Saw the movie “Alien vs. Predator” yesterday. I must admit I had my doubts about this concept for a film. I don’t think Alien and Predator should be placed in the same universe in a match up.
The Alien can symbolize perfection only when compared to humans. To have a film where Aliens fight Predator is totally missing the point in my view.
The Predator aliens are a technologically more advanced race than humans and they enjoy going to different planets and hunting various violent life forms. The Predator’s hunts are like a person going on safari.
The Predators are highly intelligent while the Alien seems more like what we would consider an animal whose only goal is survival and reproduction. It is a highly adaptable creature (thus the interest by the weapons division of the corporation) adjusting to environments that would be harsh to human beings. I think you cannot put Alien and Predator in the same league.
It is obvious that the advanced Predators will (or should) be able to deal with the highly vicious and versatile Aliens far more effectively than human beings….. now about the movie.
The movie quickly introduces us to the main characters and then quickly sets up story lines that successfully connect other Alien and Predator movies to this one.
The problem is the characters are weakly drawn and the story is very thin indeed. It feels too much like a rushed superficial introduction to characters and a rushed superficial introduction to the world these characters inhabit.
I didn’t care about any of these characters, human or alien. I didn’t care about this world. With no investment in any of the major characters or this world the movie immediately began to take a nosedive in my opinion.
In this movie a company discovers a heat signature buried beneath the ice and gathers up a team of experts along with the usual armed escorts to go explore this find.
Unknown to the corporation the Predators allowed this buried Pyramid to be discovered by them hoping that they would seek to explore it thus supplying the necessary humans needed in the Alien’s metamorphosis.
All this is necessary so that the Predators can go on some sort of ‘right of passage’ hunt against the Aliens within the self-altering maze of passageways and rooms in the buried multicultural pyramid.
The explorers enter this pyramid where a chained queen alien has literally been taken ‘off ice’ (defrosted) so she can restart producing eggs that contain the young Alien creatures that will leap out and wrap themselves around the face of their victims and lay their eggs in their victims’ chests.
There is the usual mature Alien and Predator attacking and killing humans and the Aliens fight the Predators with various degrees of success and failure.
The fights between the Aliens and Predators, which give the film its name, are really not that exciting. They were kind of boring to me. I guess this is because I just don’t believe the Aliens are a significant match for the Predators with the advanced armor and weaponry that they have.
The Aliens are dangerous creatures to the Predators no doubt but not like they are to humans and so there is no suspense.
Nothing is dealt with in depth but the writers of this screenplay do develop a long storyline about the Predator hunt of Aliens here on earth that evidently has been going on for thousands of years.
Hell, the Predators even helped humanity to develop so that they could provide them with human host for the Alien.
I find the whole film tepid and uninteresting. Is it because I felt the idea of putting these two great aliens from two A grade movies together was a bad idea? I don’t know.
My favorite movie genre is science fiction yet I can only muster a C- grade for “Alien vs. Predator”. Most could wait for the DVD for this one but if you like science fiction then it is watchable but nothing special like “Predator” and “Alien” were when they came out.