Better than anticipated...

Rating: 9/10 (29 August 2004)

Warning: some of my comments may be construed as spoilers.

First of all, I want to say that I liked this movie. The before-hand critics weren't very open to it, and the people in general had low expectations. However, it was not a bad movie. I have been a fan of both Alien and Predator since seeing each original series, as well as a fan of every other media type this pop-culture crossover has surfaced in. Therefore I had my own high expectations.
I will say this. It was cool. Despite being subject to some piddly studio-enforced time constraint, it played out well for an hour-forty movie. I felt the effects were well done, the aliens did not look in any way as deficient as those in Alien: Resurrection (mostly the queen), and the predators were quite excellent.
That said, I have some beefs. Being a longtime fan, I noticed some really irritating things.
The sense of time lapse in the movie was relatively basic; that is, it didn't feel like time ever really jumped forward by a big chunk. Because of this, the facehuggers seemed to take only a few minutes to implant the larval aliens, despite the several hour process intoned in the first two movies (which I consider the bible on all things Alien). I didn't mind this as much; so maybe the facehuggers are a little premature. However, this time problem arose with the chestburster stage. They set it up so that it seemed like the bursters also only took about ten minutes to fully mature, and exit their host. This, to me, felt way to fast. But, being a devout fan, maybe I'm just too obsessed. Finally, I felt that, even though it was cool and all, it was pretty shallow in terms of action volume. There aren't many big action scenes with the predators and aliens together, and they're mostly broken apart during the second half of the film (The first half is mostly character development and introduction). If it hadn't been for the queen's inclusion in the action, I doubt I would have voted on this as I did. To me, the queen really saves the movie.
And, it's definitely open for a sequel. Now I know, there haven't been any "number one movie" commercials for it, meaning it's general reception is satisfactory at best. But, unlike Godzilla, which was set up for a sequel that never came, AVP will most definitely get its sequel. This is because, using my example, Godzilla was a popcorn-action flick, and thought it may have earned its keep in sales, it didn't have the physical fan base to prod the sequel into production. AVP has that physical fan base - we've been around for twenty years. This means, even though AVP might not even make back its production costs, it most certainly will be sequeled simply to feed the fan's interest.
Oh, one last thing: Antarctica is really cold. Towards the end they seemed to have forgotten that.