Today marks the 20th anniversary of Alien: Resurrection directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and to celebrate this occasion we have decided to see if any of the Alien films are currently available to stream on Netflix.
Ever since the franchise’s first debut in 1979 at the hands of Ridley Scott, the Alien films have spawned many books, comics and video games over the years. The first film was followed by three sequels, Aliens, Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection, the lattermost being the least successful. There have also been two prequels released, Promethious in 2012 and Alien: Covernant earlier in 2017, both which have been directed by Ridley Scott.
The series has undoubtedly been highly influential in the horror and sci-fi world even to this day. Below we’re going to take a quick look to as why this is.
A lot of sci-fi movies of this era relied heavily on special effects to convey their story and subsequently didn’t age particularly well as a result. The Alien franchise is not an example of this, the practical effects that were used still look great today; anything from the facehuggers, to the dismembered cyborgs. Along with the effects, the great casting like Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, Bill Paxton made the series stand out above others.
The plot of each of the movies follows a pretty similar concept. A group of space marines are sent to an unknown transmission in deep space only to find a sinister organism hellbent on hunting them all down by any means necessary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvU24IIWJ5I
Now to the important bit, and let’s start off by saying that unfortunately as of right now, none of the original Alien movies are streaming on Netflix. This includes the first 1979 film Alien directed by Ridley Scott that introduced Sigourney Weaver as the infamous Ripley. The second more action-packed film Aliens directed by James Cameron is also not streaming anywhere on Netflix, along with the third film Aliens 3 which was directed by David Fincher. And finally, we are still yet to see Alien: Resurrection on Netflix, the only film in the franchise to be directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
Regarding the recent prequels directed by Ridley Scott, the story remains depressingly the same. We will update this article if there are any contractual changes that mean that the new films might be coming to Netflix.
Alien fans might be disappointed with this realisation. But why haven’t the films ever been on Netflix? Well, the answer lies with 20th Century Fox, the incredible popularity of the series makes it exceedingly valuable, clearly too valuable to let go to a streaming service like Netflix. Fox have complete control of the property and believe that DVD purchases are more profitable.
Also, it may be important to mention that Fox is due to be taking a lot of their titles off Netflix towards the very end of 2017 and throughout 2018. This means it’s even more likely that we will not see the Alien films on Netflix in the foreseeable future. For more information on this, check out our list of all the Fox titles leaving Netflix.
If you are lucky enough to have a Netflix DVD account, you are able to rent the movies. You can also rent the films from Amazon Video.
Would you like to see the Alien movies on Netflix someday? What do you think about the new prequels compared with the originals? We would love to know in the comments.
