TB4000
08-14-2004, 12:30 PM
Paul W.S. Anderson gets a very bad rap. Go to any movie geek oriented message board and do a search on his name, you’ll see them wishing him strung up, beat up, pent up….in a cage or something, the list goes on. He has that reputation of being a hack director, style over substance, that type of thing. True, his movies don’t have that cerebral edge as an A.I. or Vanilla Sky, but he is the man that brought live action Mortal Kombat to movie form, creating probably the most accurate video game movie in existence, even if non-fans didn’t get it. He’s back to form now, taking on classic movie/video game/semi classic comic Alien vs. Predator. Is it worth the trip? If you want to see A Midsummer’s Night Dream, no. If you want to see aliens and predators beating each other down and bleeding acid all over each other, than yeah.
The cast is pretty much no-name, as in, no Cruises, Washingtons, Cages, or hell, even Afflecks. You’ve seen them as co-stars, though. Sanaa Lathan (mmm-mmm!!!) is the main Ripley-like hero, Alexa Wood, globe trekker guide extraordinaire. She receives a call from Charles Weyland (Lance Henriksen), a wealthy businessman who wants to be the first in the world to set foot inside a newly discovered pyramid located in Antarctica. Of course, Alexa says it’s idiotic to try, and of course, Weyland says they’ll be in and out within minutes, but this movie’s title being what it is, we all know that won’t be the case. As soon as they hit the entrance of the pyramid, stuff begins to go wrong, thanks in part to the predators knowledge of their entrance.
You can’t discuss this flick without comparison to last year’s Freddy vs. Jason…the similarities are just too clear. Everyone has a favorite horror movie villain, and you either like the Lovecraft-ish Aliens or the 7 foot tall cats with pincers for mouths Predators. The main attraction is them going at each other full force, both with their own respective weapons and abilities. If you’ve read the comics or played the video game, you know how that goes. Aliens bleed acid and have mouths inside of mouths and claws, Predators have staff spears, guns, blades, and heat seeking tracking guns…whoever wins, we lose, indeed. About halfway through the movie, I did like how they kept to the original material’s plot about humans just being in the middle of this massive attack on each other and not taking sides, though towards the end the humans do have to casually choose one over the other in order to survive. The whole plot is basically an excuse to watch humans get their faces hugged, chests bursted, impaled by spears, and then to see them do it to each other. I did have a slight problem at times with the logic, as a predator can turn around and slice an alien’s head off with no problem, but in another scene an alien of the same size and skill is able to take him down easily. Continuity was never the strong point, I guess.
The final third of the movie is pretty action packed, as Alexa and one lone predator must face an army of aliens on their own, and they form a pseudo truce in order to get out of the pyramid alive. But it does get kind of ridiculous at a few moments, when Alexa and the predator gaze at each other like they wanna just rip each other’s clothes off and make out right then and there…that’s a whole other movie in itself, and not one I’m too fond of seeing, I must admit.
AvP isn’t the worst movie in existence, and it’ll be number one, no question. Anderson could’ve delved a little more into it, but if you just like VS. movies, this’ll suffice. Now I just wanna wait for Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash vs. Michael Myers in space vs. Alien vs. Predator vs. E.T…..place your bets.
The cast is pretty much no-name, as in, no Cruises, Washingtons, Cages, or hell, even Afflecks. You’ve seen them as co-stars, though. Sanaa Lathan (mmm-mmm!!!) is the main Ripley-like hero, Alexa Wood, globe trekker guide extraordinaire. She receives a call from Charles Weyland (Lance Henriksen), a wealthy businessman who wants to be the first in the world to set foot inside a newly discovered pyramid located in Antarctica. Of course, Alexa says it’s idiotic to try, and of course, Weyland says they’ll be in and out within minutes, but this movie’s title being what it is, we all know that won’t be the case. As soon as they hit the entrance of the pyramid, stuff begins to go wrong, thanks in part to the predators knowledge of their entrance.
You can’t discuss this flick without comparison to last year’s Freddy vs. Jason…the similarities are just too clear. Everyone has a favorite horror movie villain, and you either like the Lovecraft-ish Aliens or the 7 foot tall cats with pincers for mouths Predators. The main attraction is them going at each other full force, both with their own respective weapons and abilities. If you’ve read the comics or played the video game, you know how that goes. Aliens bleed acid and have mouths inside of mouths and claws, Predators have staff spears, guns, blades, and heat seeking tracking guns…whoever wins, we lose, indeed. About halfway through the movie, I did like how they kept to the original material’s plot about humans just being in the middle of this massive attack on each other and not taking sides, though towards the end the humans do have to casually choose one over the other in order to survive. The whole plot is basically an excuse to watch humans get their faces hugged, chests bursted, impaled by spears, and then to see them do it to each other. I did have a slight problem at times with the logic, as a predator can turn around and slice an alien’s head off with no problem, but in another scene an alien of the same size and skill is able to take him down easily. Continuity was never the strong point, I guess.
The final third of the movie is pretty action packed, as Alexa and one lone predator must face an army of aliens on their own, and they form a pseudo truce in order to get out of the pyramid alive. But it does get kind of ridiculous at a few moments, when Alexa and the predator gaze at each other like they wanna just rip each other’s clothes off and make out right then and there…that’s a whole other movie in itself, and not one I’m too fond of seeing, I must admit.
AvP isn’t the worst movie in existence, and it’ll be number one, no question. Anderson could’ve delved a little more into it, but if you just like VS. movies, this’ll suffice. Now I just wanna wait for Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash vs. Michael Myers in space vs. Alien vs. Predator vs. E.T…..place your bets.