Which sequel ruined the Alien trilogy 3 or 4?

For me 1 2 and 3 were a great set of movies yet many, many people believe that Aliens 3 ruined the franchise. I disagree. I thought that 4 was a big mistake which ridiculed the films and made a laughing stock of Lt Ripley 1 of the greatest movie action heros ever. Bitch had balls.

I would like to know you're views on this if you don't mind.

Well since a trilogy is generally considered to be a work in three parts , I suppose a fourth movie can't really be considered to have any effect on it

However nitpicking aside I actually preferred 4 , perhaps because I was delighted to see an ingenious return for Ripley to enable her to go head to head with the ugly critters again... And for whatever reason I just didn't like 3.
Probably because I found the basic theme illogical after what we had actually seen happen in 1 and 2.

Each to his own I guess. Probably would have been better left after the second film.

I think 3 suffered off the back of the gung ho shoot em up of Aliens as it took it back to a much slower paced dark style. If you took out the high octane 2nd film then 3 is a very decent sequel to the original.
The 4th though for me was horrendous.

The only sequel with a good 4th film was Rocky, mainly because they copied what they did before but made it a better imitation. When will sequels learn we DON'T want different!!

But Aliens was very different from Alien, the original was a slow paced horror in space, the second an adrenalin packed action film, yet that worked.

Both crap. Part 3 was a good idea but I just don't think it was executed very well.

Aliens vs Predator has ruined both franchises in my opinion.

Alien 4? As in the one where the Alien child has the typical 'horror' mummyish face and the frowning eyesockets?


Hmmm.... I wonder which one will it be for me.

Alien 3 at least had Charles Dance, who looks really disapppointed that he's part of the movie but acts the depression well because of it. And it has a well constructed cold dark damp world that the creature fully belongs in for best effect.

Yep, 4 ruined it.

3 is very underrated film, mainly because it was edited badly for cinematic release. Also, people by then were used to the shoot-em-up scenes of Aliens and may have wanted more, only to be confronted with lots of bald English prisoners with no weapons. And running around in dark corridors. A lot.

I actually thought both scripts were quite clever (although not that well-executed) and I quite enjoyed the 4th one in an "unscrew your brain and enjoy" kind of way. My wife hates the way the Aliens could suddenly spit acid in the 4th film (an evolutionary thing from Ripley maybe) and the whole Alien/Human hybrid child is ridiculous. But as per every Alien film, there's lots of hats on the floor by the end.

Whilst they're not a patch on the original 2, they're not THAT bad. I think they both get a bad press.

Just don't mention Aliens v Predator: Requiem. We don't talk about that...

I love Aliens 3, that and Aliens are my favourites - pete postlewaite is awesome.

Alien Resurection was a mistake and poor, though it did have some good bits, the bit at the end where the 'alien mama' gets sucked out of the space ship is painfully bad!

As Mr Bounce says just forget AvP ever happened.

The first is the best, next the third and I can leave two and four to scrap it out between them.

I suppose the simple answer to the question as to what ruined the TRILOGY was the 4th film...!

My serious answer though is Alien 3 (aka "Alien Cubed"). I was left thinking "what, REALLY?" at the notion that they missed a stowaway xenomorph before going to hyper-sleep at the end of Aliens... and didn't like Hicks and Newt being unceremoniously killed/written out having seen them survive the 2nd instalment and emotionally investing in them.

I'd say that Alien Resurrection was rather under-rated. It's not brilliant, and the hybrid in particular was awful... as well as yet another re-run of the airlock, but there were some good ideas in there.