The lead protagonist is a woman by the name of Alexa Woods, portayed by Sanaa Lathan (Blade, Contagion) who was clearly meant to be a modern day Ripley, and catastrophically failed at doing so. Honestly I think the film works as an archetypal film in the realm of both Alien and Predator, just not a sequel or prequel to either.

AVP was complicated as a stand alone, and disastrous when compared to anything else in the franchise except perhaps its sequel Requiem (and maybe Predator 2 or Alien3). And whilst it worked to some degree (my grandma liked it) it wasn't enough of a step in either direction. AVP on the other hand used references to the older films, but then completely threw the canon out the window and went for a larger fanbase. Where Predators was a film that you didn't need to have watched all the others in order to follow, it was still fundamentally a Predator film, aimed at the Predator-loving market. Ultimately it's downfall came from some poor dialogue, and trying to reach a larger audience. Not because it was good, just because it was panned so fucking hard by critics! I think this is mostly due to the fact that it was being compared to both the Alien and Predator series, which is fair enough, but it was never going to be what either of those films was. I can honestly say, that this is one of the most under-rated films of 2004. Rating: PG-13 (Language|Horror Images|Slime and Gore|Violence) Making matters worse, another extraterrestrial species, known as Predators, arrive to hunt the other aliens, with the humans caught in the middle of the conflict. Led by a tough guide, Alexa Woods (Sanaa Lathan), Weyland and his team uncover a pyramid, but they also find malevolent parasitic aliens. When the wealthy and ambitious Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen) funds an expedition to Antarctica, he hopes to find a mysterious source of heat that has been detected.

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