* "'Discursion', n.: A higher form of 'discussion' only practiced by the enlightened." - Tito's Dictionary of High-Society-Type Words

~ Said "discursion" will actually be performed in the form of a simple HTML table and some explanations.

Director: Since I know nothing about director quality, I just left these scores at zero.
Sigourney Weaver: Unlike now-a-days action heroines, Ripley isn't some buxom woman. That makes her even more hardcore. So +1 for both movies.
Number of aliens: Even though the single Alien in the first and third movies made them more suspenseful, it can't compare to seeing a bunch of colonial space marines use machine guns, grenades, and flamethrowers to rip a bunch of aliens to shreds. +1 for Alien and Alien³, +2 for Aliens.
Androids: Each android has his own coolness. Ash, for one thing, is Ian Holm in his "pre-Bilbo Baggins" stage. Secondly, when he dies he gurgles milk all over the place. Bishop is cool because he helps out the crew and risks his own "life" for his fellow compadres. So +1 for both movies. Unfortunately for the third Alien movie, Bishop is so beat up that he doesn't get a chance to be hardcore. So no points for that one.
Actor appearance: A "pre-Bilbo Baggins" Ian Holm was pretty funny to watch. However, Bill Paxton takes the cake for "Greatest Random Actor to Appear in Aliens." His "Game over, man!" quote earns him a +2 score, while Bilbo Baggins only gets +1. Unless you count that guy that was the dinosaur hunter from The Lost World, Alien³ has no real appearances of people who appeared elsewhere, besides Weaver.
Whiney girl named Newt: Boy, what a lousy thing to add to an action movie. -1 for Aliens.
Greedy corporate weasel: As Ash wasn't greedy on his own right, being a programmed robot with nothing to gain from his actions, I couldn't dock Alien for his treachery. However, Burke was a complete jerk. His attempts to kill Weaver and Newt and his general weasel-like features made it unavoidable not to give Aliens a -1 score in this area. Alien³ doesn't really have any corporate weasels, unless you count that Asian guy and the "real" Bishop who show up at the end, so I didn't count off for it.
Facehuggers/chestbusters: Undoubtedly, some of the coolest parts of Alien involved these two stages of the Alien. Aliens only showed a few seconds of chestbuster in its opening scenes and had some non-facehugging facehuggers, so it didn't deserve the +2 rating that Alien got for this feature. Alien³ included a little bit of non-facehugging and one super awesome chestbursting scene. So it gets +1.
Huge explosions: The Alien³ explosion was only good enough to earn it +1 points in the category. The first two movie's explosions were so great that I had to give them each +2 instead of +1.
Machine guns/grenades: (see "Number of aliens:"). Does the machine gun that the Company soldier mows down the next-to-last surviving prisoner count?
Flamethrowers: Flamethrowers are cool. Not the most effective weapon, but cool nonetheless. +1 to the first two, 0 for the third.
Multiple endings: Unlike Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, in which the multiple endings became redundant and almost agonizingly painful to watch, the multiple endings of the Alien movies are great. Just when you think the movie is over, there's one final battle scene.
Net Score: Amazingly enough (and this wasn't rigged), the first two movies came out with a net score of 10. Basically, these movies are equally awesome, but for their own seperate reasons. Watch them the first chance you get, preferrably back to back (or at least in chronological order). As far as the third goes, even though it may not have had the suspense of the first movie or the hardcore kicking action of the second, it was a great deal better than the reviews I'd heard from others before I saw it for myself. It is much better than the 5 rating my survey gave it indicates. If you are a fan of the Alien series, you should definitely see this film.