Alien Vs Predator Review

[Lordblackadder]

OK so I finally broke my long standeing vow never to spend money on a Holywood movie in a theater... I feel so dirty.

So the movie basically deals with the origins of human civilization, exploring remote ancient structures and aliens. You know the plot, greedy capitalist spots something and assembles a team of 'experts' from central casting to explore it. When they get there, they find themselves in over their little heads.

That's all I can say in order to remain spoiler free.

Analysis: This movie shows what happens when a competent special effects outfit, comes together with decent writers, who come together with not so bad actors, who come together with a lousy director. This guy did Resident Evil, which I haven't seen.
In any case John Woo should have been tapped for such a serious project. But it comes well together nonetheless. It definately posesses the pungent atmosphere normally associated with Aliens movies. Like Predator, it doesn't dilly dally on character developement, but gets you into the action ASAP.
It doesn't confuse what it is, it is an action sci-fi flick nothing more or less. Note to you, if this movie is worth seeing it is worth seeing in DIGITAL. A standard celluloid screen sucks, especially with this film, where Alien/Predator fight seens are the going commodity. Actually I wish they showed each fight scene twice.

What annoyed me: Not enough fight scenes. Direction of fight scenes left much to be desired. They wern't bad, I just expected more quality and more fighting. The end seems to come too abruptly, kind of leaves you hanging. The story seems to breeze by too quickly.

Verdict: The Extended DVD edition will have to find it's way into my greedy claws as soon as it comes out.

 

[Yakuza]

huh, I thought the movie sucked.

You cant say that the movie was a sci-fi movie nothing more nothing less. Its a combo between two of the greates sci-fi flicks ever made, I sure as hell was expecting more than what I got. The movie wasn't even consistent with any other aliens or predator movie.

I laughed out load when it took a good 10 mins for a chestburster to reach a full gestation period.

And why aren't the Predators smart enough to use the same tech as their weapons to create their armor. Seeing as the armor melts from alien blood and their weapons dont.

 

[Lordblackadder]

Ok OK they paid me to say that.

Actually the movie completely sucked.

THe fight scenes are badly done and too sparse
.

 

[PunisherUSA]

huh, I thought the movie sucked.

You cant say that the movie was a sci-fi movie nothing more nothing less. Its a combo between two of the greates sci-fi flicks ever made, I sure as hell was expecting more than what I got. The movie wasn't even consistent with any other aliens or predator movie.

I laughed out load when it took a good 10 mins for a chestburster to reach a full gestation period.

And why aren't the Predators smart enough to use the same tech as their weapons to create their armor. Seeing as the armor melts from alien blood and their weapons dont.

Hmmm, guess they strayed a bit from the Aliens/Predators universe. Those are some silly errors.

 

[Fender357]

huh, I thought the movie sucked.


And why aren't the Predators smart enough to use the same tech as their weapons to create their armor. Seeing as the armor melts from alien blood and their weapons dont.

Thats what I said!!!!!

 

[Dalamari]

[sarcasm]Wow, I really didn't expect the movie to suck[/sarcasm]

Didnt know there really was a [sarcasm] command, lol

 

[Ghost Freeman]

Here's my review:

It sucks. It's nothing like it shoulda been.

Straight to the point

 

[FoB_Ed]

video game movies suck, I'm not surprised

 

[mortiz]

This movie was the thing that should never be!

There's not many directors that could have translated the idea into a successful movie, but it was almost certain that Anderson feck it up.

 

[Delirious]

I thought the alien vs. predator movie was based on the comic book.

 

[h00dlum]

i hate the fact that its PG-13...they just do that to make more money...

 

[Some_God]

My and another persons review:

SPOLIERS
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.
.
.
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they released a Freddy vs Jason type movie meant to make some money.

Sadly I saw this movie and I didnt have high expectations. They redesigned Predator and made him look like the "good guy"... I dont want no touchy feely girly movie... If i wanted to see that I would go watch The Princess Diary and go kill myself after!

I knew people werent going to like this movie because (1) it is rated PG-13 when all the other movies were rated R, (2) its coming out during the summer (when all the crap "BIGGEST ACTION MOVIES" come out), and (3) it has a "VS" in the title... I mean seriously WHO EXPECTS A GOOD MOVIE WHEN THERE IS A "VS" IN THE TITLE!

You want to know who won? Hasbro, Paramount and all the others who participated in this movie... you want to know who lost? The audience.


Another guy's review:

I will be the first to admit it. I am a raging Aliens fan. I know the names of Newt’s family (Ann, Russ and Timmy). I know how long Ripley was adrift (57 years, right through the Core Systems). I know what weapons the Colonial Marines used (M41A pulse rifle firing 10mm explosive tip caseless standard light armour piercing, over and under with a 30mm pump action grenade launcher). I bought the novel adaption, played the board game, the role-playing game and bought the technical manual. What I don’t know is what Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett (writers in almost all of the Aliens movies) were thinking when they signed on to write for this movie.

Let me start this review by saying that despite what you may have heard, AVP is not a complete steaming pile of crap. Parts of it are, yes, but not all of it. I’m not going to re-hash the postage stamp plotline much – basically, Predators have been using Earth as a hatching ground for their aspiring warrior-teens to hunt our favourite genome mutagenic xenomorphs for the last 10,000 years or so, revealed in a really lazy expository sequence about half-way through the film. Hatching aliens in the chest cavities of willing sacrificial victims to curry favour, the Aztec, Egyptian and Cambodian cultures worshipped Predators like gods. When things get out of hand in the past, they nuked the place with their handy wrist bombs – it’s the only way to be sure. In the present day, Weyland Enterprises’ CEO and founder, Charles Bishop Weyland, has discovered through thermal satellite imagery that an ancient pyramid has been reactivated thousands of feet beneath the Antarctic ice and assembles the usual international all-star team of scientists and experts to get him there. Mayhem ensues.

That’s about it for plot. The intricacies of hieroglyph translation, thermal imaging, vast leaps in interpretative logic and self-reconfiguring architecture I will leave to the viewer. I have a particular hate for any writer who attributes the honest work of ancient builders to aliens because those pathetic humans couldn’t have possibly figured it out themselves, but I’ll swallow my bile and move on.

The actors mostly do their best with what they’re given. Generally, they’re a slight twist on the usual motley assortment of nerdy science-types – Raoul Bova plays the hunky archaeologist Sebastian de Rosa; Sanaa Lathan plays the ubiquitous Aliens franchise macho female lead environmentalist and climber, Alexa Woods; the very aged-looking Lance Henriksen plays the founder of the precursor to titanic evil corporation Weyland-Yutani; and Ewen Bremner (Spud in Trainspotting) plays a quirky Scottish mineralogist, Graeme Miller. The rest of the cast (Colin Salmon as a major-domo, Tommy Flanagan as a hired gun and Agathe De La Boulaye as another pistol-toting merc), despite decent efforts, are complete throwaways – they just don’t get enough screen time. Which brings me to the principal criticism of this movie:

Memo to Paul W.S. Anderson: SLOW DOWN.

The director, while relatively adept with action sequences, allows virtually no time for tension to develop, or for that matter, empathy for the characters. Every quick cut, rapid fire sequence and zipping cinematic transition trick is geared to speed the whole film up; this is fine when you’re doing a straight-up action movie.

Our Aliens, though, thrive on tension and suspense, and there’s none of it here. When the action pauses to breathe for even a moment, you can hear the cogs of Anderson’s finely oiled music-video brain go “clunk”. A brief sequence where Graeme shares a photo of his kids with Alexa just screams “I am going to be killed gruesomely later in the movie”. An awkward moment with Graeme, Sebastian and Alexa contemplating the moon and the southern lights is painful to watch, partly due to Woods, but also in a large degree to Anderson. Hmmm – maybe he shouldn’t slow down, on second thought. Anderson does do action pretty well – he just can’t seem to let up on it, and as a result, we have no time to feel afraid or even mildly discomfited by the prospect of being hunted by not one but two insanely deadly predatory species in a dark, claustrophobic environment.

The art direction, production design and effects are well done – finally a movie where they don’t go overboard with CG. The use of CG versus practical effects is generally well balanced - puppets and models are used where puppets and models are needed, and CG where CG is better suited. The Aliens and the Predators look good, but if you’re a fan of Predators, be prepared to be disappointed with how quickly two of them are dispatched. There’s a fair reason why the bugs get the jump on them, but still…

As for technicalities and believability issues, they’re there in abundance – how is it that all the humans are romping about in Antarctica with so much exposed skin and not dying or at least getting frostbitten? Why would Predators build one of their pyramids in the Antarctic thousands of years ago when the last evidence of tropical weather there was millions of years ago? How is it that the Predators have no anti-contamination scanners on their ship? Why on earth would a mineshaft elevator cart be able to travel faster than the blast wave of a tactical nuke?

But, all of this aside, there are some fun moments in this movie. The Preds put some serious smackdown on some of the Aliens, and the Aliens really stick it to some of the Preds. Blood, both fluorescent and molecular acid, is sprayed with abundance. Weapons are used, people are dragged off screaming, natty dreadlocks are tossed with contempt. There’s even a few nods to the prequels (sequels?) with a familiar-looking briefing scene homage, one of Alexa’s lines echoing both Arnie and Sigourney in one blow, and the death of the principal Alien in a manner which is both fitting and familiar – the monster banished to the depths of an icy-cold void. A lot of this movie is actually fun and exciting, and fortunately, these moments save it from being the aforementioned steaming pile of alien goo. Alas, it isn't enough, and this movie is merely mediocre, where it might have been good.

In the original screenplay for Alien, the writers quote W.H. Auden: “Science fiction plucks from within us our deepest fears and hopes and shows them to us in rough disguise: the monster and the rocket.” The quote is a fine summation for all that is good about both the Predator and Aliens storylines – both the coolness of future technology and the inability of it to protect us from our worst fears and dangers – the primeval terror of being hunted in the dark by something which we do not understand.

Anderson might have learned from this quote and injected a little more tension and fear into this movie than the typical WWE cage-match. More monster; less rocket.

Ah and BTW.. 600!!! w00t!

 

[McFly]

"As for technicalities and believability issues, they’re there in abundance – how is it that all the humans are romping about in Antarctica with so much exposed skin and not dying or at least getting frostbitten? Why would Predators build one of their pyramids in the Antarctic thousands of years ago when the last evidence of tropical weather there was millions of years ago? How is it that the Predators have no anti-contamination scanners on their ship? Why on earth would a mineshaft elevator cart be able to travel faster than the blast wave of a tactical nuke?"
i thought the movie was great, while there were some bad technicallities being broken, like the acid blood not melting some weapons or aliens hatching too fast, it was all a way to make the plaot work. They wanted the stay in the pyramid to be short, not one of few days, naturally our characters might starve, so they made the aliens gestate fast. As for the preds, they needed a way to give them weapons, and have them not need to bring 50 along. As for the reason in the quote above why the pyramid was underground in ice, im guessing is that the Preds, or Yautja, saw the deveopment of the human race where it was, warmer areas, and built a pyramid in the cold underground both to keep widespread discovery contained and keep the aliens queen trapped.

 

[KidRock]

Lol I think most people who said the movie sucked just like jumping on the whole " ANY VS MOVIE IS COMPLETELY STUPID!" bandwagon. :rolleyes

 

[McFly]

They want to sound cool for showing they have the nerve of dissing a sci-fi movie cuz other people have...

 

[KagePrototype]

or maybe they just dont like it? That IS possible you know.

 

[McFly]

some people dont like it, but many people will actually do this.

 

[KagePrototype]

No, a LOT of people don't like it. I wouldn't say that the amount of people who will bash the movie just to seem cool to others, will be anything significant.

 

[JonTheCanuck]

i liked the movie but i think they made it too hollywood. It didn't have the nitty gritty feel the aliens movies had. And the fact they stayed away from showing any real gore wasn't really to my liking. The reason i didn't like this was it felt like they were trying to get a teen rating so the kiddies could see it but its supposed to be a more gruesome movie. Other than that i'd say it was pretty good.

 

[Lordblackadder]

Watch for a maaaajor spoiler:

If the producers want to make it up to disappointed viewers they will relkease the DVD with the following:

More fight scenes, I don't care if they have to re-film.
Said fight scenes must occur previous to any Predator fatalitiies.
It was really stoopid how one alien takes out a fraggin third of the Predator hunting party in the first battle. THat sucked. It was stoopid and I felt cheated. I didn't go to see this in order to ponder the possibilities of forming an alliance between a pred and Janet Jackson or whoever the hell she was.

AN additional 20 minutes of actual Alien vs Predator footage would do the title some justice. Unfortunately now that I think about it, the actual battles were more like an afterthought.

 

[ne-waller]

the film was not based on the game - just thought i'd clear that up. I thought freddie Vs jason was hilarious btw. if alien Vs predator is like that i'll watch it, it deserves so much more though.

 

[Pressure]

I'm suprised the lady and the predator didn't kiss. The fight scenes were too short and too few. When there was a fight the camera was shakey and kept changing angles quickly. You could barely make out what was happening. I'm watching Predator on FX right now. I'll be enjoying it more than this movie.

 

[McFly]

Watch for a maaaajor spoiler:

If the producers want to make it up to disappointed viewers they will relkease the DVD with the following:

More fight scenes, I don't care if they have to re-film.
Said fight scenes must occur previous to any Predator fatalitiies.
It was really stoopid how one alien takes out a fraggin third of the Predator hunting party in the first battle. THat sucked. It was stoopid and I felt cheated. I didn't go to see this in order to ponder the possibilities of forming an alliance between a pred and Janet Jackson or whoever the hell she was.

AN additional 20 minutes of actual Alien vs Predator footage would do the title some justice. Unfortunately now that I think about it, the actual battles were more like an afterthought.

battles are not based off of numbers. if the alien has an advantage, or sneak attack as this one did, then its totally possible it could have taken 2 out.

 

[Brian Damage]

Was it a party of unblooded younglings, or a warrior hunting party, McFly?

 

[Yakuza]

battles are not based off of numbers. if the alien has an advantage, or sneak attack as this one did, then its totally possible it could have taken 2 out.

We are talking about a movie here. The point is that you have all of these aliens and only three Preds. Since the movie was only 87 mins long they had to kill off as many creatures as they could. And two of the Preds die within mins of each other while the last one manages to survive and attack by a bunch of them as well as fighting off the queen....oh but he did have a human to help.

 

[ZombieBudgie]

The PG-13 rating killed AvP.

 

[The Dark Elf]

Was it a party of unblooded younglings, or a warrior hunting party, McFly?

bah, stop using the naming conventions given to them by the god awful dark horse lot. Can't possibly call yourself a fan if you even aknowledge any of that tripe they put out constantly.

--

Alien
Aliens
Predator
Predator 2

thats it, thats all there's ever been, the rest are mistakes that should be forgotton ASAP.

AvP had a chance to be brilliant, it failed and its now screwed up any chance of there ever being a decent film of either. Best you'll get is the saturday morning cartoons feature Predator and his mate Alien fighting a really badly designed version of the original pilot race in some Stargate: Infinity style mess.

There's so many things wrong with AvP, and I wanted it to be amazing so I'd get a proper Alien 5 and Predator 3. But no, thats gone forever now. Well done Paul Anderson, for your next trick why not go ruin Lord of the Rings eh?

 

[Some_God]

I think Predator 2 sucked ass. :|

 

[The Dark Elf]

I think Predator 2 sucked ass. :|

P2 was an aquired taste.. it was far from perfect I admit. Predator really wasn't super amazing. But AvP is even worse.

 

[Some_God]

I was expecting Mel Gibson to show up in Predator 2.

AvP is a crap movie in my book because they dont use the tactics that the other movies used to make them rock. I dont completely know what they are, but I know they aren't in AvP.

 

[mortiz]

right, so by bashing what is for all intensive purposes a bad movie we're trying to look cool?? So, what? Are you saying that we should like every movie?

 

[The Dark Elf]

I was expecting Mel Gibson to show up in Predator 2.

AvP is a crap movie in my book because they dont use the tactics that the other movies used to make them rock. I dont completely know what they are, but I know they aren't in AvP.

heh and I was expecting Bill Paxton to show up "hey im in both movies again!"

-

Exactly, AvP is just missing that whole atmosphere the others, even Predator 2 had to an extent. It's too much like the comics for kids, and the games, while the games are good AS games, bad as a movie, heck the predator even stands there and does a scene right out of the game shooting at aliens for a bit, just like most would play it.

Oh well, im glad I saw it though, just to know for sure. I then immediately went and played AvP2 while watching Alien and Aliens special edition followed by Predator and Predator 2.. feel better now :E