The Unseen Movie Review

Alien vs. Predator

“Whoever wins, we lose” – never has a movie tagline been more prophetic. Anyone foolish enough to pay good money to see this mindless tripe loses; the studio loses money; the actors involved (including the cult hero that is Lance Henriksson) lose any respect they may once have had; the director loses what little critical kudos he may have managed to hang on to from his last (only?) halfway decent film, 1997’s Event Horizon.

Ridley Scott’s 1979 scifi horror Alien was a masterpiece of updated slasher suspense; John McTiernan’s 1987 scifi horror Predator was a good attempt at post-Vietnam action. Both films had sequels – of the various spin-offs, only 1986’s James Cameron-directed Aliens was really any good – but in one of them, 1990’s fairly awful Danny Glover-starring Predator 2, a movie geek in-joke was slotted. Acknowledging the debt the original Predator had to the original Alien (the films are pretty much the same, only one is set on a space ship, the other in a jungle), the design team included what was fairly obviously an Alien’s skull in the trophy room of the Predator’s space ship. A scifi crossover was born, and ever since, fans of the films have been calling out to see what would happen if the two beasties got to fight it out.

The last cult crossover to hit the screens, last year’s splicing of the Nightmare on Elm Streetand Fridath the 13th franchises that was Freddy vs Jason at least had the decency to be self-referential and moderately amusing. Then again, that film had the benefit of one of the two main draws being able to speak, and of being directed by someone with an obvious love of and respect for the source material.

Alien vs Predator ends up an insult to both franchises, not just in its shoddy execution, but also in terms of story-telling consistency. For starters, fans of the Alien films will know that the Aliens won’t make it to earth for several hundred more years – the films were all set far in the future. So why is there an Alien Queen on earth in the present? Plus, both Predator movies made clear that the Predators appear only when it is extremely hot. So why are they knocking around in the middle of the Antarctic? A geeky point, maybe, but for a film aimed at geeks to get things wrong from the outset is a little bit worrying to say the least.

The trouble is that anyone who really wanted to has already seen Alien vs Predator. There have been several computer games based on the concept – some of which have even been quite good – and umpteen different comic book interpretations. Pretty much all of these have been better than this take on the idea.

The major flaw, however, is the lack of any perceivable point. The first Alien was a great psychological thriller more than action; the second was a futuristic take on Vietname; the third and fourth flawed but interesting looks at human nature; the first Predator was a metaphor for Ronald Reagan’s perceived Communist menace in Central America; the second used the Predator to examine the threat of the drug trade. This is just action and violence, but not anywhere near impressive enough to be worth the price of admission. Avoid.

posted by Nosemonkey @ 12:00 AM