AvP Double Feature - Alien vs. Predator (2004) + Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)

Guaranteed box office dollars? You bet. Guaranteed quality? Nope.

After Predator 2 was released in 1990, everybody expected an Alien vs. Predator film to be made soon after. Unfortunately for those people, AvP wouldn't arrive until summer 2004. Much like the previous year's versus flick, Freddy vs. Jason, the film's delay had been the fault of a lengthy development hell. What is truly sad is that an Alien 5 had been in development with both Ridley Scott and James Cameron writing, producing, and directing! Unfortunately, 20th Century Fox pulled the plug on that film and went with the sure fire money maker, Alien vs. Predator, instead. After the first film's success, a sequel titled Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem was eventually released in 2007.

There's no doubt about it, these films are the bane of the Alien and Predator franchises. Few fans actually like these films and most fans love to hate on them. These films don't exactly count within the Predator or Alien franchise continuity either. They are more like fan fictions that don't align with the canon of the series at all. However, I still have to check them out for my journey through the Predator films and dedication to all action films good and bad. These films classify more as spin-offs than sequels anyways. So I guess this review doesn't get a part in the Predator-a-Thon. My blog, my rules.

Director: Paul W.S. Anderson
Cast: Sanaa Lathan, Lance Henriksen, Raoul Bova, Ewen Bremner
Country: United States / United Kingdom
Rating: PG-13
Run Time: 101 minutes

After such a long wait, 20th Century Fox finally decided on none other than Paul W.S. Anderson to direct Alien vs. Predator. I have never stated it before on my blog but Anderson is one of my least favorite directors currently working in Hollywood. He churns out bland and generic PG-13 sci-fi actioners that are fueled by special effects and nothing else. His track record (Resident Evil, Three Musketeers, Pompeii) is less than stellar. Therefore, many of the film's issues can be laid on Anderson because he directed and wrote the film. I wish he had Tommy Wiseau'd the thing though. Than we could have seen him produce and star too!

After a satellite detects a heat bloom in the Antarctic, billionaire Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen) assembles a team to investigate the occurrence. When the team discovers the origin of the heat, they find a large pyramid buried underground. As they enter, they quickly find themselves caught in a battle between Aliens and Predators. The Predators fired a laser into the ice in order to carve themselves a hole into the ground and to attract humans to the pyramid. The Predators than use the humans to create Xenomorphs, alien creatures that they deem to be the perfect prey for their hunts. The team than has to fight their way through the pyramid in order to survive or end up as Alien food.

The biggest issue with Anderson's film is that all of his human characters are incredibly boring. None of them are memorable or contain a single character trait beyond their profession. Every character exists to be executed by the Aliens or the Predators, therefore making them useless to the audience. It's a shame that there are no human characters to latch onto and root for. A likable human lead amongst crazed alien creatures is what made films like Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, Predator, and Predator 2 successful. Anderson utterly fails at writing good human characters and gets right to what he does "best", special effects fueled fight sequences.

The action scenes between the humans, Aliens, and Predators are fairly decent. Nothing is photographed horribly and the concepts are quite fun at times. Regardless of how silly or stupid this movie is, the big Alien vs. Predator fight is still a cool showdown. And while it isn't breathtaking, it sure makes for some fun sci-fi schlock. That's the best way to describe this film and it's sequel, ridiculous schlock. The problem with this film is that Paul W.S. Anderson thought he was making a chilling film full of tense build up. That is just not the case. The build up in this film is nothing more than boring and yawn-worthy. Anderson doesn't seem to put his best traits as a filmmaker to work until the film goes full action.

Unfortunately, I have some major issue with the film. For starters, every scene is lit too bright. These characters are in a pyramid underground and yet every hallway is lit like a Christmas tree. The bright and shiny visuals completely pull one out of the film. Another obvious issue with the film is its box office friendly PG-13 rating. The Alien and Predator franchises are hard R films with loads of gore and blood, not lame PG-13 films with lots of cutaways. Whomever okay'd the film to be released with a PG-13 clearly never saw one of these films before. The Predator make up is also some of the worst make up I have ever seen for a creature in a blockbuster motion picture. Whoever designed the Predator's face in this film should be introduced to an Alien facehugger and left for dead.

However, for all of my complaints, AvP is never god awful or terrible. Once the Alien and Predator fights get going, the film makes for some dumb yet fun popcorn entertainment. Unfortunately, this is a huge step down from the previous Predator and Alien films in terms of pure craftmanship, action choreography, character work, and atmosphere. Not recommended.

Rating: 5/10 - Anderson leaves his stamp of mediocrity on two franchises that deserve better.

Director: The Brothers Strause

Cast: Steven Pasquale, Reiko Aylseworth, John Ortiz, Johnny Lewis

Country: United States

Rating: R

Run Time: 94 minutes

If Paul W.S. Anderson, a director with actual experience, wasn't bad enough, how about two brothers with no directing experience whatsoever? The Brothers Strause are special effects artists, not directors. Therefore, the two of them do what they know best as far as this film goes. Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem is all blood, gore, action scenes, and violence without any subtlety, suspense, build up, or creativity. By the looks of the horrible creature design and poorly written characters, you might suspect that this sequel is a Sci-Fi Channel Original. But alas, it's a $40 million film released by one of the biggest studios on the entire planet.

Let me get this out of the way. This is a terrible mess of a film. However, I enjoyed it far more than the first film. The first film tries to take itself seriously and thinks that it is actually suspenseful. This sequel on the other hand goes full sci-fi schlock within the first minute and never turns back. It's as if the filmmakers knew that an AvP sequel couldn't be taken seriously after the first film. Therefore, the Brothers Strause went all out and packed their film with as much action and violence as they could. I knew going into this film that I wasn't going to be able to take anything seriously. And since the filmmakers didn't either, I found myself able to enjoy this film as pure unadulterated sci-fi trash.

AvP-R picks up where the last film left off; that is with a baby Pred-Alien bursting out of a Predator's chest. This Predator/Alien hybrid creature causes one of the Predator's to shoot a hole into the side of his ship and send it crashing down to Earth. Before he dies, a Predator sends a distress signal (instead of setting off a bomb like they always do) for a lone Predator to come down to Earth in order to clean up the evidence of the escaping Pred-Alien and facehuggers. What follows is an hour and a half of Aliens and a Predator killing humans in a small Colorado town while fighting one another.

It's astonishing how little disregard there is for human life in this film. Characters are established and killed off with the littlest of ease throughout this film. Their deaths are also far gorier than the tame PG-13 kills of the previous film. Gory highlights include heads exploding, bodies sliced in half, and faces melting from dripping acid. However, the film goes too far when chestbursters erupt from a child and a pregnant woman. I don't know if it's a cinematic rule but killing pregnant women and children in a film should always be avoided unless it serves an important narrative purpose. Here it is just to increase the body count of the film; what a noble purpose.

Like I said, there is far more action and violence in this film than the previous entry. Even though I did enjoy the concepts and settings for these action scenes, it's a shame that they are so dark and horribly shot. My two favorite action scenes were when the Predator took on some Aliens in the sewers and when the main characters shot up numerous Aliens on there way to a helicopter. Speaking of the main characters, they are all laughably underwritten. The film's laughable attempts to give these character's backgrounds is really entertaining though.

Dylan and Cole Strause clearly don't care about franchise continuity because they break numerous established rules throughout the film. For starters, the Predator kills an unarmed cop and skins him alive for no reason. Why would the Predator go to Earth to eliminate evidence of Alien life if only to make more evidence himself? Also, the Predator has the ability to shoot Aliens point blank and to crush their heads without any acid getting onto him. And yet numerous human bodies are melted to death by splashing acid. The Alien chestbursters also grow to full size within a scene now instead of several slow scenes. So long to build up and subtlety.

But the worse offense of the entire film is the disgustingly awful design of the Xenomorph Aliens. My goodness, the Aliens have never looked worse! Each Alien is clearly a man inside of a rubber suit. There is rarely an animatronic or effective shot of an actor in their rubber suit. The Xenomorph mouths also look ridiculous. Since when do the Aliens need braces? Their teeth look like crap! It's a downright crime to take the sleek and beautiful design of H.R. Giger's Alien and turn it into a crappy cosplay quality outfit.

AvP-R is a mess of a film with awful characters, pacing, and effects. However, I really do enjoy this film as a gory and trashy horror film with numerous action scenes and lots of creature fights. After hearing everyone tell me that this is the absolute worst film in the series, I found myself enjoying it far more than anyone else. But alas, it is pretty lousy.

Rating: 5/10 - Equally as lousy as the previous film but more enjoyable as far as "so bad it's good" films go.

Franchise:
Predator (dir. John McTiernan, 1987)
Predator 2 (dir. Stephen Hopkins, 1990)
Predators (dir. Nimrod Antal, 2010)

AvP Spin-Offs:
Alien vs. Predator (dir. Paul W. S. Anderson, 2004)
Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (dir. The Brothers Strause, 2007)