On the whole, about what I'd expect from a movie version of the Dark Horse comic

Rating: 6/10 (29 January 2005)

I didn't have the luxury of seeing this film in the theater, and I kinda wish I had after viewing the DVD.
I was and still am a fan of Dark Horse Comics' multiple AVP series, and I was keen to hear way back in the late 80s that there was some commotion about making the series into a movie, simply because it brought together two franchises which both worked well on their own, and which definitely lent themselves to a celluloid treatment.
It finally happened, and admittedly it's not exactly the same story, but the essentials are there.
There are the odd-ball additions of the whole "Predators created civilization" foo, and the seemingly ended-before-it-was-begun hints at the beginnings of the "Company" that so dominates the landscape of the first four films (Weyland Corporation and the presumably collected information, either voluntarily or otherwise, from Lex about the technologies and creatures encountered during this little adventure). Other than those annoyances, the gist of the story is intact. Predators "breeding" Aliens for the hunt, humans getting in the way, one of them surviving, joining in the kill and being "marked" for it like a Predator.
What I did not get, I mean simply did not get, was the whole facehugger-to-alien in 30 minutes or less thing...if you want to voice an apologetic, I guess you could excuse it by saying the Queen is in duress, so the facehuggers are driven to rapid reproduction. It doesn't necessarily jibe with the timelines in the other movies for the belly-bursters, but hey...who's counting right? To be truthful, I can't say I was expecting anything, but I do know if all I had been treated to was an Alien/Predator bloodbath (or acid-bath, as the case may be) I'd have bolted inside of 10 minutes...I can see that kind of pointless noise three times a week or more on SciFi.
On the whole I liked it well enough. It wasn't Academy material, but come on...it's Aliens, it's Predators...
"You die, she dies...EVERYbody dies..."
That's like birthday cake on Christmas Day! :)