9 Movie Sequels That Ruined Great Characters

Part of the terrifying appeal of the Xenomorphs (and the face-huggers and chest-bursters – let’s not forget those abominable bastards) was that they were so … well … alien. The clue is in the title apparently.

Horrifying in all their gooey otherworldliness, the Xenomorphs and all their various other forms worked so well because we had no clue of where they came from or how they came to be just that they were ruthless killing machines. The first four films in the Alien kept up the enigma of their titular villains but then came the much-maligned prequels and – as prequels are wont to do – they pretty much ruined all their mystique.

To find out they – or at least the Xenomorphs we saw in the original Alien film – were created by an uppity megalomaniac of an android who can’t tell his Shelley from his Byron is anticlimactic to say the least. Imagining the Xenomorphs came from some dark corner of deep, deep space and evolved of their own accord was far more effective.