3 was solid, and it was fitting that the little girl was dead - Ripley is no Mommy.
Will you clarify here? Are you saying that
Aliens didn't demonstrate Ripley's mommy skills to you thoroughly enough?
Having the girl die for
3 just seemed a cheap way to start a new plot, and it's what bugged me the most about
3. It has "let's just make money on this franchise" written all over it - forget any real carry over from the first two films. Ripley, tragically, finds out her daughter is dead (of old age, I think?) in the beginning of
Aliens (although maybe that was just in the longer cut of the film?) and then she gets a chance to redeem herself later in the film, saving Newt from death.
3 handily undercut the entire emotional weight carried by Ripley in
Aliens - why did I bother to care about Newt in
Aliens if Newt's just going to be written out of the script in
3? It's just irritating. (Plus, after having a crush on Michael Biehn's character, I was furious that they killed him off for
3, too.
)