Uncle Bingo,

For me, killing Hicks and Newt was not only not stupid, it was creative and brave.  (I thought we didn't like ti when movie studios just gave us the same things over and over, and didn't try different things?)  I thought the opening revelation of the deaths was perfect--this is a horror movie, and in Scott's original, you felt insecure because ANYONE could get killed. Cameron's I didn't like that much--at first I enjoyed it, now I see it as a good actioner, while the first film is a masterpiece--in part because you could tell right from their first entrances that Hicks and The Kid were walking out of this movie. That goes against the entire worldview Scott's original sets up.

Killing these characters in A3 was brilliant. In the first place, you'd have to recast the kid because the first actress had grown up--how often has that worked? Secondly, right from the start, we're out of Cameron's heroes vs. villains world and into Fincher's, a much, much darker worldview--but the perfect one for a true horror movie. This is a dark, dark film, as opposed to the "Dark" films most studios put out. This is a movie about someone dying of cancer or AIDS.

What, exactly, could Hicks and Newt have accomplished as characters in this? They'd have been sidelined until they were killed off. In various early drafts, Hicks and Newt simply did more of the same, or they were, in Newt's case, shipped off because the writers couldn't figure out what to do with the kid anymore. She was heavy baggage that had to be dragged around. Unless we're going into Anakin territory and are going to see her shooting a gun (which wasn't going to happen due to Sigourney Weaver's no-guns policy, which she disposed of when the next one came up after the relatively lower box office of the third), what good was this character going to be? Newt as a slayer of xenomorphs would be taking this deeper into predictable territory, and frankly--who cares?  I think we've seen enough xenomorph killing in these movies, and it hasn't worked out as anything but lots of running around and shooting and killing.  That's not what intrigued me about the first one.

Hicks is a fan favorite, but I've never grasped his appeal--he's a Generic Good Soldier. For him to be anything significant in the third one he'd have to become a superhero type--the main action of ALIENS and ALIEN 3 would have taken place in about a week of conscious time for Hicks and Ripley, so for him to have any significant character development, he'd have to become some kind of Cameron-like gun-blazing type.

That would have warped the series even more than Cameron already had. Resurrection, AVP and AVPR all tried to follow the Cameron mode. All failed.

A3 tried to be a true horror movie, and part of that involved it being surprising, and dark, showing truly vile 'heroes' who are necessary for the defeat of the villain.

There's just so much more to A3 than the other sequels, and while I could fill a post with complaints about it, I think it has one quality 99% of horror films lack--ambition. And I found what was achieved sufficiently original and interesting to see it as a flawed film that still managed to be more than most horror movies ever try to be.

 “The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.”
 Joseph Priestley
Last Edited By: Jonatwork May 13 11 3:30 AM. Edited 2 times.