The characters who do get the most screen time are generally uninteresting. First there is Raoul Bova, playing archaeologist Sebastian. All we get is a dull guy trying to act tough, there is really nothing interesting about him, save for the great line "It's all starting to make sense!" Possibly the biggest downfall is Sanaa Lathan, playing our hero Alexa. She is not a bad actress, but due to the confines of the script, she has nothing to work with giving us a lackluster hero. Without that hero to latch on to we don't have that emotional center to the film.

Enough about them, I know what you really want to know about, the real stars. Do the Aliens and Predators match up to their previous incarnations? Well, yes and no. The Predators probably fare the better of the two. The Aliens, well there isn't a lot you can do with them, so long as they are cunning creatures with a knack for killing, that's all that is really necessary. The Predators, on the other hand, are a little more complex. These creatures are intelligent, have a high level of technology and like to hunt. To that end, they also want worthy prey, hence this pyramid.

To understand some of the basic thought process that goes into a film like this, you need to have a convincing way to combine the two. The idea has been around ever since Predator 2, when an Alien skull was glimpsed in the Predator's trophy room. The idea was developed in a long string of Dark Horse comics. The Predator's would seed a planet with Alien eggs and wait for them to gestate, and then go down for the hunt, which for the younger ones is a right of passage. That is given to us here, the history given for the purpose of the pyramid, all the way to the Predator's taking of trophies. I cannot go into too much detail for fear of spoiling these interesting plot points to those who haven;t yet seen the movie.

The fights between the creatures are great, violent affairs where the Predators have to use all their tricks to be able to survive. Of course they are armed to the teeth with a variety of weapons, shoulder mounted cannons, a variety of knives, wrist mounted blades, an extendable staff, a large glave, and nets that can be fired entrapping their target. Sounds like more than enough to deal with those pesky Aliens, but they have the numbers, plus acid blood, and of course a monstrous Queen, which sort of evens up the odds.