Who misses Hicks?

Rating: 7/10 (28 July 2001)

**contains spoilers**
I am very interested in those reviewers who hint at what this movie
could have been with different editing. I think some of the
concepts are great--the prison planet with the strange religious
movement could really work, but I felt like not enough was done
with it. I got the feeling that the director, the writer, or somebody
wanted to make a really weird movie, but was told to cut to the
chase. As usual, weirder would have been better.
The movie starts with a shock: the deaths of Hicks and Newt.
Yes, it's totally left unexplained how the alien managed to lay eggs
on the ship before getting kicked off at the end of the second
movie, but then again, are we so sure that everything about this
creature's physiology has been completely revealed in the first two
films? In other words, it doesn't make much sense, but it
shouldn't really bother us.
As for the deaths, I didn't miss Hicks at all. He was just another
one of those annoying commandos in Aliens. Newt, on the other
hand...after all the effort Ripley put into saving her in the previous
movie, to have her killed was really depressing. But I think it really
works for Ripley's character--as the series goes on she gets more
and more existential, and more and more she realizes her fate is
intertwined with that of the alien. I don't think her decision to throw
herself into the furnace at the end would have been as easy, or as
convincing, had Newt still been around to need her.
Clement was a great character, and what a change to allow Ripley
a romantic interest. His death, so early in the movie, was a big
shock, but in retrospect I think it was timed just about right. If he
had died at the end, after he and Ripley had fallen completely in
love, it would have made her sacrifice look like a love suicide; as
is, they weren't yet in love--she was just beginning to trust him, and
bang, he's gone. The tragedy is perhaps even greater because
the potential in their relationship had not yet been fulfilled.
That said, I think the movie does go downhill from there. None of
the other characters are developed enough to make you care
about them. If the cult story had been developed more, Dillon's
character could have really been something (and the strange
religious elements of the first and fourth movies might have made
more sense), but as was he was basically just another commando type.
The ending is spectacular, though: not only Ripley's memorable
death, but her confrontation with the Company's men, who are
even more evil than the aliens. Like a lot of the action sequences
in the second half, this confrontation comes out pretty confused,
though (I always found myself wondering in this movie who'd shot
who and why, who was running where and why).
As usual the best thing about the movie is Weaver's performance.
Unlike some of the other reviewers, I have no trouble believing that
Ripley would refuse to be confined to the infirmary and take her
chances around the prisoners. By this time, she's faced the aliens
twice--what has she got to fear from some puny double-y's? Each
film in the series sees her get tougher and tougher, but it's a
believable transformation. In the first two movies she was scared
but smart; here she's lost so much that she has no energy to be
scared.
All in all, it's not a perfect film, but it's not bad, either.