The only time I ever watch Alien³ is when it's part of my Alien marathon and I have to watch it just so that I can say I did. It wouldn't be much of a marathon otherwise. If I were to come across this while channel surfing, I just keep moving along. I want to like this one, but I just can't get past the first 5 minutes of the movie. To me it just wrecks the film in such a way that there is no saving it, no matter how awesome the film could have been. Killing off Newt, Bishop and Hicks in my eyes and I'm gonna say a lot of other people as well just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It makes the ending of Aliens....irrelevant. Saving Newt amounted to nothing in the end. Just writing about this now just gets my blood boiling about what they did. I seriously hate the 3 writers credited for the screenplay. What the f*ck, man!!

I get why the writers felt they had to kill them off, given where Alien³ takes place. But I think they could have done a completely different story altogether and saved both Newt and Hicks. Okay, now that is out of the way, how about the rest of the film? Um, it doesn't get any better. First off, I don't like the setting in a Prison. I don't like any of the characters that populate the Prison and the big one is I just don't like the story much. On top of that, there are some pretty bad Special FX that look like cutout paste jobs with the Alien creature itself. Really bad.

Now factor in the ending of the film when they kill off Ripley and you have the recipe for one of the sh*ttiest ways to end a franchise (at that time). Bad taste in my mouth doesn't even begin to describe how I felt about this back when it came out. Still one of the suckiest endings to a movie, let alone a series. Horrible opening and horrible closing.  Also, not really a fan of the color palette either. Sepia tone just drives this further away from the first two films and make it the ugly stepchild of the bunch.

Even though the copy I watched comes from my Quadrilogy Set, I can only recommend this as a Rent at best and I'm being very generous in even recommending this at all.

Maybe it's my insane mentality, but putting Newt in that prison could have been REALLY interesting, first of all: bald little girl, freaky, right?  Second, they're all prisoners (if I remember correctly) and the idea of something as pure as a child being thrown into their terrible world could reignite their resolve to escape or damage their tough veneers, give 'em something to live for and then kill 'em all with an Alien.

Of course, I'm sure part of the reason Newt's not in the movie is she grew up too much for the whole "stasis" thing to make sense.

You could kill off the other guy halfway through or earlier, in man-on-man violence rather than an alien death, give him an early heroic out.

I'm sure it's contracts and more that kept those two from reappearing.  But what do I know?