Thoughts about what would have made it better....

Rating: Null/10 (19 August 2004)

I was thinking about what I think would have made the movie better, and thought of this:
1) The beginning should have been a narrated story type thing, as seen in other movies like Terminator, Judge Dredd, and others; a detailed, but concise telling of the backstory to let the audience know the how and why. The scene where the Italian guy was reading the hyroglyphs, and recounting the tale, with the flashback, THAT should have been the beginning.
Tied into this narration would have been some info about a deep exploration team going to check out a mysterious occurrence, and have the movie actually start once they were at the site and ready to go down. As it stands, I personally felt the humans got too much screen time. This movie is supposed to be about aliens and predators; I really don't care about the background history of each human character in this particular film. By abbreviating the beginning, more time could have been given to what we were all waiting for: AvP carnage.
2) Have 5 Predators (or at least 4) to give more on screen battle time. It seemed as if the first 2 predators got killed much too quickly (although the fight was really cool) However, these are Predators; cunning skilled warriors that stealthy, strong and resourceful. Despite being inexperienced "teen" Predators, it would have been better to see more one on one battles. When "scar" finally gets his shoulder cannon back and starts blasting aliens off the ceiling, I thought "wow! I hope we see more of that!" but alas, that's all we got. Some scenes with a Predator med kit would have been cool, just as a throw back to earlier films. Having 4-5 Predators in the film may have added to screen time, but with movies as of late (like the annoyingly tedious Bad Boys II) pushing 2hrs+, this movie could have had more "money shots" and action, because that's what we paid for.
I'll draw a parallel between AvP and Godzilla: People/critics slammed Godzilla as a piece of crap for various reasons, however I enjoyed it for one reason: All I wanted to see was big lizard stepping on stuff, and that's exactly what I felt I got. There were so many shots of Godzilla itself, as well as the thing that made Jurassic Park fun: Raptor like offspring. Not just a taste, but a full on barrage of footage with the little offspring. I walked away from that movie feeling I got what I paid for, and not "teased" by quick glimpses or snippits of action. As for the acting, who really cares about the acting in a film like this? I mean really....The movie wasn't called "the adventures of Matthew Broderick and Maria Pitullo" so who gives a crap if they weren't up to par?
I found it hard to stomach the human/predator alliance. If you remember the previous predator movies, there's no way such an allegiance would ever form between man and this ruthless creature, even if the human did kill an alien. I kept waiting for the Predator to kill Lexxa after she bagged his target, but I knew already that she was the "heroine" so that wasn't going to happen. The tag line stated: "whoever wins, we lose..." However, since Lexxa is basically the only one who survives, it seems as if "we" won..
As an additional thought, Near the end, when the Predator indicated that he was going to blow up the eggs with his arm bomb, Lexxa vehemently declares "let's blow these F***ers away......" or something to that effect.........the predator should have rolled his eyes (or done the equivalent head gesticulation, since his eyes are masked) and then lopped her head off with a blade, and then used a voice sampled recording in typical Predator fashion:
"Sh'up B*tch!"
now THAT would have been cool.
Just my $.04 :)