What A Fun & Wild Ride!

Rating: Null/10 (13 August 2004)

Yee-Haw! What a fun, wild ride this was!
I thought this was Anderson's best work so far. (no, I'm not an avid Anderson hater like so many here on this board are) It had a pretty good storyline but the special FX totally stole the show. The Predators never looked cooler. The Aliens, along with their queen seem even more vicious than in the previous Alien films. The Alien effects were fantastic . Tons of slime, hissing and acid blood.
MINOR SPOILERS!!
The story is very similar to Aliens only instead of Ripley and the Colonial Marines, we get a scientific research team...who happen to have packed automatic weapons.. A team assembled by Mr. Weyland travels to the unknown only to come under attack by both the Predators and Aliens. Much of the cast, no, I take that back...all of them except one are fodder and end up with either an alien in their chest or a Predator's wrist blade slicing them up.
The sets are top notch...a lot of detail was put into them. The pyramid where much of the movie takes place in is enormous. It literally has everyone trapped "Like rats in a maze" as one chemical specialist/team member points out.
The cast is also surprisingly good. All except one. That goddam Italian professor Sebastian who feels the need to read some heiroglyphs every few minutes and tell the story matter of factly. (that's him in the very top picture) It's the way he speaks, as if us, the audience, are total morons and will only understand the events happening in the movie if he tells us. Aaagh! Needless to say, I wanted him dead and when my wish came true, oh man was it good. I thought for sure there was going to be one of those obligatory "Kill me" requests like in the previous Alien films but that never happened. Never in a movie has one character been so annoying. That was the one major drawback to the entire movie....one badly written character.
Another cool idea was the last surviving human and last surviving Predator teaming up together to fight. Many people will no doubt find that utterly ridiculous and the worst part in the whole movie but I found it to be a cool, fun and action packed team up. I thought it was a great idea. The last surviving human, who I shall not reveal, is lucky that it's a teenage Predator they hooked with and not an older one. An older one would've never considered such an alliance and probably would've gutted them on the spot. There is a reason why the Predator allowed that person to tag along and to find out, you'll just have to watch the film. I'm not telling.
Oh and another thing...everything I read about this film says that there are 5 teenage Predators... Nope. There are only 3.
Overall I give this film 3 1/2 out of 5 stars. It was a fun popcorn flick.