This film is hated by Alien fans, I am one of the biggest fans Alien alive,and I fully understand why this film got the cold shoulder. The film does have it's faults, most of these due to being butchered in the edititing process by the studio. It's seems they did not like the slow burn tension of the first film, and wanted the Action of the second. Doing so deleted Many scenes that and plot lines. This made the characterisation sketchy at best. The second fault was that allot of the characters had shaven heads so identification was pretty hard. Also the death of some of the survivors from Aliens was too much to handle for alot of fans.
For me the death of Newt and Hicks was a bonus as this put Riply in more danger. The overbareing downbeat tone of the film is brilliant, The sense of doom is very strong. Also with Riply on a prison planet, the danger comes not just from the Alien, but the inmates as well. This film has only one Alien, and it's new design is brilliant, and only… more »

This film is hated by Alien fans, I am one of the biggest fans Alien alive,and I fully understand why this film got the cold shoulder. The film does have it's faults, most of these due to being butchered in the edititing process by the studio. It's seems they did not like the slow burn tension of the first film, and wanted the Action of the second. Doing so deleted Many scenes that and plot lines. This made the characterisation sketchy at best. The second fault was that allot of the characters had shaven heads so identification was pretty hard. Also the death of some of the survivors from Aliens was too much to handle for alot of fans.
For me the death of Newt and Hicks was a bonus as this put Riply in more danger. The overbareing downbeat tone of the film is brilliant, The sense of doom is very strong. Also with Riply on a prison planet, the danger comes not just from the Alien, but the inmates as well. This film has only one Alien, and it's new design is brilliant, and only letdown by CGI recreation's that were stilll in there infancy. The ending should have been the final chapter for Riply, but this was not to be as the Shoddy Alien Resurrection followed in 1997. This is a very underrated film, and if you want to see Fincher's vision check out this disc as it contains the far better version than the Cinema release with about 30 minutes of added scenes. This is what David Fincher's vision was going to be like. A must addition to a classic franchise. Also this is Weaver best performance as Riply.
The film does have it's faults, but this is still Sc-Fi at it's best!