A delicious meal, but sloppily prepared

Rating: 6/10 (27 April 2005)

14 years in the making and here we are: two of cinema's most infamous monsters (three if you count the humans) bash it up head to head to head. As a fan of the Alien and Predator movies and the AvP game I was very excited to see this movie come out and couldn't wait to see it. I was expecting just a guilty pleasure type of movie and that is just what this movie is. If you are not a fan of the characters basically stay away.
However even fans will be disappointed with this release. The story, acting, design, special effects, and action scenes are all pretty good and don't fail to satisfy, the movie's fault, and it's a rather big one, is the look and feel of the whole thing. The Alien movies are violent with R-rated level violence and gore. So are the Predator movies, and Predator 2 was even trimmed for graphic violence from an NC-17 rating to get an R. The game AvP is also graphically violent complete with dismemberment and spraying gore. People have come to know the Alien and the Predator as violent and terrible beasts, yet this movie is remarkably limited in all of that. It doesn't take a gore hound to realize that it just doesn't work the way it should, or more importantly, the way the fans expected it to. This is a film for a limited audience and it was made with a big downside: it just doesn't feel completely like Alien vs. Predator.
Taking a look at Paul Anderson's previous films like Soldier, Event Horizon, and even other video game adaptations like Resident Evil you can tell that this guy can make his movies no-holds barred violent. The only real explanation for the tameness of this movie is the potential cash revenue. They wanted money so they made a toned down, relaxed version of what should have been. However, fans will, undoubtedly, want to check it out. 6/10
Rated PG-13: violence, minimal gore and horror, and some profanity