Mostly misses the mark, often in a way that is both long and even disrespectful to what preceded.

Rating: 5/10 (7 September 2007)

Surely a mark has been missed when things which were once genuinely frightening have become merely incidental; when things that had the propensity to be quite terrifying now just seem to exist to fill runtimes. Take the scene in "Alien v Predator", Paul W.S. Anderson's 2004 adaptation of a comic book which became a video game, and features the much admired franchise monsters, whereby a Predator grabs a new-born alien mid-air as it leaps out at him - too flippantly, in my opinion. Or, worse still, the similar moment whereby a face-hugger is diced in half when it too makes an attempt on a Predator's presence. I can recall when characters creeping around alien infested corridors were once atmospheric and effective; here, reduced to inducing little more than a passing interest. What happened?
"Alien versus Predator", or "AVP" if you're hip, begins with a young American woman named Alexa, played by Sanaa Lathan, climbing a Himalayan mountain. She's by herself, which means she's fearless and independent. Suddenly, some ice gives way - panic, but she negates this and gets back on track before calmly making it all the way to the summit. Lo-and-behold a chopper, which she must surely have heard, has already landed there and sees its inhabitants offer her a once in a lifetime opportunity in Antarctica. Nothing suspicious about any of this.
The opportunity turns out to be the chance to explore a pyramid, more synonymous with ancient civilisations based thousands of miles away, which has been discovered well below the ice. Think hard and you will be reminded of "Stargate". Others have been assembled, but only Raoul Bova's character Sebastian, who needs the money to fund an archaeological dig, has been afforded an introduction beyond Ewen Bremner's sheepish small-talking Scot. I kept thinking how difficult it was in earlier films in these franchises to pick apart protagonists and how impossible it was to tell whom would still be alive by the end. Though, to some extent, "AVP" does refrain from going so totally down this road as to completely terminate your interest.
Meanwhile, floating around in outer-space, seemingly undetected by Earth's advanced satellite technology, is an alien spacecraft inhabited by a platoon of Predators - the likes of whom had only previously graced our screens on two occasions, in Schwarzenegger's 1987 jungle-bound survival horror and an intriguing 1990 sequel which had some neat ideas. They watch everything unfolding in the pyramid's radius, before enabling the hapless explorers to enter it via an energy beam shot at the structure which melts the ice and creates a makeshift tunnel. Our crew head in, despite being fully aware that 'nothing man-made' could have created the tunnel and without informing any proper authorities on the discovery, which no one seems to have a problem with, despite the chap heading the expedition, Lance Henriksen, quite evidently appearing to be mad.
The bulk of the film, within the confines of the pyramid itself, is largely disappointing without being totally unforgivable. The crew make a few nasty discoveries about its history, although I forget what it was they were precisely trying to find; the film, we realise, is not really even aliens against predators, but aliens against some kind of adolescent predators who must prove themselves as warriors. The early parts are peppered with deep senses of foreboding. "Storm's comin' in!" one person glibly observes. Two other characters look up at the moon, so bright in the sky - one remarks that, where he comes from, 'that kind of moon is the hunter's moon'. It is difficult to take too seriously.
Up in space, the Predators all gather around a holographic device and watch what transpires, like it were some kind of piece of audio-visual entertainment in itself, or a wrestling pay-per-view. This is entertainment precipitated by the pyramid managing to manoeuvre its own walls in such a way that face-huggers are able to claim a couple of human victims in order to breed the aliens at all - leaving others to fend for themselves in contained crawlspaces, as if the walls knew exactly what to move and when to keep the ambling explorers forever in the dark.
Nearer the end, I was conflicted by which to be the most struck: the words of Brian Helgeland rattling around inside my head about how the lazy way out of any finale for a film-maker is to merely burn the set; the way an alien queen is knocked onto her side with a mere pointy stick, or how a Predator knew there was an escape route out of the pyramid at all having activated a rather large firework. I suppose, in an alternate universe where this is, in fact, the very first time we get to see either an alien or a predator, you might be able to find it in yourself to give the film a passing grade, but I think you would struggle to do so in this reality.