I didn't like
Alien 3 (even the special edition) though this is entirely due to the fact that Hicks and Newt were killed off resulting in an incredibly bleak and depressing story. Hicks was my hero from the second film, a strong scrupulous male figure (a rarity in this series) with a talent for survival. To have him unceremoniously dispatched off screen in such a helpless manner completely betrayed the character for me. I also liked Newt and the sense of hope she gave to Ripley and the story. Killing her off reduced Weaver's character to an embittered empty shell that practically has me reaching for the prozac bottle every time I watch
Alien 3.
You might say
well that's the whole point of the movie UF, but for me there were plenty of other routes Fincher could have gone down without sacrificing the bleak atmosphere
or the characters. Ripley, Newt and Hicks were becoming a close family unit, united in the face of the alien and the company by their experience. These themes could have been used to generate a greater sense of peril in the third installment. Indeed there was room to develop the characters and put them in interesting situations that might well have resulted in a much more interesting and exciting film. If you ask me, the makers of
Alien 3 chickened out.
The script for
Alien Ressurection was ludricrous, Weaver should never have agreed to do it, end of story as far as I'm concerned.
Alien 5? naturally this is hypothetical, and I'm sorry to sound like a broken record, but I only want to see it if either Ridley Scott or James Cameron are involved. If Weaver
has to be in the film, then I would agree with
invisiblepredator that parts 3&4 should be discounted as cryo-sleep nightmares (not much of a stretch really

). I would like it to take place some years after the events of
Aliens so Weaver could act her age in the film and take a secondary role of some sort. Again I'm going over old ground here, but the logical choice for me has always been to set the film on either Earth or the Alien home planet. I personally like the idea of a taut horror/thriller with Ripley as an obsessive investigative crusader determined to discover evidence that the company has alien specimens on Earth (just a thought).
Still, it's highly unlikely that
Alien 5 will ever go into production, which is probably a good thing when you consider how the people at Fox have ruined the franchise.