OK, could have been much better

Rating: 4/10 (23 March 2006)

Although it deserves only one star, I give it four because at least it was made. Fans have been thrown a bone here. Granted, a bone with no meat, but a bone none the less.
The biggest problem is time. This movie barely cracks the 90 minute mark, giving the entire story a rushed feeling. No time to establish characters. It's pretty obvious in the first 10 minutes who the survivor is going to be.
Remember how great Aliens was? We didn't see one Alien till well after an hour into the film. Why? To develop characters. Hicks, Hudson, Apone, Dietrich, Vasquez, Gorman, Bishop and the like all became such memorable characters, and it sucked when your favorite marine got killed.
That sense of development is clearly lost here. Plotwise it ain't so bad. They discover a temple in the Antarctic, so they send a team to investigate. Apparently, in ages past, the Predators used this temple to harvest Aliens, presuming the purpose is to then hunt the aliens as a sort of right of passage. So when the humans show up, they trigger the egg hatching process. A nearby Predator ship picks up on the signal and arrive to exterminate.
Again, not bad, but with the time constraints, the lack of any real effort in the acting department, and fight scenes that could have been better kept this from being a true sci-fi match-up.
The end of course, hints at a sequel. Lets just hope if that's so they get it right the 2nd time around.