Great Concept... Poorly Executed.

Rating: 2/10 (6 December 2011)

I love the Alien and Predator franchises... when I heard they were bringing the AvP series to theaters I was stoked. And then we get this.
I will say I am kind of a stickler for If you are taking an idea straight from another source, be it comics, video games, books or TV. My belief is, stay true to the source material. That is what made the idea popular enough for you to make a movie to begin with.
The Concept of the comics and video games were, futuristic with the Space Marines from the Aliens movie (not the same squad but the soldier) on alien planets. The only real concepts that Paul Anderson took were the humans and Predators working against the Aliens, and that the Predators use the Aliens for hunting.
The Movie is a pseudo-prequel-sequel movie. It's a sequel to the Predator movies (albeit indirectly) and a prequel to the Alien franchise, with the introduction of Charles Bishop Weyland, one half of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, the "Company" from Alien, and the model for the Bishop android in Aliens and Alien 3.
The story takes place in Antarctica, a far throw from the hot jungles of Central America and the 100+ weather of L.A. Where Weyland makes a remarkable discovery, a huge heat bloom on frozen wasteland. He takes a team of archaeologist along with some personal security (probably ex-military although never mentioned) to find the heat bloom, only to find in a large underground cave a Pyramid. But the pyramid has designs and carving and markings from three separate cultures that never had contact with each other.
Well that's because they were build by the Predators. SEE Aliens DID build the pyramids.... anyway. It turns out the pyramid is a training facility for a certain tier or clan of the Predator species that a right of passage is to hunt and kill Aliens. There are some spoilers after this point. Unfortunately I need them to explain why I did not like this movie.
So brings out a Queen Alien to start making eggs, so that the humans can become hosts for Aliens for the Predators to hunt. The Predators show up. Three of them, one similar to the ones from previous movies (called Scar), another close to him but with huge blade swords on his arms (can't remember his name) and one huge Predator (named Celtic) Well the one I can't remember his name is killed like instantly. Scar disappears, and Celtic goes after the one who killed the first Predator and they have like a huge 5 minute fight. the Battle was really cool, but Celtic is cut down and the Aliens take a huge advantage.
At this point the humans are split up Main Characters together and secondary are lost and going to die soon. They start learning about what's going on by translating the hieroglyphics and decide they need help the last remaining predator.
The fault I have with this movie is. Besides bad acting, a poor sense of location, it is dark a lot in this movie. And the fact that the Predators are built as these bad ass hunters to kill 2 of them in really the first 10 minutes of them actually getting screen time was stupid. That and Paul Anderson doesn't really understand how the Alien species works. To make an Alien you need an egg, which makes a face-hugger, which implants an embryo into a host, which then becomes an Alien. By my count their were about a dozen or so people in that temple... there are a lot more Aliens then just that dozen. And also that 2 Predators are killed by one Alien, and yet 1 Predator can kill 5 or 6, plus the Queen with the lousy help of someone who is pretty much a pacifist. It just seemed very unbalanced.
Truthfully this movie would have worked out a lot better had the plot been Set on some outpost on another world. Where the Predators dropped some eggs and breed Aliens for a hunt, and the Marines were called in to investigate a distress beacon from the outpost. And have a huge 3 way battle royal. And I will have a review for AvP:Requiem the sequel to this movie... and lets just say this was Shakespeare compared to the the sequel.