Killing just for the fun of it, as the Predators do, is no longer considered socially acceptable in most circles. We farm our food, and soon we'll manufacture it. Even today, humans (who are a long way from being able to make sporting trips to other star systems) don't rely on predation much.

They then harvest this crop of useful compounds quickly, a tactic that can power an active life style.īut of course, for an intelligent species with technology capable of interstellar travel, predation is oh-so Stone Age. Predation is an economic device: carnivores leave it to plants or plant eaters to slowly build up energy-rich molecules from sunlight or some other source. So you can expect that there will be predators. Darwinian competition will be their lot, as well as ours. After all, any biology out there will exist in a landscape of finite resources. We still can't say what real aliens are like, of course, but science can provide some useful insights. The tracts of space, in this view, are akin to the unknown seas on medieval maps - 'here be monsters' - vast, forbidding habitats that lap the shores of the civilized world, and are stuffed with dangerous creatures. Of course, films like this suggest that the Galaxy is largely populated by highly aggressive species, ones whose interest in Earth might extend no farther than using it now and again as a hunting lodge. It has the fascination of feeding time in the Big Cat cage. And even though the first part of the film, in which the humans work their way into Earth's nether regions to explore and discover, is rather more interesting than the stochastic brutishness that follows, you've got to admit that it's not every day that you watch a litter of non-carbon based life forms (the Aliens) making a sincere effort to dine on a bunch of grunting hulks from another world (the Predators).

This really is a comic book, a video game, and the extraterrestrial equivalent of a mano-a-mano contest of strength, wits, and spring-loaded weapons.

Alien vs predator full movie