Review of AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004) by Jack M — 26 Feb 2014

Two sagas come together, two great sci-fi influences finally clashing each other...by the hand of Paul W.S. Anderson?! Let me guess then...it sucks. Oh, was I right? What are the chances!

First, let's do a brief re-cap on both sagas. The Alien saga is one of my favorites, even if the third and fourth entries are awful. It's because of the first two movies, specially the second (Aliens, by James Cameron) being my favorite movie of all time, and also had the best designed aliens in history. The Predator saga is different though; it's about one monster haunting, rather than a species looking for population on Earth. I never get into the Predator movies, but that doesn't mean it's not important to cinema history. So, if a crossover of these two sagas is being made, it needs careful direction, writing and a great story, along with great special effects and intense action scenes...but this one is made by Paul Anderson, who only takes action. Maybe it was cheaper to have him instead of a five-star director, but something like Alien vs Predator NEEDS only the best crew, not the most streamline out there. Now that we got that out of the way, let's look more into the actual movie:

The characters are forgettable and labeled: there's the courageous woman (that never tops Ripley at all), the socially awkward nerd, the rude guy that never cares, the black guy that dies quickly, etc. pretty much clapboard characters like the consensus says. The dialogue makes no sense and the lines are bland, the music is barely noticed and the movie as a whole never lives up to anything, and when it seems to come to that, we are surrounded by the bad things all over again. Oh, but it doesn't stop there, there's plenty of details to nitpick, cause the movie deserves it, but I'm not going to be too deep on this:

When the title of your movie is Alien VS Predator, that means action scenes are necessary, I mean, note-to-note-the-freaking-saying, it's very obvious, isn't it? Or is it too hard to understand, Anderson? And if you do make action scenes, you need three things: first, FILM THEM WELL. Second, have a great choreography. And third, have them very constantly in the movie; don't make us wait a whole hour to enjoy them only to have dull ones. Being Anderson, none of these three things are given justice. The action scenes aren't that good, only the first fight with a Predator and an Alien was cool, the others felt dull, even the final one with the Computer-Generated Alien Queen never gets too exciting. And also, I am pissed off on how they put the Mayans and Aztecs as a civilization that worshiped the Predators, oh Hollywood, you merciless fucktard. These civilizations are known for their advanced acknowledge and the big impact it made on cultures around the world because of that, but why should the Americans care for that? For them, even the Mayans were assholes that needed a Hollywood figure to be the geniuses they're apparently were. Too much self-indulgent Hollywood, WAY TOO SELF-INDULGENT. How could you? How could you make two great sagas mere insults to human history? Well, I shouldn't care, it was done in Ronald Emmerich's StarGate already, and seeing how this movie didn't fill my hunger for an epic Alien vs Predator movie, then the rest doesn't matter, I guess.

Alien vs Predator doesn't even get to be a guilty pleasure: it's so disappointing, so lackluster and so un-ambitious that I can't help but feel indifferent to this movie. Maybe I'll come back to see that first fight that was cool, but even for that, I can simply look out for it on YouTube, I don't need to go a whole hour in again to see that. This crossover had all the elements to work, and it didn't use them. Sad, but Anderson always does this since after Mortal Kombat. Damn, I mean, Anderson, do you know what's effort? No? Well then, fuck you Anderson.