What went wrong?

Rating: 6/10 (17 August 2005)

I must preface my comments by first saying that on a purely visceral level, I did like Alien vs Predator. Alexa held her own very well. So well in fact that I would like to see her again. It was a real thrill seeing the predators and the aliens get it on. It was also cool to see humans totally out of their league on a battle field of dueling behemoths. True underdogs. For any of them to survive was a real triumph, yet I totally bought the rationale behind Alexa's survival.
Now for the criticisms: What went wrong? The predators have been going through this Right-of-passage training ritual for thousands of years. They built many labyrinthian pyramids, presumably getting better at it as time went on. So again, what went wrong? They are obviously aware of the current stage of human technological development because they lured us their with heat blooms to attract our satellites. Did they think we went there to ritually sacrifice our selves. If so, why did they kill everyone in the whaling station? Why was it so surprising that the team found their way to the predators canons? There were no obstacles. If we can build a satellite we just might be able to read hieroglyphs and figure out their sarcophagus calender lock which was based on our own planet's cycles. The predators boomerang charikons and their spears were made of metal impervious to the alien's acid blood (unlike their wrist bayonets that instantly melt on contact). Why wasn't the mother alien shackled with that stuff? And if the conveyor belt is designed to take her eggs to the sacrificial chamber, how did all of those other eggs get into the aliens incubation room. How was the pyramid designed to stop this? The poor design of the pyramid is inconsistent with the technological sophistication that built their ultra quiet ship with ultra refined controls. One last thing. The mother speared the predator through it's back and out of its chest with her tail and kills it. The tag scene has the predator/alien larvae burst out of the dead predator's chest. Why break out when the mother conveniently supplied a ready made birth canal? And more curiously, why was the alien larvae not killed when mom speared the host through the chest? And even more curiously, why did she kill the last predator. Alien 3 established that they do not kill impregnated hosts. Or was it because in Alien 3 the larvae was a mother alien? Which means that they will kill their young, but that is contrary to their previous behavior, except in Alien Resurrection (which I hated, so I will not go any further with that). Or should I just ignore this fact because very few people like Alien 3. Personally, I liked a lot about that one also.