Re: Alien vs. Predator sequel
Characterisation, wooden acting, seriously thin plot... erm sorry but take the rose tinted glasses off - sorry but the Original Alien film was very very thin on plot - what it had in spades was good characters, better actors and genuin terror, Aliens was some wooden acting gone nuts - but Cameron did to perfection was to amp up the action to compensate so you just didnt care (appart from praying newt would die)... on to Predator, again relitively thin on the plot front, and relitively thin on the SFX front relying on a decent amount of tension and interaction of the characters... other than these though Pred2, Alien 3 films just relied on their predecessors to get audience, with Alien 4 pulling up with a duper truck of money to beg sigorney (the only saving grace to the mess) to revitalise the dying alien franchise.
In this respect AVP2 I would maintain was better than Pred2 and Aliens 3 - 4 easily. Sure there was the cookie cutter "reformd rebel" and "army Mom" - the characters all from the pop up book of how to build a plot... but this said if you hadnt taken some shortcuts with using these simple place holders for the cast it would have had to be like alien where half or more of the film is totally dedicated to building up the characters on screen.
as for the "plot hole" of the clean up of the alien infection, yet the predator leaving a skinned human - your assuming the predator was there to erase the evidence for HUMANS to detect... perhaps what the Predator was really doing was removing evidence so other PREDATORS didnt come accross it - so it alone could claim the supream kills and be "da man" back home on the home world - granted this wasnt portrayed in the film but its got legs plot wise.
*********** SPOILER ALERT**************
******** You Have been warned ***********
Best Movie bits:
"daddy - are you alright daddy..." chestburst al la gore
Prety blond running down the corridor - she's got to live as she's the "nice girl" who fancies the hero's brother..." she isnt killed directly by the alien or the predator - no she's collateral damage from a thrown weapon ... she's just in the wrong place at the wrong time yet they kill her of wonderfully!!!
The maternity ward - genuinely a great idea! replication through the womb! terrific..
sorry but film is very respectful to both the alien and Predator originals, I would be compeatly happy with these guys doing another turn of a follow up if they where allowed to invest more money and time of the cast... the main man / woman despite their "character by number" paper thin back stories actually delivered very good performances - ok no sigorny weaver in Alien but still not too shabby and iff they where brought into a follow up would be highly watchable.