Predator is thriving while Alien is flopping, and the reasons are obvious

The Predator and Alien franchises have always been linked. They’re both about human beings fighting fearsome extraterrestrials. Both had their heydays in the ’80s and ’90s before going on long hiatuses. And of course there were the Alien vs. Predator movies, which kept people talking about them during fallow periods, for better or worse.

Both franchises have mounted comebacks in recent years. But while the Predator franchise may be having the hottest hot streak of its existence, Alien is floundering. What happened?

Predator is expanding intelligently; Alien is just expanding

One franchise has focus, while the other is fuzzy

The Predator franchise has had its share of middling entries, including 2010’s lukewarm Predators and 2018’s dismal The Predator. The series got a new lease on life with 2022’s Prey, which introduced a bold new idea: Predator does history.

Prey is set on the Great Plains of North America in 1719 and follows a young Comanche hunter named Naru (Amber Midthunder) as she faces down a Predator. Structurally, it’s pretty similar to 1987’s original Predator movie, with a lone hero taking on a mysterious alien menace in a battle of wills. But the new setting, attention to detail, and careful direction from Dan Trachtenberg make it feel like a whole new experience. It’s the kind of movie that only gets better on repeat watches.

Trachtenberg followed that up with the animated movie Predator: Killer of Killers, which tells the story of three different people throughout history — a Viking warrior, a samurai, and a fighter pilot — who encounter Predators. Without spoiling too much, that movie ties everything together in the end by bringing us to the Predator’s home planet, which is where the upcoming movie Predator: Badlands will be set.

Each of these projects leads directly into the next, with Prey introducing the historical angle, Killer of Killers expanding upon it and teasing a closer look at the Predator’s native culture, and Badlands promising to take things forward from there. Prey and Killer of Killers were released straight to streaming, which is what you do with a franchise in decline, but they were reviewed so well that Badlands is being promoted to movie theaters.

The Alien franchise, on the other hand, can’t seem to decide what direction it wants to go. In 2017’s Alien: Covenant, Ridley Scott — who directed 1979’s original Alien movie — continued to probe the origins of the monstrous xenomorph, but never quite got to the bottom of things. In 2024’s Alien: Romulus, a group of young space colonists encounter xenomorphs while navigating a derelict space station, an echo of the original film. And the TV show Alien: Earth is about sick children whose consciousnesses are transplanted into synthetic bodies. Xenomorphs eventually show up.

These new movies and shows were reviewed decently, but not spectacularly. They do not lead one into the other; rather, they all have different ideas of what an Alien story should be. While the Predator series has built up a ton of momentum going into Badlands, the Alien franchise can’t decide where to go next and has to start from zero each time.

Predator focuses on the Predators

But Aliens barely matter in Alien anymore

This might sound obvious, but if your franchise is named after a thing, the thing should feature prominently. Dan Trachtenberg’s new Predator movies take this advice. In Prey, Naru fights a Predator. In Killer of Killers, our trio of heroes fight a Predator apiece. And in Badlands, the protagonist is a Predator, the first time that’s happened.

But over in Alien land, the titular creatures are weirdly deemphasized. This reached a nadir in Alien: Earth, which spends a lot of time introducing us to characters like Wendy (Sydney Chandler), the first of the dying children to get a synthetic body. She’s attached to her brother (Alex Lawther), but the Zuckerberg-esque tech billionaire who gave her the robot body (Samuel Blenkin) is worried he’s a distraction. Are the kids still themselves now that they have synthetic brains? Is the fully synthetic being Kirsh (Timothy Olymphant) some kind of synth supremacist? Are the giant, globe-spanning corporations in the series a comment on the growing power of corporations in our own world? All of these are interesting questions, but they have precious little to do with the iconic xenomorph alien after which the series is named.

To be fair, the research station where Wendy and company stay does house alien specimens, including a xenomorph. But the xenomorph isn’t even the most interesting of the creatures; the blood-sucking slugs kept me up a night, and the internet fell in love with the crawling eyeball monster that shoved its way into a sheep’s brain. You know something’s not quite right when the Alien is playing second or third fiddle on the Alien show! It’s one of the many reasons the finale failed to meet expectations.

There’s one person in charge of the Predator franchise, whereas Alien keeps changing leadership

Dan Trachtenberg is a godsend

Alien: Covenant was directed by Ridley Scott, Alien: Romulus by Fede Álvarez, and Alien: Earth managed by Noah Hawley. Meanwhile, all three recent Predator projects were directed by Dan Trachtenberg. The lesson here is pretty simple: if you want your franchise to feel coherent, it’s important to have a unified creative vision, or visionary, behind the scenes.

Of course, it wouldn’t matter if the vision was terrible, but Trachtenberg is clearly onto something. Meanwhile, as talented as they are, neither Scott, Álvarez, nor Hawley has come up with something as immediately compelling as “Predator but in the pre-colonial Americas.”

In space, no one can hear you scream for joy about Predator

Maybe someone involved in the Alien franchise will eventually hit on a great idea, but right now, Predator clearly has the edge. I never considered myself a superfan of either franchise, but Trachtenberg’s last two Predator movies have me extremely excited for Predator: Badlands, which comes out in theaters on November 7. It’s one of several upcoming sci-fi movies coming out this year that you can’t afford to miss.

The ongoing story of Alien vs. Predator isn’t over, but it’s obvious who’s winning the war right now.