Expectations were high for this movie with the way the previous one ended and this let us down. Big Time! Apart from a PredAlien Queen & the whip weapon there is nothing new in this film. It borrows very heavily from the plots of Aliens, Predator, Resident Evil & The Return of the Living Dead.
We start where the last film left off with the Predalien chest-buster which causes the ship to crash, all the Predators on board are killed by the Predalien. Some face-huggers are also set free and obviously go do their thing on the local people of the town where the ship crash lands.
It was pretty obvious as the only one of it's kind that the Predalien was going to turn out to be a Queen (that's what it's doing to the pregnant woman in the hospital, you see the eggs going down her throat). Basically we're following a towns battle for survival and a Predator's hunt of a new species for a trophy. We have a mum who is also a soldier with her daughter (which echoes Ripley & Newt at several points during the movie).
We have the fight for survival, the sequence in the hospital staircase directly mirrors the Marines in the atmosphere processing plant in Aliens, right down to someone being grabbed from the wall and someone falling down a stairwell. The sequence where all the National Guard get killed is lifted wholesale from Alien, likewise the ride in the Armoured car (mirrors the APC in Aliens). Also the battle to the helicopter on the roof mirrors Ripley's rooftop escape to the drop-ship in Aliens.
The Predalien looks good, the whole back story of an airlift coming to rescue people when it's really an air-strike to destroy the town (which was so obvious) which is right out of both Resident Evil and The Return of the Living Dead. Escaping a nuke in a helicopter which later crashes is also right out of Resident Evil 2. The film is very low on new ideas indeed. We are introduced to the character of Ms. Yutani right at the end of the film so we see more about how The Weyland-Yutani Corporation comes into being.
The film is a little action heavy and could have done with a bit more thought to scripting and new ideas. Having seen all the Alien and Predator films this is by far the worse yet. Could have been so much better. As far as the cinema version goes? For the hardcore fans only.
If your lucky enough to buy the Unrated Cut DVD release then you get a far better movie which is much more enjoyable & far superior to the awful cinema release. The extra 7 minutes improve the poor plot no end, it actually makes watching the film much more bearable. Even enjoyable!
If you get the chance to listen to both sets of commentary then you'll see exactly why the film is so unoriginal so often (the directors are huge fans of James Cameron & claim this movie to be their homage to Aliens, personally I say they couldn't come up with any better ideas than Cameron so they decided to steal all his best ones and say it was a tribute as opposed to outright theft), the much better commentary comes from the sfx guys.
Worth watching if its the unrated cut on DVD.
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