Joe Karlosi wrote:
Looks like they would have had an EASIER out if Newt had lived, judging by the disapproval!

But what role could a little girl have played in ALIEN 3, had Ripley died?

I can't say I'm married to the idea of Newt surviving one way or the other, but let's say she did... Ripley could die in the third one, and Newt could be the one scarred for life and carrying on the hunt for the aliens... did you ever read the ALIENS Dark Horse comic from the 80s? It took place after Aliens, and I think Newt was grown into a young woman by then... I haven't read it in years. I think a lot of the story was told from her point of view, too. I think Ripley/Hicks/Newt was such an important combination to the success of Aliens, that they could have and should have carried it forward... at least for most of one more film. You could even kill off Hicks, too, and get away with it... but at the end of the movie, after he saves Newt one more time.

If it had played out like that, with a sense of the torch being passed, I think it might have rejuvenated the series. They could have saved the movie (if one thinks it needed saving, that is) by setting up future storylines where perhaps Bishop got an alien to Earth, and then let all hell break loose. So ALIEN3 could have been a bridging chapter between the movies that went before and came after, which might have helped its standing with the fans.

I can understand why people dislike the film as it is... Hicks and Newt dying was a serious bummer, which set the tone for the whole movie. Nobody wants a bummer Alien movie. They want either a Lovecraftian horror film, a kick-ass action flick, or some new direction that gets you excited, not gets you down.

A perfect Monster has no end...