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They were Dark Horse, not DC

But that definitely played a part of it. As was the fashion at the time, once you’d tied an onion to your belt, the only way to get news and new content for beloved franchises was in printed media. And for many that meant licensed comics. You’d say to the Newsagent “gimme that comic for Five Bees”.

Dark Horse’s AvP is of course seminal, and in fact pre-dates Predator 2’s release, so depending on who was where and knew what at which time, probably does mean Dark Horse were the first to put such a crossover into practice.

And it was through those monthly comics the hype for an AvP movie began, and was maintained for a number of years.

Then we got this, which as covered played fast a loose with the rules for each species, and rather than give us thrilling fight scenes resorted making the preordained loser of each individual scrap Incompetent Boobs. And singularly failed to do Humans, Predators and Aliens any kind of cinematic justice whatsoever.

Killing off two of the three Predators (no I’m not gonna use that Japanese themed name for them because I survived the 90’s and 00’s Edge Wars, and it’s never been canon) wasn’t just a crap scene with many shades of Wonk? But it made the sole surviving Predator’s role just way, way too obvious. Which meant the subsequent fight scenes lose all tension.

In a redo of a trio or pack of Predators? Have them slowly ground down. Lots of flesh wounds, perhaps a really bleeder of a wound here and there, and no time to apply first aid. Let us see them go down bravely.

And I’ll always maintain despite it having the greater number of flaws? Requiem was the more interesting premise.

Predator and Alien movies formula: introduce a cast of distinct characters, get viewer to at least somewhat attached to them, and then pick them off one by one. In some films, characters are established as badasses, and then to their horror discover that they're not as high in the food chain as they thought, and the movie shows how they deal with it.

Those Predator and Alien movies which flopped generally did not have interesting characters. AvP had boring humans and boring Predators. AvP2 had boring humans, but at least the Predator was cool.

Predators kind of tried to follow original Predator formula, and I have to give them credit for trying. The Predator [why it was called that, when it had two Predators?] failed in many ways, but most notably by not killing of characters until the end of the movie.

I don’t disagree with your initial summary. Indeed I do entirely agree with it.

But Predator worked because of how it used that premise.

I guess it’s hard for us in the modern day to give proper credence to, but Predator first played along with the action movie trope (big muscly well armed heroes with infinite ammo), then inverted it. Where our heroes are now the ones outgunned, outsmarted and outmuscled.

That’s what’s always made it work. It gets its claws on Arnie and kicks his arse in the initial encounter. The next? Gloves and gear on in a battle of wits.

Which is where Prey really Gets It. It was never about muscle. It’s about cunning and spirit.