First off: The action scenes other folks have lauded were horrendous. The entire film was apparently shot in Ridlin Vision. Each fight-scene is a quick succession of ultra-fast zooms on either an Alien or a Predator, intercut with some generic squelching noises, which are either meant to represent stabbing, or an ancillary character making an orange smoothie. I'm not sure which. Good fight scenes allow you to see the action in a stylish fashion (ala the first Matrix or anything by Kurosawa); these didn't. At all. It was like watching a fight scene while being repeatedly bludgeoned with a frying pan. You simply cannot comprehend what the **** is going on. I wanted to repeatedly scream "Do the Dew" during every fight, but was laughing too hard to execute this plan. Did you know that there are facehuggers in the Matrix? Well, there are.
The dialogue was SO bad, it didn't even gel with itself, for God's sake. The people get to the pyramid via this enormous frozen tube the Preds cut with some kind of Death Star beam (never explained), they comment on the otherworldly technology necessary to create this Antarctic Slip N' Slide, and then commend themselves on being the first team to get there once they hit bottom. Through the tube someone else quite obviously dug for them. With the exception of Bishop and That Guy From Snatch, line delivery is horrendous. My dog acts better. He's not a bright dog, either.
The concept is Special Olympian in scope. I particularly hate the token smart guy, who is able to interpret Predator writing and technology inside of 28 seconds of seeing it. "Well, the Mayans used a base 10 number system and enjoyed corn, so it's obvious that the pyramid will turn into a giant game of Tetris every ten minutes, and squish people. Until that gets inconvenient, at which point it will stop. 10 minutes,in Predator years, is about 32 seconds." Bishop has cancer, I think. For those who don't know, cancer medication doubles as a flame thrower. I'm not kidding.
The Tyrannosaurus chase sequence from Jurassic Park was really well done, though. The Tyrannosaurus runs after Lex and Jim (that's the Scar Pred's name) after Jim blows up the pyramid. He does this by throwing his nuclear wrist band into a room full of eggs, and Lex immediately recognizes that the completely alien device is a bomb. This is due to Jim waving his hand vaguely at her. For those previously unaware, waving you hand vaguely is the universal hand-sign for "Monster F*cker Death Nuke." Try it at a restaurant sometime, and watch the results.
Anyway, after the T. Rex kills Jim by way of its tail, Lex pushes her into the ocean. Luckily, as we all know from Aliens and Alien Resurrection, Aliens can't swim, and as we know from THIS VERY MOVIE, they can't live in cold climates. The Queen is very, very definitely dead. Jim and Lex share a Neo-Trinity kiss or something before he dies, and then the M.A.S.H. 4077 shows up to bring him onto their ship. They give Lex a pointy stick, then leave her in Antarctica in a tank top. Luckily, Antarctica isn't cold in winter, so I'm sure she makes it home just fine.
Question: If the Preds have been using the temple for thousands of years to train new hunters (as recently as 1904, according to the film, and the infestations have been much worse before, according to the flashbacks), why aren't they pissed that Jim blew the whole shebang to kingdom come? Why are the humans so concerned that the Aliens not get to the surface? They've never seen them before (outside of the flashbacks), and the ones who comment on how dangerous they are have only seen 1, maybe 2 Aliens, tops, before their severely edited chestburster deaths. Did they maybe see the other films in the franchise before getting to Artic Hell? Also, if Alien body parts are so horridly caustic, how can Lex wear some as body armour less than 2 minutes after Jim offs one of them? Also, is it possible to request a free ticket back for use on a different movie? I'd like to try.
If nothing else, the slo-mo Baywatch sequence with Jim and Lex hauling @ss out of the pyramid is classic. Stupid, but classic. Overall, I give the film a whopping minus 8 points out of 1, and that's only 'cause it's really, really funny. It would've been a minus 14 otherwise.
Bottom Line: If you're an Alien fan, don't bother. If you're a Predator fan, similarly don't bother. If you like movies in general, slash your wrists now. I laughed myself stupid.
