Following up on an earlier thread, which I can no longer find (although to be fair, I didn't look that hard)...

Caught it yesterday.

Will preface the review by saying that I flat-out didn't care for the first Alien vs. Predator installment, and this is coming from someone who totally dug the first two Alien flicks, liked the third one and thought the fourth one was passable. Thought the first Predator movie was great, the second one a little less so, but still good. Also really enjoyed both of the PC AvP games.

AvP 2 is a quantum leap over the first flick, but that's not to really say it's a good movie. It still suffers from a lot of the same problems the first movie had, in that a lot of the sets were poorly lit, much of the action takes place at night in near darkness, and the editing staff suffers from ADD; WAY too many jump cuts combined with intentionally shaky camera work reduced much of my reaction to "what the fuck just happened", to the point where even the Predalien hybrid didn't have much of an impact.

Think a lot of it is that there's just really not much in the way of new ideas to be drawn from the series. Seeing facehuggers leap through the air, alien acid-blood corrode things and the Predator fiddling around with the electronic wristband all has a "been there, seen that before" quality. This flick also suffers the same problems Predator 2, Alien Resurrection and AvP 1 did in that the character development is poor. I didn't giva a monkey's uncle about ANYONE in this movie. Subsequently, when they started to get bumped off, it really didn't amount to much.

The quantum leap comes mostly in the kills and gore with this sequel vs. the first AvP movie, although
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there was some nastiness involving pregnant human women that was a bit uncalled for.

The ludicrous ending leaves it wide open for a third flick, but honestly this might be a good time to either bring back Ripley and conclude the Alien series apart from the Predator crossover bit or just leave it alone.

The downside is if you enjoy the Alien / Predator flicks, this IS the kind of movie you'll want to see in the theater, as I could tell watching it that this would be totally underwhelming if viewed at home; just see it during a matinee, so you don't have to pay full-price for it.

2 out of 5 stars.