Alien Vs. Predator
by savage on Tuesday 17 August 2004
The premise of this film is to showcase the greatest hunters in the universe verses the most lethal prey. Both Aliens and Predator each come from their own movie lines and come together to hunt each other for the first time on screen.
The concept of an Aliens/Predator cross over has been going on pretty much since the movies first came out. In Predator 2 the audience gets to see an Alien skull on the wall implying that the two races are known to each other. Dark Horse comics have been publishing Aliens and Predator and even Alien Vs Predator comics for many years now. There have even been video games depicting the two great sci-fi/horror creature duking it out. So, compared to comics and video games, how does a major motion picture compare? Let's find out:
General Premise: The Predator race has a sort of coming of age moment in their lives where they either kill or be killed by Aliens, vicious, powerful and slimy monsters who have acid for blood. So, theoretically, the Predator can't be killed by anything shy of awesome or Seppuku with nuclear bombs. The Aliens can pretty much kill anything and so do. In other words:
Predator = Awesome killing machine
Alien = Awesome killing machine
So Aliens Vs Predator should = Totally Awesome killing with machines (or something like that). Unfortunately, it ends up being more akin to, "Oh... well, there was one awesome moment... and, umm... they almost succeed in doing a really cool moment from the comics... but they screwed it up."
The Predators only had one really awesome moment, several really cool moments and a lot of ok moments. The Aliens had maybe one or two slightly freaky moment and several scratch, claw, bite, drip acid blood, die, spill acid blood moments.
Generally speaking the premise worked, though way too much time was spent setting it up. Some of the attempts at being clever became annoying after awhile, and the chance for a really great moment from the comics was ruined in such a way that it didn't even make sense to do so in the film. Why they choose to alter the moment, I just don't get. Nothing in the film indicated that it would make sense to do it that way. Everything in the film before there said to do it one way! What a waste of a great moment.
On the plus side, long time awesome Alien movie actor Lance Henriksen played, "Charles Bishop Weyland" in the film. Henriksen played, "Bishop" in Aliens and, "Bishop 2" in Alien 3.
In the end this film was disappointing. Fans of the Alien and Predator movies have been waiting for at least 14 years (since Predator 2 where the alien skull was seen in the Predator ship) for this movie to be made and they give them only slightly more action then the last Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie. If you're jonesin' to see either Aliens or the Predator again, see the film. If you're looking for a really cool story or anything really close to awesome, look elsewhere. They dropped the ball in this one, completely missing the chance to show how incredibly awesome the Predator character is suppose to be and how terrifyingly lethal the Alien is. This film gets a 4/10. They did end the movie with possible sequel opportunities so they could have a chance to make a better film, but they only way a sequel could come from that ending is if the same less-than-awesome Predators where in it, and if that happened, well... let's put it this way, I won't be waiting in line for the matinee showing at the discount theater for that one.
- Savage
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