Got around to see it after long time...

Rating: 6/10 (9 September 2005)

I kind of boycotted this movie, since I didn't really enjoyed the premise, the trailers and the "buzz". It seemed to be aimed more for kids, and I kind of felt that they was just making another movie out of two good series, and destroy them with this.
But I was surprised, because I was obviously totally wrong.
I enjoy Paul W.S. Anderson's other movies (except Resident Evil), and he delivers what he should with this one too.
His script follows the both the alien and the predator-saga's pretty nicely, and it works well both as an alien prequel and third part in the predator series. I especially enjoy the scenes towards the end with only the predator and Alexa. Very close to the comic-books, and I liked that.
Overall, this film was better than I expected, and I hope for more sequels! There are some drawbacks though. It's far to little violence, it feels very bleak. Maybe the "directors cut" makes up for that. It actually also felt a bit slow sometimes, especially in the beginning. It could have been more character build-ups and back-stories woven into it. As it is now, it's a bit too straight forward.
However, the film works, it has some nice interesting things in it and it is well done.
The most major drawback however is that Antarctica doesn't look like Antarctica at all. OK, I haven't been there, but I know a few things about it. It's cold. VERY cold. We SHOULD see their breath! :-) THE THING from 1982 actually succeeds to make it look more like Antarctica than this movie does. It looks a bit like a studio, trying to look like Antarctica. ;-) Other than that, the film itself is fine. If you like Predator 2 and Aliens, you won't be disappointed. However, if Predator and Alien are more in your taste and you hated Alien 3 and 4, then you might skip this one.