What Happened?!

Rating: 4/10 (7 February 2005)

I was initially disappointed in knowing this film was going to be rated PG-13, in an effort to soak up all teenagers the producers could muster. All of the Alien and Predator films were rated "R" for a very good reason. And anyone who felt and understood the horror, suspense, disgust, etc. from the work of those films would have shook their head (just as I did) at the mere mention of a PG-13 rating. To combine some of the fictitious universe's most feared creatures and have them go head-to-head under a PG-13 rating is almost comical.
Nonetheless, I watched AVP and was pretty impressed for about half the film. The big fight scene with an alien and a predator was definitely the best of the whole film. The director managed to execute all the gore and mayhem he could without really getting too explicit. Quite a bit of the violence is actually suggested. I guess after having seen the Alien Quadrilogy, you really don't need to see a bunch of facehuggers jump on people to know what's about to happen. But even with these "saving graces" to do the film credit, the second half (normally the more important of the two) peters out big time. Instead of getting a massive battle of a bunch of predators fighting a swarm of aliens, (SPOILER) we see one predator and a woman fleeing from an explosion that takes out all the aliens. And just to show how Hollywood sometimes never changes, we get a repeat of "Aliens" with the queen alien surviving the explosion. A final battle ensues with the predator and woman taking on the queeny.
Maybe there just wasn't the budget to execute one of the best "versus" battles out there, because this film could have easily added another thirty minutes to an hour of footage. I think too much time was wasted in showing the human expedition team trying to uncover/discover the temple. And the whole bit of using the aliens as part of predator warrior training was a bit hokey, but not near as hokey as the ending. Can anyone say "Predalien"? 4/10