Talk us through itA Weyland Co. satellite picks up thermal readings on the remote island of Bouvetøya in the Antarctic Ocean. Company scientists determine the reading is from a pyramid buried under 2,000 feet of ice. Pretty quickly company founder and chairman Charles Weyland puts together a mixed team of experts in various disciplines and heads on down to the ice to check out the archaeological find of the century, assuming that face on Mars isn’t the real deal. No thought is given to why thermal imaging of the pyramid should suddenly be occuring in the first of a number of issues the movie has. Our intrepid crew discover that someone or something has bored a hole down to the pyramid, but, undeterred, head underground to shed some modern science on an artefact that displays characteristics of Aztec, Egyptian, and Cambodian cultures. This could well be the first civilisation, so who cares who bored the odd hole here or there really. Once inside the pyramid our team trip a device that re-animates a Queen Xenomorph and before you can scream out “Get away from her, you bitch!” they are knee deep in Aliens. And if that isn’t problematic enough, three Predators head on down to Earth for the ultimate 21st kegger coming of age party. It’s Aliens versus Predators, with the odd human making up the meat in the sandwich. Let’s rock and roll!
Review“They're not hunting us. We're in the middle of a war.” – LexIn 1997, the last of the Alien franchise movies by and largely failed at the box office leading Fox Studio to shelf plans for further movies based around one of their core concepts. In 2004 they brought director Anderson on board to make the “Alien” movie they had always wanted, and a whole new generation of horror fans were introduced to the elder psycho gods. Fans of the original films were not impressed, but with a new movie imminent in 2007 I thought it was time to dust this bad boy off and have a look with hindsight. We didn’t get the film we wanted (PG13 wtf?), but is the movie as bad as horror genre fans make out? The answer is yes and no. Okay let’s get a few of the criticisms of this film out of the way first, before digging into the meat of the matter. One of the major problems fans have with this movie is the gestation period of the “chest-bursters” being hours and not days, as the preceding movies would indicate. Well aren’t we all just geeks, it’s an action-orientated movie, not rocket science! Who cares, we want Aliens, we want Predators, let the battle commence, and this sort of thing should be left to the Trekkies of the world and not horror fans. Bogus point by the way never in the franchise is it made absolutely clear the Xenomorphs need x amount of time to gestate. Point me to the logic pertaining to this in Alien mythology and I’ll eat my hat. A second point of order is usually raised around Lex joining the surviving Predator in battling the Alien hordes; apparently this shouldn’t happen. Says who? The novels based around the Predator franchise certainly build on the idea that a human can join the Yautja pack, so why can’t a movie also follow the same storyline? If we wanted to be totally pedantic we could voice disagreement about the Alien and Predator universes co-existing; certainly the “space jockey” from the original Alien is not a Predator. In the wash-up, this is a fictional story – who cares about some people’s ideas in regards to what should or shouldn’t happen? I would suggest those people stick to arguing whether or not Star Trek Episode 3 Season 5 covers the Federation versus Klingon Empire war factually. The rest of us are sitting down to catch ALIENS vs PREDATORS, and don’t much care for nit picking. Director Anderson was on a hiding to nothing with this movie from the word go. He had to incorporate everything that fans expected from the two franchises, while still putting together a new experience. The Alien bases are fully covered; we get face huggers, chest-bursters, warrior drones, and a Queen. You really can’t ask for that much more from an Alien movie, though I was somewhat disappointed in Anderson not introducing a new facet to the Alien behaviour or type. In Predator terms, well they’re tough mofos and the full arsenal of Yautja weaponry are brought into play during the course of the movie. 
For no apparent reason Anderson throws in a couple of nods to Cameron’s Aliens – the opening satellite scene for example – but doesn’t reference the original movie. This was a mistake, one feels, as I certainly didn’t need reminding that AVP is the idiot cousin of the franchise. There’s no doubt that Anderson can direct, but he just never seems to get it totally right for one reason or another. This time round we get some well-constructed frames, some cool slow mo – loved the face hugger scene – but overall nothing to really hang our hats on with the all out wow factor coming into play. Where the movie goes slightly off the rails is in the actual meshing of the two protagonists; there’s not enough combat between the species, the Predators go down way to easily, and there’s all these humans cluttering up what was advertised as an all-out war. The flashback to Predators battling swarms of Aliens on some forgotten pyramid was about the coolest thing going for the movie, with the live action stuff being pretty mundane. The other area of concern was Anderson’s use of light, which wasn’t working. Sure he was going for dark corners for the Aliens to hang in, but I would have liked to actually have been able to make out more than Anderson clouds the screen with. Plot-wise this one is pretty much by the numbers, and if you have read the books Dark Horse published then the final sequence was pretty predictable. Far too much time was spent introducing ancillary cannon fodder, and not enough time was spent on the action parts of the movie. It’s one of the uber match-ups; we paid to see an all out battle, not a minor skirmish. Sanaa Lathan (Lex) tackles the Ripley style character and I was impressed with her performance from the starting credits – cool ice climb – to the closing credits. She is amply backup by Raul Bova (Sebastian) as the eye candy for the girls, and Ewen Bremner (Graeme Miller) as the comic relief. Special mention of Lance Henricksen (Charles Bishop Weyland), who provides the needed continuity between the Alien movies and this cross-franchise effort. Once again the genre legend delivers a strong meaningful performance that was on par with his best efforts. T&A is down to nekkid Aliens, knock yourself out there. Harald Kloser ladled on a score that is pretty generic, i.e. could have been slotted onto a dozen movies without making an impact.
Summary ExecutionAVP was hugely disappointing when I saw it on the big screen. I was expecting a hell of a better movie to re-ignite the franchise. What we got was some pretty damp kindling which smouldered rather than being a basis to propel the two franchises, Alien and Predator, back to life. Having just re-watched the Director’s cut for this review, I have to say the movie is a lot better than I remember it being. Director Anderson avoids lag, and lays down a pretty decent action/adventure movie.On a budget of $60 million the movie made $80.2 US domestic and $91 internationally. A quick calculation should be enough to indicate that’s a profit for Fox Studios. Somewhat disappointing result overall but enough to bring a sequel in 2007. I’ll be there opening night, but am hoping for something with a lot more bite, and not the PG13 hog-tying that was applied to this movie. Go get the DVD and re-watch people, the movie is certainly not as bad as reviews indicated at the time, and at least we got to see Aliens again finally. AVP is the worst entry in the Alien franchise, but is a lot better than the second Predator movie. End of day you will enjoy, just leave your brain in neutral before viewing.
ScaryMinds Rates this movie as ... Sad indictment of Fox's inability to adapt the franchises.
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