Reel Horror

AVP - Alien vs. Predator (Two-Disc Collector's Edition) asin: B000AP04P6

The US Government has been lying to the American public long before Roswell. It’s a fact that Predators and humans can co exist and hang out in Antarctica. So if you ever hear a scientist mention the inaccuracies of Predator/Human cohabitantion on the same planet, they would be mistaken. With the Summer movie season winding down, there was still some films people were expecting. Well folks this aint it! I hadn’t read much on AvP because I am busy working, but I did manage to get away and see the “brilliant piece of cinema.” Now I know what your saying, it’s a summer movie, a “popcorn” film, just go and enjoy it for what’s its worth. And its worth never to be discussed again... I have seen hundreds, if not thousands of films and I have never seen a film that started out good and go from somewhat “plausible” to completely idiotic in 1 hour and 32 minutes.

The film starts out with Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henrikson) who discovers a temple buried in the deepest recesses of Antarctica. By the way for those of you who don’t know the Alien franchise, Lance played Bishop the cyborg in Aliens and Aliens 3, a bit of trivia. Anyway back to the “plot”. So Charles Bishop Weyland the billionare puts together a crack squad of scientific geniuses to go to the temple and see what’s cooking. Ahh but there is ice and snow and cold weather, well have no fear you’ll need your standard navigator and explorer Alexa Woods (Sanaa Lathan). She is the tough as nails, go getter who always gets the job done… her way. So 10 or 20 scientists go down to the temple buried 2000 feet below the surface. When they arrive at the sight there is a whole dug exactly to the bottom. And by which all the calculations was not there just 24 hours ago. DUN DUN DUN… insert scary music here. Who dug the whole? Why is it there? And what does it mean?. You know what it means, it means imminent death to all who enter. So the group people traverse down the enormous whole to the center of the earth. Mind you that the film builds for a good 45 minutes before you see the Aliens or Predators. We see glimpses of the Predator hovering over the earth and its somewhat clear that they need to get to the temple. Meanwhile the Alien is shackled up deep inside the temple and just laying eggs, like she is working for KFC. So everyone is now down in the temple and it’s a great sight to see, the resident archaeologist Sebastian De Rosa(Raoul Bova) and his assistant are the only ones to understand the hieroglyphics on the wall, and they appear to be Cambodian, Aztec. The main hieroglyphics say “only the chosen can enter” and of course these group of magellan’s apparently feel they are the chosen one. If it were me I would eaten the red pill, but hey… Now the group of scientists trek through the temple and find a sarcophagus and they open it up and inside are 3 objects, which later we come to learn is the Predators shoulder mounted guns. In accordance with these types of films, someone must always be ailing and or dying and in this Shakespearean tragedy its our host Charles Bishop Weyland. He is slowing the pack down with his asthma or cancer or something unclear. Once the humans take position of the objects the Predators realize they need to get it back and high tail it down through temple. Once the objects were taken the temple goes into lock down which in turn makes the face hugger aliens begin to hatch. Of course the two schmucks left in the “sacrificial chamber” will soon die a terrible duecifying death. Now the Aliens all begin to hatch and run amok through the temple and the Predators are going after the humans. Who really is the hunted? I don’t care at this point who held the boom mic. For some convenient reason everyone gets split up and leaves small groups of people running around the maze like temple which, because of the metric system or the Dewey Decimal systems the temple shifts itself every ten minutes. Alexa and Sebatian are once again separated and Alexa goes face to face with the Predator. It appears that our heroine will soon die at the hands of the creature. But alas she is smarter than all the scientist who well sorry to say are alldead, she decides to hand over the gun to the Predator who than sights her up to shoot her when the Aliens attack.

Now here we go with the back story, apparently thousands of years ago the Predators existed and the humans at the time prayed to these creatures. But the Predators got bored and brought in the Aliens. The humans were used to sacrifice themselves to give birth to the Aliens, so the predators had something else to kill. And if the Aliens became too powerful, the Predators would blow themselves up so no one would win. Alien vs. predator round 1, Alien and Predator get into a cool special fight. The scenes with the Aliens and predators are entreating and fun, I guess a plus for the film. They both use there special skills in trying to one up each other and it appears the Alien will kill the Predator but BAM! Alexa kills the Alien and saves the Predator. This sounds like the start of a beautiful friendship. If it was me I would made the film from this point on go to black and white and make it more like Casablanca. For some idiotic reason the Predator and Alexa have this mutual understanding that they need each other. And if you look close in one scene, it almost appears that Alexa and Predator were gonna make out… I swear. The theme of the film is basically “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” Basically saying the humans and Predators each share a loathing for the Aliens. So Alexa and the Predator team up to kill all the Aliens that are now pretty much taking over.

The entire third act of the film is humorous. There was a reason that this film was not screened for critics. Paul W.S. Anderson has made some entertaining films in his past. Resident Evil is a solid film and many people seem to like the first Mortal Combat movie. But I can’t explain what happened with this film. On the bright spot of the movie the art direction was top notch, much like Underworld. If you are interested in seeing this film, I recommend you not watch any other Alien or Predator film to “get in the mood” the only thing it will do for you is make you wonder why Spaceball One doesn’t make an appearance.