15 Sci-fi Movie Characters Who Deserve Their Own Spin-Off

2. Dwayne Hicks - Aliens (1986)

James Cameron picked up where Ridley Scott left off with Aliens, his action-horror extravaganza, which took the premise of Scott’s film and scaled it up, introducing weapons, grunts, and an army of Xenomorphs.

Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) makes it home safe to Earth, but the Weyland-Yutani corporation isn’t done with her yet, and they send her with a squad of Colonial Marines back to the original site of the alien eggs – exomoon LV-426 – which has since been terraformed and may now be in grave danger. And the Marines are kind of the star of the show, trading quips, wielding serious firepower, and just being generally badass, especially Corporal Dwayne Hicks (Michael Biehn).

Hicks could have been a mainstay for the franchise, continuing the adventure with Ripley and maybe finding some peace for her and young colonist Newt (Carrie Henn) down the line. But David Fincher and Fox went and killed him in the opening credits for Alien 3, leaving the franchise to spin solely on Ripley’s axis, with diminishing returns – until Ridley Scott’s soft reboot Prometheus (2012).

Unfortunately, in the process of doing this (and using Michael Biehn's likeness without his permission), the studio pissed Biehn off, putting the nails in the coffin of any possible Hicks prequel/spin-off. But we can imagine how satisfying it could have been to see a Colonial Marines movie with Hicks, Hudson (Bill Paxton), and the rest of the gang going to town on some non-Xenomorph threat.