Actually it wasn't that bad. I certainly expected worse, which is likely a large part of the reason I didn't dislike it. The advance sneak reviews were mostly negative, FOX kept it from being seen in advance by the critics, and now that it's out most of them have not bothered to review it. There are only 44 reviews on RT now, of which 38 are negative. 14% positive isn't historically bad; hell, it's not even the worst this weekend, (hello Yu-Gi-Oh at 0/39) but it's certainly not good.

This review has very minimal spoilers about the plot, not that there's really a whole lot of plot anyway, and most of what there is is shown in the trailers.

Here's my quick categorized score, before I get into more discussion of the movie and what critics hated about it. And no, the fact that most of my review focuses on things that weren't as bad as expected isn't a real good sign.

Alien vs. Predator
Script/Story: 3
Acting/Casting: 3
Action: 6
Horror: 2 (The biggest scare was from a penguin.)
Eye Candy: 6
Fun Factor: 4
Replayability: 5
Overall: 5.5

I'm really not sure why I didn't score it worse, since as I think back, I can't remember a single thing that I thought was really good. There are a few cool things, mostly in the whaling village set design, and I liked some of the grand finale fight sequence, but that's about it. There's not one line of dialogue that's memorable (in a good way), none of the characters of any species are interesting, and at no point in the film did I feel like rooting for any of the three sides to win or loose.

On the other hand, nothing stands out as wretchedly awful, and my 5.5 score for AVP makes me realize that I'm more swung by extremes than by steady mediocrity. Compare this review to another recent Sci-Fi extravaganza, The Chronicles of Riddick. I gave that film a 3.5 overall, but I can remember at least 10 cool things in the movie, and the gorgeous, metallic-toned visuals are very memorable. I'd watch it again with judicious use of the fast forward button, while I can't see sitting through any portion of AVP again.  (With the possible exception of the final battle with the last alien, which had a couple of cool shots.)

Twinned with the low expectations, the missed opportunities come into play as well. Riddick could have been so much better, so I disliked it for failing with potential. Another movie I thought of was Underworld, which wasn't any good, (I gave it a 4/.) but like Riddick, Underworld had the potential to be a really good movie, with just a few minor plot, character, and editing changes. AVP wasn't any good, but it was as good as it could have been without totally rewriting the very mediocre plot and concept.

I suppose I mostly have Predator 2 and Aliens 3-4 to blame for this. Predator 2 less so, since I only saw that once, in theaters, and don't remember much about it, other than that I was very disappointed and thought it was about 1/10th as good as the original Predator (which is on cable at least once a day, while I've never ever seen Predator 2 on TV at any time.)  Aliens 3 and 4 though, came after the brilliant Aliens 2 and were so bad that they sucked every bit of life out of that franchise.

My point is that since the last movie(s) in each series were crap, they contributed to my low expectations for AVP. And when it wasn't any good, but at least wasn't as bad as Alien 3 or 4, I left somewhat satisfied. If I think about how great a movie it could have been, without the ridiculous "pyramid on Antarctica" plot, I get a bit annoyed. Imagine an AVP set in space, in the future, with a human colony being preyed upon by Predators... Predators who are as hardcore as the one was in the first Predator movie, who hunt and kill and trophy humans at will. Then you've got Aliens as well, from a ship that crashes, or a remote outpost that is overrun... whatever. Predators start hunting both, Aliens start ransacking the humans and going after the Predators as well, and the humans are not just a bunch of idiot scientists and ineffective mercs, as they were in AVP, but are real marines, ready and able to fight. I'm sure that at least one of the AVP video games and/or comic books has had this exact plot, but hey, if it works, why not use it? All of the successful comic book movies (X-men, Spiderman, Batman) have basically been movie versions of some of the core stories of those characters, and it certainly hasn't hurt their popularity. Why buy a successful property like AVP and then rewrite every bit of it in such stupid fashion?

So AVP wasn't any good, but my expectations were so muted by the last few movies in each series, all the other crappy action movies I've seen this summer, bad reviews for AVP, and my own misgivings about the relatively idiotic plot that when it wasn't a complete disaster, I was impressed. And no, approving of a movie when it's not as awful as I thought it would be is no way to go through life, but it beats the twin alternatives of: 1) constant crushing disappointment, or 2) never paying money to see a movie again.

So what did the critics so dislike about it? One constant theme is the watered-down violence in AVP. All 4 Alien movies and both Predator movies were hard R's, with tons of violence, cruelty, great bloody special effects, foul language, and all the other good stuff we've come to expect from action/horror movies. AVP was going to be just like the others, but at some point pinhead studio weasels got the idea that it should be watered down to a PG-13. This caused problems, as you might imagine. Here's a quote from the AVP review on TheMovieBoy.com, since quoting is easier than typing it all out myself, especially on a night when neither my brain nor my fingers are working especially well:

[AVP] has been rendered impotent by the insane demands of a studio obsessed with the PG-13 rating. It is difficult to say whether the film would have been worthwhile even with the stomach-churning, blood-curdling material intact, but having it could have only helped. Audiences going to see "Alien Vs. Predator" want—no, expect—to be treated to violent, graphic death scenes and gore galore. What they will receive is an attractive but empty horror-lite version, suitable for pre-teens, that cuts away from the violence every time it is about to take place...

The plot of "Alien Vs. Predator" is preposterous and its characters stock figures from the official handbook of one-dimensional cliches, but in an icky sci-fi thriller such problems can be easily overlooked if said film is genuinely effective from a visceral standpoint. PG-13 horror can achieve spine-tingling chills—look no further than 1999's "The Sixth Sense," 2001's "The Others," 2002's "Signs," and 2002's "The Ring." What is offensive about this same rating being given to "Alien Vs. Predator" is that director Anderson has been forced to compromise not only his vision, but squander the talents of his technical crew. The editing by Alexander Berner (2002's "Resident Evil") is a hack job, with so much footage cut out of the action sequences that they become murky and nearly incomprehensible. The scares are non-existent, their attempts more of the "false-jump" variety (none of which work) than from a building of tension. The deaths, as mentioned, are plentiful but mostly off-camera, making the picture a slasher film without the slashing. The movie is also a horror film without a true sense of requisite uneasiness.

I don't think the harder violence would have made it an appreciably better film, but as this guy says, it couldn't have hurt.  The plot wouldn't have been any better, and the fight scenes would still have been silly, and the deaths would still have been telegraphed and useless, but at least we'd have gotten to see them. Instead there are a lot of shots of Predators with big knives preparing to gut someone... and then a cut to a rock with a splash of blood. Or an alien leaping onto someone... and then a long shot of a vanishing shadow while someone screams in pain.

The thing I found interesting about it is what they can and can't show. There was almost no human blood at all, or onscreen human suffering. People are allowed to scream horribly if you don't show it, and people are allowed to bleed if you don't see the blood coming out of them graphically. But AVP had by far the least visible red blood of any movie I've ever seen, considering the body count. When the Predators were hurt they bled their glow green stuff copiously, and injured aliens gushed acid everywhere, but humans? No sign of it.

Here are some other general comments, mostly on things I liked:

The Predators: I didn't think their look was bad, either in styling or costume or makeup. Malaya thought it was silly that they were so bulked up, like pro wrestlers, but I didn't notice/mind. Their special effects are much improved, and their personal cloaking devices were very cool to watch in action. Of course they never used them when they needed them, and you'd think that Aliens, which apparently live in total darkness most of the time, could detect invisible Predators by their heat or scent or something. The Predators also had very cool helmet vision tricks this time around, with their sort of CAT-scan ability to see moving aliens inside of a body, and to see aliens moving around in the darkness.

The Predator weaponry was unimpressive though. Their guns didn't do anything we didn't see in Predator 1, and they didn't seem very suited to fighting Aliens anyway; one huge fireball every few seconds isn't exactly what you need to stop the fast-moving, all-terrain aliens anyway. As for their bladed weapons, they were cool, in a 13 y/o boy sort of way, but how about some function over fashion? Must every weapon telescope out like a switchblade? How about some fabric armor that alien blood would splash off of? As it was any alien could just bite its own finger off and wave that around to win every close range fight. That goes for the weapons too; if you're fighting monsters that have blood that dissolves metal, why the hell are you using it? Get some polycarbon materials that are acid proof, coat your weapons with whatever the inside of aliens are made of, or at least bring a bunch of spare blades in a backpack so you can change the melted ones out.

Besides their other problems, the Predators fought like pussies, were slow when they needed to hurry, and couldn't do much other than kill easily-killed humans. Where was their stealth and agility? Where were their sneak attacks against unsuspecting aliens?

The Aliens: These were better-realized than the Predators, if only thanks to the continuing advances in computer graphics.  They moved great, the CG ones were basically indistinguishable from the occasional close up uses of man-in-suit, and while a lot of that is thanks to the darkness and shadows they always traveled in, that's part of the game. The Alien queen was very well done, though the whole "why chain a monster up in something it can easily melt through" theory of Predator weapons applies here as well. When she was loose and running around though (if this is a spoiler, you need to see more movies, since of course she was going to get loose; you knew that from the moment you saw her in chains).

The aliens are damn good fighters too, ruthless towards the predators and humans, and I had no real complaints about their look or actions in battle. Their life cycle was ridiculous though.  They now go from implantation to chest-buster in about ten minutes, and they go from toothy tadpole to full grown killing machine in about ten more minutes, all without eating anything. How do they get so big so fast? Where does the mass come from? It's even worse for the queen, since she apparently lays dozens of eggs every time they thaw her out. How can she lay dozens and dozens of pumpkin-sized eggs without any food in just minutes?

The Humans: Ugh, I can't say anymore. Not one of them was interesting or sympathetic at all, and the fact that 90% of them died within the first ten minutes of entering the pyramid was lamented by no one.  Their weapons were useless, none of them put up even a half-decent fight, and if they'd been any more incompetent and ineffectual I'd have wished for Lieutenant Gorman to show up and start giving orders.

The Pyramid: Ridiculous if you think about it, with the "elements of Aztec, Mayan, and Egyptian architecture" design, the ubiquitous, easily-deciphered hieroglyphics that told the humans everything they needed to know about the backstory, and the video game-esque "it all changes every 10 minutes" design. But in the movie it worked well enough, and I guess it looked okay. By far the best set was the frozen whaling village on the surface, though I have to wonder where the last 99 years of snow went, since nothing there was beneath more than the few inches of powder we saw falling during the beginning of the movie.  The single best shot in the movie, for me at least, was their early look at the whaling village, provided by an incredibly bright flare descending over it from a conveniently-high bluff (why didn't they just sail into the harbor where the whalers did, way back when?)

Plot holes and other dumb stuff. Spoilers below:

 ¤ If the Predators do this every century, what did they do in 1804 when no one was there? 1704? 1604? Etc, all the way back to what, 12004BC, which was about the last time Antarctica might not have been entirely covered in ice.

 ¤ Where were the bodies that the aliens grew in back in 1904? There were bodies from prehistory, still preserved by the cold, apparently, but where were the whalers?

 ¤ Tunnel questions: 

• Where did the hole in the ice go in 1904, when the whalers went down there? Did the Predators come back and fill it up with ice afterwards?  People showed would have showed up at the whaling compound a year or six months later to pick up the rendered whale carcasses, so it's not like the hole had 100 years to fill with snow (not that it could have anyway, not in such a short time).
• Why were there grooves on the hole going down, when it was melted from space by a laser?
• How did the hole stop exactly at the base of the pyramid and not continue down into the rock below?
• Where did the millions of gallons of melt water go from 2000 feet of ice?
• Why is the ice above the pyramid shaped like the inside of a cave, when it would have completely entombed the structure if it's supposed to be millennia of snowfall?  And if the snow above it was melted by the power plant inside the pyramid heating up, where did the melt water go, either now or 100 years ago?

 ¤ Why would the Predators use a time based on earth's revolution around the sun? In the pyramid, maybe, but on their ships, to return every 100 years?

 ¤ What happened during the past battles in the pyramid? It was never blown up, so obviously the Predators won, but the alien queen never had her minions free her before? Where were the acid holes from the alien fatalities?

 ¤ There was a cool bone room, but how? Who put the bones there? How did their flesh rot away when the last group of 10,000+ year old sacrifices were still perfectly-preserved by the cold in the sacrificial chamber?

 ¤ Why wasn't the whaling village buried under 100 feet of snow? 

 ¤ Why the hell do the Predators leave their three guns so far down below the surface? Sure, getting there in time is part of their challenge, but how does 100+ year old technology still work with the rest of their gear? Imagine a soldier today picking up some musket; he might shoot it once, but modern bullets might as well be nails for all the good they'd do him in a gun that old.  And why are the locks on the old guns done in the Mayan calendar, with high tech locks beneath them? Weren't the Predators worried about the human natives getting into their stash? Is learning enough ancient human hieroglyphics to input the correct date part of Predator basic training?

I could go on and on with the plot holes and silly stuff, but that's sort of beside the point. You go in knowing the plot will be entirely idiotic, and you've just got to accept that, and save any such objections for later.

So no, it's not a good movie, and no I can't really recommend it, but it's not as bad as I thought, and it's better more enjoyable than a lot of the other action movies I've seen this summer.

Pre Movie Discussion

July 16, 2002

They are really going to make the Alien vs. Predator movie, it appears.  This has been a rumored project forever, but I never thought it would actually happen, given how much money it would require, and how cheesy the idea sounds.  I think we have Spider-Man and Xmen to blame for this; since now any comic book style movie with lots of action is getting the green light.  There will be about 5 massive bombs next year with every obscure comic book getting a movie, and the studios will go chasing off after some new trend.

The thing that's interesting about Aliens, and the Predator, are that they are unknown outside creatures.  The enemy, powerful and mysterious.  The movies they've made of them (4 Aliens and 2 Predators, of which only the first half in each series were any good) were told through the eyes of the humans, trying to deal with the powerful monsters.  I can't see how a movie could be based on just the monsters and be anything more than mindless battle scenes.  That works very well in a video game, which is what Alien vs. Predator is, but in a film?  It's not as if video games made into movies have anything other than a disastrous history.  The guy they've got directing this one was the guy who did the Resident Evil movie.  Which was horrible and flopped to less than $40m.  So expect more of the same, IMHO.

And yes, despite all my better judgment, I still harbor a budding urge to see it.

November 3, 2003

We also got to see the trailer for Aliens vs. Predator before the movie, and it's visually and aurally interesting, and it's a teaser for a movie that's not due until next August, but come on guys, don't you have any footage at all? The whole trailer is like 30 seconds, and it's nothing but super closeups of parts of aliens and parts of the Predator mask, while the scary grumbling alien and predator type sound effects play in the background, with an ending scene of a small ship crashing into a planet's (earth's?) atmosphere, ala the opening shot of Predator.  The obvious implication is that a Predator is coming to earth, so obviously there's a nest of aliens somewhere on earth, in what I assume is the far future, sometime after or concurrent with the events in Aliens 4, since they went to all the trouble of cloning Ripley and the alien queen from the DNA found in the molten metal she died in at the end of Alien 3.

Of course that was entirely ludicrous, as if DNA would some how come up with a human with a bit of Alien in her, who was born impregnated with an Alien that the scientists could remove, and who was born already about 40 years old, and who had some vague memories of her past battles with the aliens. Yes, Aliens 4 was about the stupidest movie script ever written.

The AvP trailer isn't bad, even though it lacks any footage of the movie whatsoever, aside from the space ship shot at the very end.  It's moody and atmospheric and evocative and all that, and probably cost about $75 to produce, which I'm sure was another point in its favor to the studio.  I can't possibly believe that it could be a decent movie, but how much worse could it be than recent garbage such as Underworld or Freddy vs. Jason? Both of which I paid good money to see, I must admit.

And true, evaluating upcoming films on an "it can't be entirely awful, can it?" basis isn't a real vote of confidence, but it's all I have at this point.  Especially since I'm surely going to be seeing AvP, since Malaya raised her fists and exclaimed, "Yes!" when the trailer title and movie release date came up.  I'm not sure why, but she's been waiting about 5 years for that movie, since the first rumors about it appeared, so my fate is thusly sealed.

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