"AVP bores me because it clearly doesn't care about the characters, and the one fight scene between the titular monsters isn't really what it could have been".
This is true. The characters and their development in the first film were just terrible. B-movie quality for certain. As for the creatures, Net-head was a force to be reckoned with in AVP1. Then after they tagged, there came Wolf in AVPR to pretty much destroy everything and everyone. While the fights between the creatures exclusively weren't nearly as good as they could be, the sewer fight and the predator fight inside the hospital were short, but solid efforts.
"AVPR bores me because the movie just seems to be moving from scene-to-scene with no real point other than gore, gore, gore, gore. "
I'll admit, this is exactly why I love AVPR. When you think about it, it's hard to imagine these two species running wild in a town without massive and constant carnage. The aliens biology will have them host-hunting incessantly, and Wolf is in full blow "fix-it-felix mode" here. The film has some genuinely scary moments in the midst of serious carnage too. The scene where wolf is spotted by the police officer in the woods, his eyes shining in the dark, it really felt like an old school Predator moment. But, when the guard rolled into town and was engaged by the Aliens, I was honestly grinning from ear to ear. It was probably the closest we've come to anything resembling Cameron's Aliens since 1986. The journey through the hospital, the predator fight inside the hospital, the human fight through the hospital, the power plant scene, I think AVPR actually brought quite a bit to the table. Heck-fire, it even worked Yutani into the plot before it closed.
AVPR might not have been perfect, but it had guts, in every sense of the saying. It was a more grown up approach to the subject matter, and it felt like there was an affection for the creatures there (on behalf of the directors) that wasn't present in the first film. I think the brothers really gave a dang, and aside from ditching the migraine inducing darkness from AVPR, I wouldn't hesitate to give them a shot at AVP3, should Disney allow another "R" rated AVP. That may well depend on the success of Predator 2018.