...or how Hollywood took two franchises and flushed them down the toilet

Rating: 7/10 (8 April 2005)

Over ten years of hearing rumors about this film being made and waiting and waiting and then more waiting as nothing comes to fruition. Two more (disappointing) "Alien" pictures will come and go and still no confrontation. Finally, it is hereand THIS is what we get? I was at least vaguely entertained, but this should have been much, much better. This movie succeeds (barely) on being short and having a lot of (uninspired) action scenes. I wasn't bored, just extremely let down.
First off, I had problems with the premise. A team of scientists discover a "heat bloom" from Antarctica and venture out to discover a pyramid buried under the ice. Now, I know next to nothing about science, but wouldn't a burst of heat large enough to be detected from outer space be warm enough to melt the ice? Anyway, once there they discover the pyramid is a weird series of mazes and moving chambers that seemed to house a pre-Aztec sacrifice ritual. We soon discover the humans are merely there to gestate the eggs of the Alien species. And the said aliens are merely the prey for a race of the alien Predator species, who like to hunt the acid-blooded beings.
Now comes my second problem (believe me, there are many more between one and two; this is just the order I am describing them in): what exactly do the predators do? We know from the first two "Predator" movies that they like to travel to Earth to hunt us weak humans every hundred years or so. But, in the meantime did they fly by and check on the pyramid? I can just see them in the 1500's taking a cruise through outer space and thinking "Nope, the silly human race has not advanced enough to travel all the way to the coldest region of their planet, dig miles beneath the surface of the ice, find our pyramid, bring to life those nastier, slimier aliens and let us hunt. Let's try again in 1600. Who's paying for gas this time?" And the aliens sure have a wonderful shelf life! They have been dormant since before the Aztecs! And come to life at the first sign of human lifethousands of years later!!
The human element is the weakest of many weak factors. There is absolutely no point for any of them to be there, other than gestating the eggs and providing dialogue. Of course, after hearing them talk, I could have done without the latter. Poor Lance Henriksen is completely wasted here. He is cast as a modern-day ancestor to the guy who would go on to finance the expedition to the planet of the aliens in the 1986 sequel (at least I think that was who he was; I think I lost a lot of brain cells watching this). Here, he's just a character with a familiar name and a wonderful actor trying to make the best out of what has been "written" for him. None of the other actors make any sort of impact whatsoever; they are merely present to die.
And what were the so-called filmmakers thinking in dumbing down the aliens? In the four Alien movies, they were very scary creatures; kind of like outer-space versions of sharks. They were deadly and existed only to kill and would go to any means to do so. Here, they seem like a pack of barely vicious dogs. And they are much smaller than before; now they are the outer-space version of a pit bull.
Blame must lie with director Paul W.S. Anderson. He has made some stylish and decent (plus the excellent "Resident Evil") movies in the past. Here he just comes across as a talent-less hack; a director who was handed a dream project that knew would make millions and did not bother to make an intriguing story. For that matter, he barely bothered to make a movie. Rarely have I watched a movie and felt like I was looking at a video game. This is the equivalent of watching one that someone else is playing.