Not as bad as I expected

Rating: 7/10 (20 September 2005)

I was pretty reluctant to even watch this one, simply because I love both the Alien- and Predator-franchise and didn't want to spoil it for me. After all: I kept reading so many negative reviews that I was surprised not to find AVP in the bottom 100 list on IMDb.
Alien 1 and Aliens both were brilliant films. Totally different from each other, but both great. Alien 3 was not for me and Alien 4...oh well.. lol! Predator 1 was a great Arnie-vehicle, a typical late 80s action-blockbuster with tons of pumped up macho-"actors", big explosions, shell-casings flying around and a huge body count. Predator 2 was like a rabid version of part one, with both gore and body count increased by a fair margin.
What they all had was blood and gore in amounts ranging from "adaequate" (Alien 1) to "nicely overdone" (Predator 1+2).
This, AVP can't offer. It's painfully obvious from the first kill that this film was either cut down to or always intended to be a PG-13 show. Hell, they even "cut" the famous Predator tag line (you know, the one about ugly people who make out with their mothers).
After a while however, this bothered me less and less. I would've loved to see an R-rated AVP of course. After all: These are the two nastiest killers in recent movie history slugging it out. Lest I forget: We do get to see some nice blood and guts, but the blood is all green (Predator's) or yellow (Aliens'), and the guts/brains also belong to Aliens and/or Predators. But: No trophy-taking/skinned victims, no real chest-burster-scenes, no huge gunshot wounds...
What the movie really lacks is sophisticated production design and a budget. This was obviously shot on a tight budget, and while the FX and sets look good, the lack of money does show. Everything looks quite good, but I couldn't stop thinking that with a bigger budget, everything would've looked a lot better.
Let me conclude with the good stuff: Story is OK (for a movie like this), bringing the two...err..three species together in a relatively elegant and plausible way. Acting is mostly good also and the effects are (as mentioned earlier) pretty good for such a "cheap" movie.
The first fight between the two creatures kicks butt, and should satisfy most of the Alien/Predator fans, it did satisfy me anyway.
So, bottom line: Don't be confused by all the negative reviews, this movie isn't all that bad. It's not top-notch action-material either, and I'm positive that with other artist and more money involved, the AVP-idea could be turned into one kick-ass movie.