James Cameron Slams ‘Alien 3,’ Calls the Sequel’s Plot the ‘Stupidest F***ing Thing’

James Cameron, who directed 1986’s Aliens, has a lot of feedback for the sequel Alien 3.

During a recent appearance on the “Just Foolin About With Michael Biehn” podcast, Cameron, 71, was asked about the film’s plot twist, which killed off multiple beloved characters.

“I thought that was the stupidest f***ing thing,” Cameron told Biehn, who starred in the second movie alongside Sigourney Weaver.

Aliens, which is a sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1979 film, Alien, follows Ellen Ripley (Weaver), who is the sole survivor of an alien attack on her ship (which occurred in the first movie). Ripley makes contact with another group of surviving humans who join her team, including Biehn as Dwayne Hicks, Paul Reiser as Carter J. Burke, Lance Henriksen as Bishop and Carrie Henn as Newt.

The sequel ends with Ripley and her new team entering hypersleep as they prepare to return to Earth. However, Alien 3 undoes all of that, as Ripley’s crew is killed off, making her the sole survivor a second time.

“You build a lot of goodwill around the characters of Hicks and Newt and Bishop, and then the first thing they do in the next film is kill them all off, right?” Cameron explained. “Really smart, guys.”

Alien 3 was directed by David Fincher and written by David Giler, Walter Hill and Larry Ferguson. The film, which took inspiration from a story by Vincent Ward, follows Ripley after she survives a fatal crash on a planet housing a penal colony filled with violent inmates.

Cameron shared that he was not jazzed with the direction of including unlikable criminals in the story.

“And replace them with a bunch of f***ing convicts that you hate. And want to see die,” he quipped. “Really clever.”

While Cameron was not a fan of Alien 3, he confessed that he is a “big fan” of Fincher, who also directed Fight Club, Zodiac, Gone Girl and more.

“I give him a free pass on that one,” Cameron joked of Alien 3.

Biehn, for his part, had a personal issue with Alien 3, as the film was going to use his likeness to show his character with his “chest blown out.”

“You put so much effort into that f***ing character and so much who he was,” the actor told Cameron. “And so did I. And the fact that you’re going to dismiss him like this. No, that’s not going to happen.”

Biehn shared he was able to negotiate with Fincher to use an archival photo of his character.

While Cameron has mixed emotions about the Alien franchise as a whole, returning to the project is not on his to-do list.

“You couldn’t pay me enough money to go back to that franchise there,” he said. “It’s sort of almost become fan-driven at this point.”

Following Aliens, Cameron went on to direct multiple successful films, including The Abyss, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, True Lies and Titanic.

In 2009, Cameron released the first movie in his most successful franchise to date: Avatar, which he directed and wrote. The sci-fi film reunited him with Weaver and also starred Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña.

The first Avatar broke box-office records as it became one of the highest-grossing films of all time. More than a decade later, Cameron returned with the second installment, Avatar: The Way of Water. Earlier this month, Avatar: Fire and Ash premiered. There are currently more Avatar films in the works.