Great tribute, only minor flaws.

Rating: 9/10 (31 August 2004)

I just want to say off the bat that I loved this movie.
Going into the theaters, I thought that the movie took place in the future. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it takes place in 2004 once the intro text stated the where of the movie in Alien tradition, as well as the when, in not-so Alien tradition.
I thought the acting was great, the character were decently developed, and the script well done.
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GOOD: I thought the acting and script was well done, for instance, when Weyland industries contracts Alexa Woods to be in charge of safety for the expedition the expedition crew doesn't take her very seriously (they seem to think that having guns will keep them safe from anything), one of her 3 BIG rules is to never go anywhere alone, advice which the expedition crew could not have ignored more during the course of the movie, as most of them are picked off one by one while they are alone by the predators.
While I don't know much about the predator movies, I am a HUGE fan of the Alien franchise, and I really appreciated the dedication to details from those movies, such as the company involved is called Weyland Industries, founded by Charles Bishop Weyland. This means that sometime in the future, Weyland industries merges with a corporation with Yutani in it's name and becomes Weyland-Yutani ("The company" from the Alien movies) and creates the Bishop android in the likeness of Charles Bishop Weyland. It also explains how the Weyland-Yutani Corporation found out about the Aliens in the first place in the movie Alien. When I saw the actor that played Mr. Weyland, I didn't recognize him as Lance Henriksen (Even though I thought he looked like Lance Henriksen), because he looked so different from when he was in Alien3, 12 years before this movie was released.
BAD: I did notice one flaw in the movie however. After the expedition team is infected with chestbursters, it takes what seems like mere minutes for them to burst out of the chests of the team after being planted there. The original Alien movie showed that it takes several hours for a chestburster to burst out of someone's chest after being put there. But maybe I'm wrong, and many hours did pass while the team was unconscious and the two main characters wandered the lower levels of the pyramid, but if that's the case, they should have shown the passage of that much time somehow.
I also think it was stupid how Sanaa Lathan's character teamed up with the remaining predator. It completely out of character for the predators from what I know about them.
Overall I really liked this movie and I think it's an excellent tribute to the Alien franchise at least. This is actually the first Alien movie I've seen in theaters when it came out (mostly because I was born in 1986), and I will go see AvP 2 if and when it does come out.