Either that, or proof he-s just played too many platform games. It's tempting to see Anderson's choice of setting - a gargantuan, Indiana Jones-style box of tricks, complete with sliding walls, trapdoors and shifting blocks - as an attempt to distract us from the dearth of humanity. Sanaa Lathan's plucky guide is nothing more than a shrug-worthy Ripley-lite, Lance Henriksen's Company-man Weyland only serves as an overstretched plot-umbilical to the other Aliens, and poor Ewen Bremner's stumbly science-bod is a mere patsy for a string of sick jokes. Plus, those films offered a group dynamic which amped the suspense as the extraterrestrial stalkers picked their prey off one by one.īut Anderson is a director in a perpetual state of rush, so blindly keen to shove his early-teen audience into the front row of this intergalactic royal rumble that he's forgotten the dramatic importance of building anticipation - and along the way denied us the small luxury of any characters.

Problem is, the originals were savvy enough to make sure their human element was something we could latch onto, whether it was watching an Arnie-at-his-peak outgunned and outmuscled by a mostly unseen supernatural foe, or chewing fingernails for Ripley as her destiny became agonisingly entwined with that of her nightmarish nemeses. Predator comic book: Predators breed Aliens in order to hunt them, then some unwitting humans get stuck in the middle. And Anderson's been smart enough to keep the cool species-pairing concept first suggested by the Alien Vs. Naturally, for those who still have a bit of freshly pubescent boy, or even tomboy, in us (so to speak), there is a twinge of a thrill at the prospect of seeing the rastaphibian hunters of the Predator movies getting scrap-happy with H R Giger's acid-drooling xenomorphs. Or, at least, an audience which doesn't entirely consist of freshly pubescent boys. Ridley Scott's chilling first instalment intoned, 'In space, no-one can hear you scream' - surely the most alluring horror tag ever - while James Cameron's action-classic sequel offered the no-mess, gravelly bark of 'This time it's war.' Then Fincher's grim, part three mis-step delivered the brutal cough of 'The bitch is back', with Jeunet's sloppy Resurrection apologetically muttering, 'Witness the resurrection.' Consider, then, the strap for Paul W S Anderson's kinda-prequel: 'Whoever wins - we lose.' Yes, you guessed it, the 'we' here refers to the audience. Few franchises boast taglines so indicative as those of the Alien saga.

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