just sound FX and visuals but no dialogue, is one of my favorite trailers ever. It echoed what the movie was going to be so well without ruining it. More trailers should be that great. It doesn't hurt that the tagline is top-notch and still one of the most referenced taglines to this day.

Those first 2 Alien films always astound me in that they're both, for me, perfect in what they are going for. The first being suspense/horror and the second being action.

Sidenote: I don't hate Alien 3 or Alien:Resurrection, those just weren't up to the levels of 1&2. I feel that if Fincher had been given the kind of control he got for his other films that Alien 3 could have been truly something (though I still don't agree with killing off Hicks, Bishop, and Newt in that fashion). A HUGE redeeming factor that Alien:Resurrection has is Weaver's performance. She does so much with the confusion/weird sexuality Ripley 8 has it's hard for me to watch and not be fascinated.

Aliens is pretty overrated. It's an exciting thrill ride, sure, but that's all it is. Alien is an artistic masterpiece and it's scary as hell.

To those arguing in the favor of Alien....yeah, it did combine the genres very well. But so did Aliens, mixing horror, action and sci-fi. Alien might be scary as hell, but Aliens is exciting as hell. It's about as well-made a blockbuster can ever be.

Alien. Although Aliens comes VERY close.

I agree with this for the most part. Aliens is overrated in the same way the majority of Cameron's work is.

Alien, on the other hand, is one of the greatest movies of all time.

Alien

I too find Aliens to be quite overrated.

Alien is one of the best horror movies of all time and Aliens is one of the scariest. Aliens gets the edge. It may not be as terrifying as Alien, but the movie is just as intense and suspenseful with the better developed characters, and I mean come one, the simple of idea of comparing the Alien species to ants is one of the most brilliant ideas ever.

Easy - - Aliens.

Alien--just for being so damned original and scary. It still gives me goose bumps when I watch it. Aliens was a suitable sequel that just fell ever so short in terms of matching the original.

Aliens, which I actually find underrated.

Aliens.

Aliens

alien cant be topped. but i really like aliens too, i think its camerons 2nd best movie behind the original terminator.

Saw ALiens for the first time yesterday.

ALien >> first 2 hours of ALiens

However, the Last 30 mins. of ALiens was AWESOME!!! that it makes up for the decent first 2 hours of it and bareLy surpasses the originaL as a whoLe. So my vote goes to ALiens though ALien is pretty cLose.

Alien for me. One of the best directed films ever IMO.

Aliens is a pretty great action movie, but I like T1, T2, and Titanic more.

I give the nod to Aliens because of Weaver's Ripley performance... and that showdown with the Queen.

The last 30 minutes of Aliens are truly breathtaking.