I wanted to see
No Country for Old Men, the newest masterpiece by the Coen Brothers. I thought it was owed to me by the person who made me sit through the boring, Pulp Fiction meets Fargo-lite
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. But no, Malaya and Caaroid wanted to see AvP2... again! They'd already seen it over Xmas, when I was in San Diego. I wasn't opposed to seeing it, but it seemed more like a DVD rental than something worth $9.75 on a Sunday night. But I bowed to the majority vote in our movie-going cabal, and AvP2 it was.
It wasn't a bad movie, on the whole. Well, let me clarify. It was an awful "movie" if judged by standards similar to those which other movies are judged by. For an action/horror movie based on a comic book and targeted to a 15 y/o fanboy mentality, it was excellent. The film did pretty much what it wanted to do, essentially providing 90 minutes of fan service. I doubt anyone not a fan of the series/genre would get much use from it, but such people aren't likely to see it in the first place.
To the scores:
Alien vs. Predator: Requiem
Script/Story: 3
Acting/Casting: 3
Action: 8
Humor: NA
Horror: 6
Combat Realism: 5
Eye Candy: 6
Fun Factor: 8
Replayability: 7
Overall: 6.5
As I alluded to in the intro, this overall score is my personal opinion on the type of movie this was. Rated just as a film, it's about a 2. Rated as an action movie, if the other Aliens and Predator movies didn't exist, it's about a 5. It's not any good, in terms of telling a story, or creating interesting characters, or presenting exciting action scenes, or doing other stuff moviegoers demand from their cinematic entertainment. It is, however, far, far better than the
first AvP film or Alien 4 or Predator 2. It's not nearly as good as Predator, and it's like a very faint reflection of Aliens. I won't compare Alien 1 or 3, since those were more about horror and suspense than out and out action.
AvP2 is basically a formulaic horror movie, with action in place of the scary stuff. There are various set ups; a father and son out hunting, winos drinking in dripping old sewers, skinny-dipping teenagers, etc, but instead of some maniac in a mask stalking and murdering them, they're set upon by the monstrous aliens who either seize them and hiss before pulping their skulls with that snapping mouth/tongue thing, or who knock them out and drag them away to serve as incubators for the alien larvae.
Adding to the fun are the interstellar Predators who pursue aliens around the universe, killing them with those shoulder guns or various spears and throwing weapons, while helpless humans run to and fro, falling victim to both sides. And that's pretty much the whole movie. The things that make this one good, or at least better, are the various scenarios. This movie doesn't mess around with just a few deaths; there are hundreds of humans killed at point blank range, chiefly by the aliens, who infest a whole town in various gruesome and imaginative ways. Some scenes of the aliens invading a hospital, and adding their own babies to the maternity ward, are pretty amusing. There's even an alien born from a predator, who is bigger and stronger than the average alien, and equipped with one of those non-functional, four-tusked vagina mouths that was actually sort of shocking when first revealed to Arnold Schwarzenegger
on his wedding night in the first Predator film, but that is now old hat.
So yeah, stuff blows up pretty good and the humans are cattle and the monsters are the real stars of the show and there's a tremendous body count, etc. Dragging the film down were the uniformly forgettable "performances" by the human actors, the lack of anything resembling a plot, and the painfully blatant way the second half of the film rips off scenes and characters from
Aliens,
a movie I hold as the best action film yet produced.
AvP2 doesn't go that way early on, but as the action starts to heat up it becomes almost an homage to
Aliens. There's a Ripley character, a Newt, a Hicks, a Hudson, and numerous scenes that are directly lifted from the earlier, vastly-superior film. This actually added to the fun, since Malaya and I spent the last 45 minutes amusing ourselves by whispering appropriate quotes from Aliens.
The characters pile into an APC with the Ripley female character driving, and start driving and crashing into other vehicles. "Ripley, you've blown the transaxle! You're just grinding metal!"
The Hudson character inexplicably freaks out and starts running and shooting at an alien as it falls down an elevator shaft. "You want some of that, motherfucker! And you? You want some too?"
The group of survivors walks through the infested hospital and finds a stairway choked by the alien beehive stuff. "It's some kind of secreted resin?" "Yea, but secreted from what?" "Nobody touch nothing!"
There were many more, including a few mentions of perimeters being secured, an obvious need to take off and nuke the entire side from orbit, the little girl Newt character making big eyed looks up at scary things, the Hudson character solemnly handing the Ripley character a machine gun, etc. I was gravely disappointed that the little girl didn't get any lines, since I was so looking forward to some updated version of, "They mostly come at night. Mostly."
I'm not sure what I think about this. I kind of feel like they raped my childhood, stealing so many scenes from a vastly superior film, but at the same time it was so obvious what they were doing that it was more homage than larceny. On the other hand, every scene in this film, reused or not, was so lacking in talented actors, dramatic tension, plot-advancing purpose, or compelling characters, that it was kind of like a school theater putting on a contemporary version of Hamlet. The overall structure is the same, and you kind of recognize what they're trying to do, but at the same time it's such chalk to cheese that you're kind of horrified by the results.
So go see it if you like the series and love gory action movies, and can turn off your brain for an hour and a half and just enjoy monsters and stuff blowing up. You'll enjoy it on that level, so long as you don't want more. Come on; it's called Alien vs. Predator. It's not as if they're pretending it's Masterpiece Theater to lure you in, unsuspecting...
Labels: movie review
