Even though it's being presented as an entirely separate "thing," Alien: Romulus is still the ninth movie in the Aliens franchise. So if you're considering watching this new horror movie, you might be wondering if you need to see all the others.
Set between the original movie and Aliens, Romulus is about a group of youngsters who break into an abandoned space station in order to steal some of its tech, but find themselves threatened by the same fate as the inhabitants of the station.
With its rave reviews, including one from WTW, Alien: Romulus is impressing fans of the franchise and newbies equally, but it contains lots of references to several other entries into the eight other Aliens movies.
So do you need to watch all the other movies before watching Alien: Romulus? And how will doing so or not impact your viewing experience?
Technically, you don't need to watch any of the other movies to watch Romulus, as it works as a standalone story. But you'll get more out of the movie depending what else you've seen. And if you want to see the movies, they're on Hulu in the US and Disney Plus in the UK.
Do you need to watch Alien to understand Alien: Romulus?
The 1979 Alien that kicked off the franchise remains a classic, and if you're going to watch any of the movies before Romulus, you'll want it to be the original.
Watching Alien will give you a lot of information on the creature and its abilities that'll help you better understand the stakes of this new movie. It'll also give you a better grasp of the gravitas of a certain face that shows up mid-way through, and give some contextual information on the Weyland-Yutani company.
If you're in a theater full of Alien fans, having a grasp on the original will also help you better understand why people react in a certain way to some of the lines: there are loads of references to the original movie in Romulus.
Do you need to watch Aliens to understand Alien: Romulus?
No, you don't need to have seen Aliens to understand Alien: Romulus. This is because the new movie is set in the gap between Alien and Aliens, and so the story of the 1986 James Cameron follow-up hasn't happened yet.
Romulus has one or two references to world-building that was absent in Alien and only introduced in Aliens, but not enough to affect your viewing experience in any way.
Despite what some fans were thinking before its release, Romulus doesn't act as a prequel to Aliens either, so you don't need to worry about seeing the sequel in order to pick up on hints and cues.
Do you need to watch Prometheus to understand Alien: Romulus?
If you've got time to watch a second movie in preparation for Alien: Romulus, you might want to make it Prometheus. This 2012 movie, which kicked off Alien's prequel series, is tonally quite different from the prior movies, with a greator focus on sci-fi world-building over claustrophobic horror.
There is one reference to the plot of Prometheus in Romulus, but it's a pretty huge one. You'll get a lot more out of the new movie if you've seen the 2012, as you can understand the importance of this reference — it sets up what's about to happen in the succeeding film and foreshadows the future events well. It also has implications of the world of the franchise.
You don't need to watch Prometheus to understand this, and clues in the movie also set up what the reference does, but the pacing of the movie seems catered more to fans who will understand it.
Do you need to watch Alien: Covenant to understand Alien: Romulus?
Prometheus' sequel, and the most recent movie in the Alien franchise before Romulus, was Alien: Covenant. It's by no means a mandatory watch if you're going into Romulus with little context, but if you're an Alien fan, I'd say it's worth a re-watch before Romulus.
That's because some of the topics introduced in Covenant are ones that are explored further in Romulus, and I'm not going to dive deeper on what I mean by that, because I want to keep this article spoiler-free.
So if you're frantically watching the Alien movies for the first time in anticipation of the new one, don't bother, but if you're an existing fan getting excited for your trip to the movie theater, make sure to refresh yourself.
Do you need to watch the other Alien movies to understand Alien: Romulus?
So far I've not mentioned Alien 3 and its sequel Alien Resurrection, which round out the original quartet with Alien and Aliens, and the two spin-offs Alien vs. Predator and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem.
This is because I can paint them all with the same stroke: no, you don't need to watch any of these in order to understand Alien: Romulus. Their plot isn't relevant and, as far as I could tell, they aren't referenced at all in the new movie.
