Silly Vs. Disappointing

Rating: 1/10 (15 August 2004)

Like most people who took the time to see this film, I am a fan of the 2 Predator movies and the first two Alien movies. They were all solid sci-fi action movies that entertained and sometimes scared. This project has the potential to be great. Sadly, it wasn't.
Last year's Freddy VS. Jason was a match-up movie that got it right: it stayed true to the mythology of both movies, found a solid reason for the battle, and offered up some great fight scenes. AVP does none of this. Writer/Director Paul W.S. Anderson plays dice with both franchises, changing everything from the Predator's signature infra-red vision to the incubation time of the Aliens. AVP's biggest weakness is the cast. The Predator movies had big name stars (Arnold Schwarzengger, Danny Glover) to carry them, while the Alien movies had great casts who made the experience seem shockingly real. AVP has a cast of no names led by Lance Henriksen. Lance is a good actor, and it's good to see him in the franchise, but even he can't save the film.
I expected much, much better from Paul Anderson. His directorial debut, Shopping, was a great movie and he has proven over the years that he can make both decent horror movies (Event Horizon, Resident Evil) and satisfying action movies (Soldier, Mortal Kombat). This movie is somewhere between action and horror, and neither one is done right. The scary moments aren't that scary and the action moments aren't that great. Don't even get me started on the ending. Anderson's direction isn't technically bad, but his writing is atrocious. If Anderson had been forced to collaborate with people who were more knowledgeable about both franchises, it would have been a much better movie. It isn't fair to place all of the blame on Anderson, however. Anderson does much better when he's allowed to make an R rated movie, but greedy Fox executives demanded a PG-13 film because more people can legally buy tickets to it. The irony of this: If these 13 year-olds haven't seen the R rated films that the franchise is based on, why would they see AVP? This film needed to be R. New Line understood that when they made FVJ. You can't make a violent film without violence.
AVP won't entertain fans of either franchise, because it contradicts established lore in both of them. Casual viewers will bored as well, by the bad acting, bad dialogue, and the silly ending (which I won't give away).
Final rating: 0 stars out of 5.
This is a major disappointment.