Review: Alien vs Predator
"Whoeven wins... We lose."
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Rating: 4 / 10
Hello.
WEAK WEAK WEAK. Come ooon! We've all seen Alien movies, we've all seen Predator movies! WE WERE EXPECTING A LOT BETTER THAN THAT!
One of the great things about the Alien series is that it hadn't been getting any worse. One of the few examples of 'sequel after sequel' that was never disappointing.
Predator, on the other hand, has had two goes at it and got the second one pretty badly wrong. However, the first one was a hum-dinger and given that the script for Alien vs Predator was written before the second Predator film was even made, there was reason to be hopeful!
.. and there's reason to want your money back.
Soooo muuuccch stoooorryyyy .. What is it that film-school beginners are taught? Show the story, don't tell it? Nothing really happens in this film! It's basically a 90 minute attempt to slowly and painfully lay the groundwork for the inevitable sequel. Actually, that's another thing that can be said for the previous Alien films, and the first Predator .. They didn't leave room for a sequel, which made the sequels much more interesting.
The movie opens with a couple of very standard character introductions, doing the usual thing .. you know the drill, showing the expertise of the characters, giving you some insight into how they might be important later on, and showing of course that by an amazing coincidence all their various charities or whatnot (one is referred to simply as "your foundation"!) are in desperate need of money!
However - Only two of these introductions are actually shown, giving us a grand total of 2 characters .. well, 2.5 actually. It seems they got bored with this (very boring) opening and just didn't bother with anybody who would later feature in the film. We get basically no background at all on any other character in the film.
So they're offered money by the henchman and part-time voiceover guy for a large corporation which will clearly stop at nothing to show us, the audience, just how big and powerful and big it is. And powerful.
If my flow's a little off it's because I'm watching a naked woman being body-painted on television. This is a great, great country..
Err, so anyhow ..So we've got a team together, out of thin air mostly, and what's it all for? Well it turns out this big corporation has a satellite dedicated purely to taking pictures of Antarctica, as you do, and it accidentally found the dawn of human civilisation. Probably. You can never really be sure until you dig the 2000 feet down and check for yourself, can you?
Bugger me, somebody already dug down there! Somebody with INCREDIBLY ADVANCED THERMAL DRILLING EQUIPMENT LIKE NOTHING FOUND ON THIS EARTH FIRED APPARENTLY FROM AN INCREDIBLE HIGH ALTITUDE HELLO IS ANYBODY GETTING ANY CLUES YET CAUSE NOBODY IN THE FILM DID.
Haha, they painted a daffodil on her breast, with her nipple as the yellow bit .. Art.
Then we get to the real storytelling. Like, actual telling. It's basically just one guy theorising out loud for the rest of the film so that you know what's going on .. With, of course, occasional cameos by aliens and/or predators, who in fact don't really have all that much to do with each other, and most of it is all in weak CG anyway.
The Predators come off as pretty pathetic, which makes no sense whatsoever .. Worse, though, is that they also come off as helpful, sympathetic, and willing to take sides with humans for no reason at all.
There is very little fighting between aliens and predators, and what there is of it is very strange, makes almost no sense, occurs only toward the end of the movie, and is drawn out so preposterously that the entire premise of the movie actually seems unlikely, if not impossible.
I've actually tried not to mention anything here that might be a spoiler .. I realise I've said a bit about what happens, but it really isn't going to change the experience for you. If you wanted to see this film, you've probably seen it already .. and I can't imagine you're too impressed. If you haven't seen it, well .. Don't pay money to see it. Download it! The sound is crap anyway, so you're not missing anything there .. and the film is ridiculously dark with excessive "fast-cutting" and shaking closeups throughout all the interesting bits .. You don't see a bloody thing anyway.
The sequel could be alright, though.
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