Had promise, but fell short

Rating: Null/10 (16 August 2004)

** Spoilers **
Another reviewer has called it junk food for the brain-- and I think
that's pretty accurate. As a sci-fi movie (forgetting the franchises)
on a hot summer afternoon, it was fun. A short escape from
reality.
But it really wasn't an Alien or a Predator movie in my mind. They
just happened to show up in the movie.
I found the concept of the backstory interesting, and saw a LOT of
potential there. What would make Predators (always established
as coming to hunt in hot weather) come to the ice? The
connection between pyramids on earth between different cultures,
etc. -- all interesting little background info to make it just believable
enough.
But a movie that advertises itself as Aliens vs. Predator should be
ABOUT Aliens vs. Predators. It seemed like the battles between
the two races were too brief, and too far between (an editing
problem, I imagine).
One of the things, particularly in Aliens, that makes the movie so
fantastic is that you care about the characters. It makes their
deaths that much more effective and impacting. Here, the
characters are barely introduced. A couple don't even have
names. There is no development of character, no connection
between them-- no real reason to care about them at all.

A lot of the problems I attribute to the way-too-fast run time of the
movie. Things that needed to be developed to solidify the plot just
could not be accomplished in the movie that was released.

However, some sloppy story writing-- within the movie itself-- also
makes it, as a member of the Aliens or Predator franchises,
subpar. For example, after multiple scans by the Predator to find
an alien growing within hosts, bypassing killing a main character
because he's old, sick, and weak, etc-- you want to have me
believe that his shipmates would not have scanned his dead body
before bringing it onboard their ship? Riiight.
Again-- for a generic sci-fi romp, it was okay. Needed more action,
needed a lot more time to develop the storyline and make me care
about it-- but the name is misleading for what was produced.
7/10.