I cared jack shit about Hicks and Newt in ALIENS because they were so 80s two-dimensional.
Ironically enough A3 is the movie where they started feeling like real people that I cared about. Their deaths are hands down the strongest and most emotional narratives of all the movies. The funeral scene is just as poetic, emotional and beautiful as it is sordid, cold-hearted and gruesome. Actually that is one of my top five favorite scenes of any Alien movie. The Hicks and Newt characters got the greatest farewell scene of any other character, except for maybe Ripley.