Paul W.S. Anderson is the kind of writer / director that makes you believe that anyone can break into movies. AvP is so paint by numbers that upon viewing one second of the start of a scene, the whole scene can be predicted. Right down to the startlingly stupid chest-busting “shock” ending. This movie looks like it was written by 13- year old fans that think that pitting aliens against predators is reason enough to green-light this turkey.

And is it just me, or do CG aliens seems much less scary than puppets and people in suits? Talking about the aforementioned “Underworld”, one of the few things I liked in that was the mechanical suits that were the werewolves. They looked so much better than a CG werewolf such as was in “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”.

And so where to go with AvP? Aliens are hive-like creatures, little more than clever wasps, and so are all similar and all lacking of individual personalities. But as you so rightly point out, what about the predators? In this film they are devoid of individualism, but don’t have to be. Yet I suspect it is too much for a film such as AvP to expand the predators in the direction you suggest of having a cowardly predator. A meditation on the cruelties of war isn’t what it can ever be, but maybe some more little touches of individualism would at least let the audience know which predator is which, and more importantly give the audience some affinity for them. As it is they are even less memorable than the humans, which is a difficult feat indeed.

I think the most improvements could be made in the ridiculous back story. Predators that have a city under the ice built by humans long ago for them to do initiation rituals in, is an intriguing idea. But why do they need to trick humans to go there, when they can pick up a few cattle / humans along the way if they need to. One of the things I never liked in the Predator movies is that they rarely fought fairly in one-on-one fights. Often it was sniping from the bushes (or city buildings) against people who didn’t even know what they were fighting against. It seemed more like modern day duck hunters than Masai youths fighting lions with spears.

I’d keep the ancient Aztec civilization alive and flourishing in a kind of “Island at the Bottom of the World” scenario. They’ve been brought there by the predators long ago from the original civilization to stock the predator’s private hunting grounds. The Aztec’s violent civilization and rituals suits the predators, and it is kept self-contained under the ice. No Aztecs can ever escape the frozen wasteland outside. They even tend to the needs of the captive queen, for she is a kind of earth-bound god. But before the predator (yes, singular like the title suggests) has arrived for its initiation ritual our heroes/victims (maybe they’re illegally drilling for oil in Antarctica) stumble upon it. It is a time of celebration and festivity, and the modern day humans feel that life is pretty good here. But actually it is the festival before the predator arrives, the seven sacrifices have already been made to the alien eggs days before, and the hunt is about to begin. Suddenly our hapless heroes find themselves included on the guest list/menu for the predator’s party, and hilarity ensues within the pyramid along whatever similar lines one can imagine. I don’t want to go too far into rewriting the film, so I’ll leave it at that.

The greater time at the start for the humans would, I hope, give more opportunity for the audience to care for the characters. Also having only one predator would put more focus on it, rather than splitting the screen time between 3, 2 of which are to die quickly anyway. We could see this predator being much trickier, as it is supposed to battle 7 aliens single-handedly. Yet I’d have to say almost anything could be better than the current setup of AvP.