Where did the rest of the movie go?

Rating: Null/10 (22 October 2004)

Visually this is a very good movie. A film where care has been taken in the production. Experienced and skillful people made this movie. The Predators and Aliens look and move well. The individual scenes all work well when taken in isolation.
But what happened to the rest of the movie? The one I saw was less than 90 minutes long. IMDb attributed 101 minutes to AVP at the time of this review. Something is missing. Several things are missing. The most obvious are character development and the blood and guts of humans. Who cares about the humans dying when we don't know their names, don't know anything about their lives (except that some of them are parents) and they speak American with funny accents (for example Scottish, English and a Scottish-European hybrid). The version I saw had a UK 15 certificate: the predators and Aliens were killed with acid/green blood and body-arts flying everywhere but the humans all died off stage. There is no red blood. There is also no explanation why the previously extra-hot weather loving Predators are now suddenly playing in the ice.
Perhaps all these missing things are on the cutting room floor and another special edition DVD will reinstate them and their synergy. Aliens and Predator are diverse multi-media franchises and they are big enough to absorb the damage caused by this failure.
The movie also features a pretty but historically inaccurate whaling station.
For a good frozen wastes movie you should watch John Carpenter's The Thing instead. In this form AVP is for the completionist only.
Final Score: 3/10