4. Hicks And Newt Were Alive In 'Alien 3: Earth Hive'
I wasn't alone at the disappointment I felt when I first watched Alien 3. No guns. No aliens (plural). No alien queen. And no Newt and Hicks. Further viewings suggest that this original assessment may have been a little unfair. After all it does have a brilliant cast (Charles Dance, Paul McGann, Brian Glover) and the dog-like alien is a brilliant predator. It also has a wonderfully bleak, tragic ending as Ripley finally sacrifices herself to stop Weyland-Yutani from getting hold of alien DNA even as the alien queen from within bursts from her chest. But in terms of the bigger saga, the third film was so small. What we really wanted to see was what happened when the aliens finally made their way to Earth and all of humanity was under threat. And it did kind of happen in novel form, with the excellent 'Alien: Earth Hive', which showed what happened when Weyland-Yutani did get themselves on alien DNA and began cultivating the monsters in an Earth lab. Obviously the results are catastrophic, resulting in a global apocalypse as aliens run amok, turning Earth into their own playground. But moreso, the novel featured two characters, a girl called Billie and a marine called Wilks. Sound somewhat familiar? Yes, that's because they should have been Newt and Hicks, only the events of Alien 3 changed all that. And furthermore, it destroyed the glimmer of hope that Aliens ended on. If they were only going to die in a crash soon after, what was the point Ripley's substitute daughter story that ran throughout the sequel? And I know you could argue that the alien queen nesting inside Ripley in the third film was a subversive take on this theme, but I would have liked to have seen where Ripley and Newt (and Hicks) developed in their relationship. Now imagine what would have happened if instead of what we got as a third film, Ripley, Newt and Hicks made it back to Earth, desperately trying to warn of the threat in the deep reaches of space? We could have still had Weyland-Yutani in their goal to cultivate alien DNA (something Alien Resurrection touched upon) and all their desperate warnings failings as aliens broke loose, slaughtering humanity? Furthermore, you could have had all the excellent cast from Alien 3 in Earth-bound roles, either as the authorities, or member of an Earth prison where Ripley and co. take sanctuary after all hell breaks loose. Either way, there were so many possibilities with the alien franchise that never came to fruition. And on a side note, the ending of Earth Hive features the return of the Space Jockeys from the first Alien, revealing a threat greater than the xenomorphs. Mixing it all in, we could have had something bigger and better than Alien 3, Alien Resurrection, and Prometheus.