Look, we know… You should know that we know - at least we hope you know we know. Odds-on Alien vs. Predator: Requiem is going to be complete and utter rubbish.

However, we do still hold out vain hope for the Alien franchise. The plots may still be ludicrous, motivations half-arsed and the acting risible, but when you’re dealing with imagery that cool you’re always going to get glimmers of what has been and what could be again.

Regardless of all my rantings, it’ll be complete rubbish with Aliens and Predators in it - and that can’t be all bad, surely?

Then there’s this: a whole pile of pictures that appeared on Yahoo movies today.  One allegedly gives us a glimpse of the Predator homeworld. Pretty neat, I s’pose – in a kinda dodgy looking sub-Matrix kinda style. More interesting though, if you flick through the gallery, is the hybrid ‘PredAlien’ – yep, you got it, no explanation needed.

The flipside of these pictures, for purists, is that they serve as proof of the pigs-ear they’ve managed to make of both these iconic concepts. Sadly, the last three visits to the Alien well have had neither the serious subtext and dissertation-spawning portentousness of the original Alien movies (meaning the first two) NOR the gonzo guns-and-scrapping fun of the first two Predator efforts. Instead, they’ve ended up as rather lame, inane efforts all-round; littered with paper-thin plots, fanboy-pleasing moments and little else.

Paul W.S. Anderson was never going to produce anything better than he managed with AvP. Basically he makes films for 15 year olds - not something Ridley Scott, James Cameron or even David Fincher and J-P Jeunnet are particularly noted for – and that’s what we got, a film for 15 year olds. 15 year olds with low standards. But, with him off re-making Death Race 2000 (with that thesp-extraordinaire Jason Statham) – and instead of trying to attract a quality director with a quality script - now they’ ve passed the franchise on to the Brothers Strause. You’d be forgiven for not knowing these guys; they’re visual effect dudes (with ‘classics’ like 300, Fantastic 4, The Fog and Aeon Flux on their CVs) whose current top directing credit is for a Nickelback video. Yeah, nice one. Cheers. I can see that things are gonna work out really well.

Of course, you don’t just have to take my opinion on this; you can check back to Den Of Geek next week to hear the opinions of Alien creator Dan O’Bannon on how he sees the development of his greatest creation to date.