10 Horror Movies That Changed Their Franchise

By the time the much-maligned Alien 3 came to a close, the three most popular characters in the franchise - plus android Bishop - had all been killed off, leaving the Alien series in a place it's struggled to ever recover from.

In the time since Alien 3's release in 1992, Alien Resurrection arrived in 1997 and was extremely poorly received; the two Alien vs. Predator pictures of 2004 and 2007 tarnished both properties; 2012's Prometheus did its best to not be an Alien movie; and 2017's Alien: Covenant had a sense of desperation to it in how it attempted to rekindle what made the first two pictures so successful.

How did Alien 3 really change the franchise, then? Well, there was so much in this threequel that not only changed the very basis of the series, but just outright soured fans. As for said souring, first and foremost was the baffling decision to kill Hicks and Newt off-screen in the movie's opening moments. Then came franchise lead Ellen Ripley, who threw herself to a fiery death at the film's close, which essentially took Ripley off the table for any further sequels.

Alien 3 meant that if the franchise was to continue on, it would need to either veer in a different direction or completely retcon what had gone before. As such, that's why we ended up with Resurrection taking place 200 years after its predecessor and with a Ripley clone at its core.