The worst thing about the movie was the lighting and constant rain. You never get to see the aliens, nor Chet, the lovable Alien-Predator hybrid. Chet gets his name from the Bill Paxton character of the same name — follow that? Chet is on screen several times and is nearly indistinguishable from the other Aliens. Can someone please let these two characters fight in the daylight Effects people use dark and rain to hide their mistakes. There must have been a lot of mistakes in this movie
This film also failed to follow another rule from the Predator films — the predator will only kill you if you are armed. This Predator must not have seen those films. This Predator also lacked the basic cool factor that was inherent in the earlier films. When you see the Predator strapping on his gear it should be reminiscent of Rambo getting ready to go kick butt. There was a point when one of the characters is kicking butt against some Aliens. I wanted the Predator to see the situation and show some respect to the pathetic human. The writers missed that opportunity.
A for the DVD, it is available in 4 flavors: rated, unrated, 2-disc, and 2-Pack DVDs. I do not have a Blu-ray player so I cannot comment on it. There are even more Blu-ray versions of this disc. How is a consumer to choose. On top of that Amazon is also offering it as an Unbox download for people still running Windows. The rated version is the version that was shown in the theaters. The unrated version adds just 7 minutes to the film. The 2-disc version (typically $6 more expensive) includes a “Digital Copy”. And finally the 2-pack lets you buy both AVP and AVP:R in one box for the same price as the 2-disc version.
The extras on DVD are sub-par. The recurring theme is that these guy made the movie because they love the two franchises. There are 5 different featurettes with much of the video being repeated in between featurette.
Fox does seem to have the “Digital Copy” mechanism almost right. It is not worth $6 for this feature but it is far better than the Digital Copy that came with Legend. You pop Disc 2 into your computer. There is a link for iTunes if it does not automatically load. In iTunes you just type in a code. iTunes will then unlock the digital archive and copy the movie to your library. The flaw in this model is that iTunes must phone home to the mothership to make sure your code is still valid. How long will this code be valid? Can I “download” it again? If I sell the DVD does the recipient have permission to download the digital copy? Playback on my computer and AppleTV look great. It seems kid of silly to use an entire DVD just for the digital copy.
If you are a fan of the series and do not mind a B movie slasher monster flick then this might be the rental for you. Only but this flick if you are a completist and have to have it because it exists to fill out your collection.