15 Best Alien Movie Deaths

15. Mary, The Cocooned Colonist (Aliens)

The first onscreen death in James Cameron’s action-packed sequel to Alien harkens back to the iconic first death in the franchise. Making the cut for the escalating dread and terror it creates, it sets the tone for the bloody, horrible carnage the naive Marines are about to experience.

It’s an unnerving moment when Mary is find cocooned to the wall of a hellish Alien hive, an innocent caught in the midst of a horrible fate. The image of her convulsing in agony triggers a visibly distressed Ripley, her nightmare returned to the world of reality.

Quite unlike the very first time this happened in Scott’s original film, we’re now fully prepared, bracing ourselves, but that hardly lessens the awful sight of the infant alien punching its way out of Mary’s chest.

It’s the death that sets the remainder of the film’s near-constant onslaught in motion, with the hordes of furious Xenomorphs roused from their slumber. It took a while, but this was the point where the Marines learned what Ripley knew all along: this won’t be another bug hunt.