10 Horror Movie Franchises That Wasted Their Perfect Ending

10. The Earthbound Happy Ending - Aliens

While Sir Ridley Scott's Alien is a phenomenal slice of space-set sci-fi terror, one could arguably say that James Cameron's 1986 follow-up, Aliens, is somehow even better than its predecessor.

Aliens took the tension of Scott's picture, threw in a smidge more action, and raised the stakes by throwing a young child into the mix in the shape of Newt. Just by including Newt, that added a sense of motherly instinct and protective nature to the Ripley character, nicely fleshing her out from what we'd seen before.

What Aliens also did, is it essentially gave audiences a happy ending. By the close of that picture, Ripley, Newt, android Bishop and fan favourite Corporal Hicks were all heading into stasis as they set their compass for a return to Earth. With that, the franchise wrapped up with a nice, warm fuzzy feeling as our protagonists lived a full and prosperous life on their home planet...

Only they didn't.

Instead, the much-maligned Alien 3 undid so much of that perfect Aliens ending by killing off Newt and Hicks in a lazy off-screen manner at the start of the film. For Bishop, he'd end up deactivated, whilst poor Ripley becomes pregnant with a Xenomorph, sacrifices herself at the threequel's end, and then winds up being cloned for Alien: Resurrection.