Alien verus Predator

Rating: 9/10 (18 February 2007)

Now, at the risk of being unpopular, I actually really quite liked this movie. It may have had something to do with the fact all I really wanted that night to watch was a very slightly challenging (and I will admit, the film was not overly challenging, in any sense).
Perhaps I was expecting a balance between the naive optimism of Alien and the Gun-Ho Attitude (ho ho ho) of Aliens. You know, in Alien, when they honestly though the Docbot would 'cure' Kane of his stomach ache. And that bit in Aliens with the remote controlled sentry guns running through whole belts of ammo, like a shooting gallery - who amongst us would be able to deny that was cool?
And perhaps due to being reasonably-to-totally wrecked, this movie delivered in spades all I was hoping. Despite being opposed on every front, I liked the way Humans were portrayed as so woefully inadequate, Aliens so powerful in hand-to-hand and being part of a superintelligent hive mind; and Predators being so all round grouse.
I liked the whole story for the movie, in that if humans hadn't been so nosey, the hundred year Predator hunt would have continued as in times gone by, the adolescent Predators were substandard in their hunting abilities. I liked several little things, like the Predators receiving the "The Shoulder Cannons have been picked up", looking at each other, and thinking "uh-oh" in Predator. As a problem; to this moment, I still don't understand why the Pred ship fired a laser shortcut to the Pyramid of Trials - unless the humans were not even noticed, and crawled like bugs into enemy territory, without even the realisation they had entered unfriendly terrain. I liked the way the academics were the appogee of their respective careers, in obscure and extinct languages, and their slow and inaccurate translations of the Pred temple. And they still got things wrong. Very reminiscent of Event Horizon's mistranslation from "Save me from hell" to "Save yourself from hell".
I also liked the way all the humans got butchered by the superior aliens. Supposedly hypertrained SAS marines and what not were devoured by rank and file aliens, and predators.
It really gave emphasis to Te expression, "There are things Mankind was Not Meant to Know". Almost Cthulhu-esquire, except people survived.