10 Movie Deaths No-One Was Ready For

5. Hicks And Newt – Alien 3

Imagine getting through the unthinkable trauma of a situation like Aliens, watching a band of the universe's hardest, most badass marines picked off like supporting characters in a cheap slasher movie and being badly injured but triumphant only to then die basically off-screen because the writers think you're in the way.

Unfortunately for Ripley, Hicks and Newt, the end of Aliens was clearly deemed too happy - which is precisely why fans accepted it as being as happy ending, funnily enough - and the Alien 3 writers (all several hundred of them or so) decided Ripley worked better on her own.

Their answer was to quickly undo the happy ending, tipping the audience's world on its head before the opening credits have even finished by taking the things that had defined Ripley's heroism and brutally killing them for effect.