I know that whenever I watch movies with animals in them, I'm always worrying about the critter--what might happen to it, whether it will survive. I suspect that's intentional. Most directors will take the Alien route--make the protagonist sympathetic by having him or her save the animal, or if said critter dies, it is at least for a carefully calculated reason.
Possibly why there's a quite well known scriptwriters book called 'Save the Cat*'? (It's good for authors too, about structure etc) ETA: yup, that's exactly why he called the book Save the Cat, because of Ripley
*The save the cat moment is where you show your protag's sympathetic side, even if he's not that sympathetic.
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