Best Alien Movies – Methodology
I searched the Internet for lists of best alien movies of all time. Criteria included the movies being ranked, not just listed, and covering all time, not just a decade. The lists were generally created by groups, whether teams or committees or based on general public voting (like Ranker.com).
I was able to find 13 lists. I took the 13 lists and added all their content into a spreadsheet, noting the rank of every film. The total number was over 600 including all the repeats. I averaged the rankings each movie got and divided that average by the number of lists that movie was on. The lowest score meant a high ranking average on many lists.
The movies that were on the most lists (out of 13) were:
- Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) – 10
- District 9 (2009) – 10
- Independence Day (1996) – 10
- The Thing (1982) – 10
- Arrival (2016) – 9
- Attack the Block (2011) – 9
- Edge of Tomorrow (2014) – 9
- Predator (1987) – 9
- They Live (1988) – 9
- War of the Worlds (2005) – 9
- Alien (1979) – 8
- E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) – 8
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) – 8
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) – 8
- Mars Attacks! (1996) – 8
- Men in Black (1997) – 8
- Signs (2002) – 8
Here are links to the lists I used along with dates the lists were created:
- ScreenRant – 28 Sep 2020
- Ranker.com – 17 Sep 2020
- Stacker.com – 16 Sep 2020
- MensHealth.com – 23 Jul 2020
- GameSpot – 6 Mar 2020
- C|Net – 13 Jan 2020
- FlickChart – 2020
- Paste Magazine – 25 Jun 2019
- SyFy.com – 4 Feb 2019
- Cinemaholic – 10 Jul 2018
- Cinema Dailies – 13 Jun 2018
- Mandatory – 10 Sep 2017
- Vulture – 27 Jun 2016