Watching this I felt like I was watching a movie for a younger audience, which is not the impression you should be getting from either franchise. The characters were bland and unmemorable, with the lead being the predictable Ripley-Lite and Lance Henriksen looking like he is just there for the paycheck. Gone are the glimpses of the Alien, now nothing is left to the imagination as a pumped up Predator smashes a Xeno through stone pillars in a sweeping cam shot. Felt like a cutscene in a beat-em-up.
With the walls moving every 15 minutes or so, you know that it is far too soon that the Aliens are fully grown and ready to fight, but it happens anyway just to get the namesake match rolling. The exposition of the Yautja's history felt lazy and thrown in, and everything seemed very dumbed down. The environments in the temple feel like sets, even though they are miles underground with only torches, everything is very lit. Which is a shame. It would be much better if the Aliens were coming out the darkness to kill, similar to the dark claustrophobia of The Descent, and being able to see the lights of the Pred's Battle armour and shoulder cannon in the pitch black would have been cool. But it was very tame. Not much if any blood, having a chestburster rip through your ribcage made the characters look like they had bad ingestion rather than Kane-style gasps and screams.
It was an interesting idea to have an Alien with a recognisable injury to make things more personal, and I did like Grid a bit.
The CG Queen battle at the end was a bit too Jurassic Park. Yes, she is a threat, but she seems much bigger and now can charge through pretty much anything. This Queen would have just rushed smacked into Ripley's powerloader and thrown it right against the opposite wall.
The ending where the Predalien chestburster pops out to 'DUN-DUN-DUN' had me rolling my eyes and made me shrink at the possibility of more Vs movies to come.
I know this is regarded as canon, but in my world this sits alongside the 2nd as two very well financed fan fiction movies.