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)

Predator-a-Thon, Part 3 - Predators (2010)

Director: Nimrod Antal

Cast: Adrien Brody, Topher Grace, Alice Braga, Walter Goggins, Laurence Fishburne

Country: United States

Production Company: Troublemaker Studios

Rating: R

Run Time: 107 minutes

I'm sure plenty of you are thinking, "No, Zach! Why did you skip over reviewing the two Alien vs. Predator films in your Predator-a-Thon?" Well don't worry, I'll get to them one day. It's just that I'd rather stick to the three main (and also good) Predator films for now. Besides, I only have so much time in my life and I'm not sure if I want to waste three and a half hours watching both crappy Alien vs. Predator films at this moment.

Predator fans haven't had it easy. The last standalone Predator film for twenty years was none other than Predator 2 from 1990. After the dismal AvP films and the wait since Predator 2, it seemed that the Predator franchise was finished for good. However, 20th Century Fox and director Robert Rodriguez (From Dusk Til Dawn, Desperado) miraculously brought the franchise back to life in 2010 with Predators. Rodriguez had written a script for a new Predator film back in 1994 and never received word on it. When 20th Century Fox re-discovered his old script, they contacted Rodriguez and asked him to co-produce the film. I remember being so excited for this film back in high school because I had never seen an official Predator film in the theaters. A new rated R Predator film in 2010? It was my dream come true. 

It has now been four years since I first saw the film. And to be honest, I am shocked that this film is only four years old. Not only that, but everybody seems to have forgotten about this film. I haven't heard a single person mention this film to me in person or online in four years! This is surprising because Predators was both a financial success and well received by fans of the Predator series. What happened? It's as if this film fell off the planet for most people. I guess I am to blame as well because I am just now getting around to revisiting the film.

They should have called this film Humans vs. Predators. Just kidding. That joke sucks.

Predators opens as Royce (Adrien Brody) free falls from the sky into a jungle. When he awakes, he finds numerous other people around him. The group quickly puts together that they have been abducted and that they are all elite killers from various groups on Earth: the Mexican drug cartel, the F.B.I.'s most wanted, Russian Special Forces, etc. It's not long before the group discovers that the jungle they are in is not Earth at all, but a distant planet with an Earth-like jungle appearance. When the group is attacked by horned beasts, Royce deduces that they are being hunted. It's not long before the hunters, the Predators, reveal themselves and engage in a hunt to the death with the humans.

Predators is sort of a sequel and a reboot of the franchise at the same time. The film its smartly titled Predators in order to avoid the baggage of being called Predator 3 even though Predator 2 came out a whopping twenty years earlier. But that might be confusing because two AvP films came out before this film. So isn't it technically Predator 5? Regardless, Predators is an excellent title and a nice call back to James Cameron's choice to title the second Alien film Aliens since there is more than one extraterrestrial antagonist. 

Predators also introduces us to an entirely new cast of characters on a game preserve planet that we have never heard of before. Therefore, the film is trying to reboot the series while also carrying some continuity from the older films. Predator 2 is all but ignored as Predators countlessly homages and recalls Predator, even to the point of a character knowing about the events of Predator in Costa Rica in 1987. If the events of Predator are officially canon in this film, than I am going to assume that Predator 2 is also canon. Of course, they never bring up the events of the sequel but never disown it either.

Don't mess with these new super Predators.

Producer and writer Robert Rodriguez produced a very faithful sequel that revitalizes the franchise by bringing the events of the series back to the jungle that we loved so much from Predator. But this time, the Predators aren't going to Earth to hunt us anymore. The Predators are now abducting elite killers from Earth and transporting them to this game preserve planet. With the humans on their territory, the Predators can now hunt in packs and not have to worry about being on their own anymore.

The screen writers clearly love John McTiernan's original film. I don't blame the guys, who doesn't love that film? Therefore, the film packs a few references and homages to the original film in Predators. The score by John Debney sounds like an exact duplicate of Alan Silvestri's masterful Predator score. One of the human characters, a Russian named Nikolai, wields a heavy mini-gun that is clearly an homage to the mini-gun that Jesse Ventura's character uses in Predator. And during the film's finale, Adrien Brody takes off his shirt, wields a torch, and screams, "Kill me now! Come on! Do it!" These references are tied quite neatly into the film. Even though they aren't very subtle, at least they aren't painfully obvious and obnoxious either.

Much like the first two Predator films, Predators has a pretty expansive cast. While I commend the film for assembling a very impressive cast of well known contemporary actors (Adrien Brody, Alice Braga, Laurence Fishburne, Danny Trejo, Walter Goggins, Topher Grace, etc.), I can't say the same for the characters that they play and the dialog that they have to speak. Let's start with the good. Adrien Brody does a fine job as Royce, the muscular bad-ass leader of the group who will sacrifice anyone for his own survival. He's no Arnold, but he looks bad-ass when he shoots a gun and packs a good gravely voice. I also love Hanzo, the silent Yakuza gang member. He doesn't say much but is easily the most bad-ass of the all of the characters in the film. I also enjoyed how the bulk of the characters are either criminals or anti-heroes. This is a far stretch from your typical mercenary or police officer. 

"I'm the crazy one."

Unfortunately, many of the human characters are one noted or plain annoying. Edwin (Topher Grace) and Stans (Walter Goggins), my least favorite characters in the film, are a doctor and a criminal sentenced to death. Even though I like these two actors, their characters are given all of the humorous dialog and neither of them are ever funny. When Goggins spouts "humorous" lines like, "You're ass is so hot," I tune out. Their dialog and characterizations are just too forced and unnatural. 

One thing that I did not see coming the first time I saw this film was the nice little plot twist. Topher Grace's character, Edwin, is a doctor. Everyone else wonders how he ended up with the rest of the group since he isn't one of Earth's deadliest killers. But by the end of the film, Edwin's true intentions and reasons for being chosen are revealed in a nice twist that puts a spin on an otherwise formulaic genre picture.

Predators introduces several new ideas to the franchise in order to expand the mythology even more. In this film, there isn't just one type of Predator, but two. The three main Predators in the film are super Predators while the one hanging on a stone at the Predator camp is a classic Predator. The super Predators have faces that look far different from your typical Predator and hunt in packs of three. According to Noland (Laurence Fishburne), the super Predators have a dispute with the classic Predators. This is an interesting concept because we have never seen Predators fight with one another.

This leads into a pretty cool action scene near the end of the film where a classic Predator goes head to head with a super Predator. While the fight isn't incredible or anything special, the idea of two Predators duking it out is just too cool to hate on. It's essentially two guys in rubber suits bouncing off one another and firing lasers from their shoulder cannons. Fans of movies like Godzilla: Final Wars or Alien vs. Ninja might get a kick out of this.

A samurai duel in a Predator film? That's more like it.

All of the other action scenes in the film are pretty good too. My two favorite scenes are the ambush at the Predator camp and the sword fight between a Predator and Hanzo. The first fight at the Predator camp is filled with gun fire and laser blasting from both parties. It's an awesome scene and it definitely gives you exactly what you want from a Predator film. Hanzo also uses a katana in a sword fight against a Predator and its hand blade. The scene is even shot in a open field filled with grass. It's an awesome homage to the kind of samurai duel found in Harakiri or Sanjruo.

20th Century Fox recently announced that a new Predator sequel is in the works by none other than action maestro himself Shane Black (Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Last Boy Scout, Iron Man 3). Black is an excellent choice because he knows how to write a good action film and he even appeared in the original Predator. With Black both directing and writing, I think that the franchise is in good hands. However, I am curious if the new Predator film will follow the remaining characters left at the end of this film? Black stated that he wants to take advantage of the pre-existing mythology in the series (always a miracle to hear in today's reboot heavy world). I just don't understand why a sequel to Predators wasn't confirmed but a new Predator film devoid of details was. I guess we will have to wait and see.

A Predator holds up poor Nikolai.

Predators isn't as good as the first two Predator films but at least it's a huge step up from the lousy AvP films. The film is a nice reboot/sequel that reminds audiences why the Predators were so awesome in the first place. Predators has solid action scenes, good special effects, and great cinematography and jungle settings. The film is quite spooky in some scenes and even really gory too. Unfortunately, the film has some forgettable characters, a slow first act, and terribly cheesy dialog. If you can forgive that, I think that you owe it to yourself as an action fan to check out Predators, one of the better action/horror hybrids of recent years.

Rating: 7/10 - Much like Gareth Edwards' recent Godzilla reboot, Predators is a flawed but serviceable step in the right direction towards bringing a once dead franchise back to the big screen.

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)