James Cameron Slams Alien 3’s Decision to Kill Off Newt and Hicks
Now considered a cult classic, Alien 3 marked both the feature-length debut of David Fincher and a massive departure from the first two movies.
Generally speaking, there are two axiomatic truths about the Alien franchise:
1) The first two movies are stone cold classics.
2) Alien 3 spectacularly fumbled the ball by killing off Newt and Hicks—in the opening credits no less!
James Cameron, writer and director of Aliens, may be the biggest hater of Alien 3's head-scratching decision, calling it "the stupidest f--ing thing" during a recent guest appearance on the Just Foolin' About podcast hosted by Corporal Dwayne Hicks himself, Michael Biehn.
Why James Cameron hated Alien 3's decision to kill off Newt and Hicks
"You build a lot of goodwill around the characters of Hicks, Newt, and Bishop," Cameron said, "and then the first thing they do in the next film is kill 'em all off ... and replace them with a bunch of f—ing convicts that you hate and want to see die. Really clever."
Now considered something of a cult classic, the third Alien film marked the feature-length debut of David Fincher, whose overall vision was severely compromised by overwhelming studio interference. Indeed, the trilogy capper was troubled from the start, going through several iterations before production began with an unfinished screenplay.
The experience was so harrowing, in fact, that Fincher still refuses to discuss the project. Had it not been for the success of S7ven three years later, his mainstream Hollywood career may have ended on the prison planetoid of Fury 161.
"I'm a big fan of Fincher and his work," Cameron continued. "That was his first feature film and he was getting vectored around by a lot of other voices, so I give him a free pass on that one."
Sigourney Weaver (Ellen Ripley) was a little softer on the film.
"I like it because it's so utterly different from the first two and I felt that Fox was very smart to keep choosing very gifted directors who wanted to do something completely different with the Alien story," she said at New York Comic Con 2025. "I had total confidence in David. I feel like David would've loved a chance to work on the script before we had to start shooting and we did delay, but not enough for him to feel he'd solved a lot of the problems.
"I think we had the most amazing group of actors," she continued, "amazing crew, so it's meaningful to me and I don't really compare them."
Just like the fans, however, she too was "a little shocked" when Newt and Hicks were unceremoniously killed. "That was hard for Ripley and for me," Weaver confessed. "But once that was done...that's space. You've gotta move on. Things happen."
