PROS:
*The action was decent. Some good AvP action in a few scenes.
*The ALIEN effects were nice. If you're a fan of ALIENS, then you'll remember how stiff the queen was when she was fighting Ripley. In AvP she's all out natural! The final chase scene had me on edge.
*Some really nice bullet time shots of the face huggers leaping at their victims.
*The Preds were pretty kewl. While not as charismatic as in the PRED I & II movies, they were never-the-less Predators.
*Hopefully there will be a better director for AvP2. Oh yes, according to the end of the film, there "should" be a sequel. During the film a Pred is 'impregnated' by a face hugger and the chestburster makes its appearance at the end of the film. Which, if you know your ALIEN lore, ALIENS take on the form of their hosts. Can we say PRAETORIAN?
Ok, now for the bad news...
CONS:
*Way too short. Registering in at 1hr 30min. there simply wasn't enough time for story build. Everything seemed like the science team knew what was going on. They 'discovered' things too quickly.
*For archeologists making a first discovery they sure weren't interested in much of their surroundings. Big huge statues of Predators outside the pyramid and they walked right past them without so much as a look.
*The action wasn't enough. There was more of the science team trying to escape the labrynth of the pyramid than there was of AvP action.
*Aliens were too "smart". While we know they possessed a 'hive mind' of some sort, they were way more intelligent than those from the ALIEN movies that were supposed to take place hundreds of years in the future.
*Not enough build on the Predator "young'ns". Showing the process of them getting ready for the hunt would have been nice.
*The Aliens, when walking, had the same exact motion as the Raptors from Jurassic Park. "Can we steal a little dino-motion from you Mr. Spielberg?"
*Not much emotion from the lead chick when she was about to become brain filleted by an Alien. Even after killing it she was more or less like, "Wow, that was close."
*Aliens incubated way too fast. In ALIEN, it took a few 'hours' for the chestburster to appear. In AvP, they spawned almost instantaneously. However, I guess Pred biology is different than humans. In one scene, it shows a chestburster coming out of a human almost as soon as the facehugger drops off while later, a Pred who is attacked by a face hugger doesn't fall victim to the chestburster until the end of the film. (btw - a lead in to AvP2) Well, for only being and hour and a half, I guess they had to work quickly.
I don't know. Since I just came from seeing the film I'm still trying to re-live it. I need a bit more time to remember what I did and didn't like about it. I know I listed a lot more CONs than PROs but all in all it wasn't really that bad of a movie. It fails in comparison to some of the AvP stuff I've read by Darkhorse, but it still kept me kind of entertained in the end. I knew the one year production time wasn't going to be enough for this film.
All I can say is go see it for yourself and then reply back here. (If you actually bothered to read thru this far without seeing the movie first.)
(the ones with the pyramid as a wireframe in the predator ship) Man those were a nightmare to do!
