I could have lived with (no pun intended) Hicks' and Newt's deaths if it led to a better conclusion. Frankly, I thought the scenario of the monks on the prison planet would have been better off without Ripley in it. After a while, her character became too tied to the franchise, and I would have preferred to have seen stories without her, then not knowing who was going to live or die. That was what was so fun about the first film. It was just such a surprise when Dallas is killed, and this franchise could have used more of that kind of interesting storytelling in the third and fourth films, in my opinion.