I do recommend Prey as a great movie in the same setting but different time period. I also Romulus as a well made Alien movie that doesn't really do anything new but does hit the right notes for the franchise.

I liked Prey a lot. A very basic plot summary

a young Comanche woman trying to prove herself as a worthy warrior and hunter while a feral Predator visits Earth for the first time.

I havent followed the franchise tho. I watched this one bc it is disconnected from the other movies. The predator is not really the main story.

Romulus was cool imo, but not mind blowing. To me it was good enough to warrant more. Was it as good as 1 or 2? No. Was it better than everything else? Yes, because unlike every Alien sequel, it is not a few good scenes in a bad movie. For better or worse, it is consistent.

I actually had my internet down for like 10 days and only had a handful of movies available to me and no books as I had just moved and was still awaiting their arrival. I ended up watching Romulus three times. to me it is the perfect example of "swimming in sevens." I had only a month prior marathoned all other Alien movies though, so maybe my brain was affected.

I cannot speak to the most recent 2 predator movies, but I liked Prey enough to watch it twice in a year. I think the same person did the John Goodman bunker movie, and I just think they are a competent person running the show for Predator stuff now.

absolutely.

Rom is probably the best Alien movie since Aliens.

Prey is EXCELLENT, as is Killer of Killers.

Alien and Predator having a resurgence right now in quality.

No it is not. The most amazing thing about the Predator movies with the exception of the latest one is that all after the first one are just bad movies. I can’t tell you anything about the latest one because I have not seen it but I don’t have any faith it will be any different.

All Alien movies after Aliens are absolute trash.

Recently watched Romulus, like two weeks ago. Personally, I loved it, thought it was great.

I had also tried to watch Aliens (plural, the sequel) holy shit it is so trash. And yet it was considered a hall mark of the time. It takes over an hour for the aliens to show up, and in the meantime you have to deal with dumbfuck marines who are supposed to be the best of the best but are undisciplined fuckwits that make the term "crayon eater" sound like a compliment. Then they do show up, and the marines are just the biggest idiots. I cannot stress enough just how trash this supposed classic is. Also, probably a hot take, but Weaver is just a product of her time and heavily overrated.

I also watched AvP and AvP: Requiem, and both of those movies were a much more fun watch, though Requiem really does drop the ball with way too many dark shots, its a common complaint about the movie for a reason. There's a lot of complaints about lack of character depth too, but my own response is who the hell cares when most are just going to wind up dead. I'm definitely not watching Alien or Predator movies to be enamored with the basic humans. And they're all better than the trash Marines of Aliens.