"Cool" and "Stupid" at the same time?

Rating: 1/10 (13 August 2004)

Well, yes...it certainly is.
**SPOILERS MOST LIKELY**
To Josh, the first review poster, I think you hit the nail on the head, but I'm going to greatly elaborate.
I just saw the midnight showing of AVP minutes ago. I have been a fan of both films series' for some time, Predator and Alien are both brilliant films and Aliens is very close to brilliant. Predator, Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection are garbage in comparison and AVP is just a notch above Alien: Resurrection.
While it was extremely "cool" to see the Alien and the Predator duke it out, so to speak, on the silver screen, the level of "stupidity" that purveyed each frame of this film greatly outweighed that thrill.
Now, Paul W. S. Anderson, has never made a good movie in his life. However, several of his films are riddled with good intentions gone horribly wrong. "Resident Evil" and "Event Horizon" are two good examples of this. You can tell he's trying but it just doesn't pan out. Having seen the interviews with Anderson, he reminds me of myself when I wrote my own version of AVP roughly ten years ago. It wasn't great, but it was a lot better than this crap. However, he has such an enthusiasm for the subject that it would strike confidence into anyone working with him that he's doing the job properly. In fact he evoked a saying that I remember uttering years before the new AVP was even announced: "I've always wanted to make a film with an Alien in it." Well, what I always said was: "I won't be happy until I've made a film with an Alien in it." Hopefully, this hasn't utterly ruined my chances.
**OK, SPOILERS Definitely AFTER THIS, I SWEAR**
But I digress, on to the matter of the film itself. The direction is sloppy and basic at best. Continuity is all over the place and their is little that is interesting about the coverage or editing choices. The only aesthetic elements that are interesting are the Production Design homages to previous films: The dipping bird in the opening as seen in the original ALIEN, the sparkling nature of the sets evoking the opening of ALIENS.
NERDAGE (skip if you don't know much or care about the AVP universe):
The Matrix-esque effects sequences of facehuggers leaping through mid-air at incredible slow motion, are completely uncalled for and pointless. They are a pathetic attempt to thrust the genre into the new era. Also, the borrowing of the Aliens and facehuggers from ALIEN 4 is a terrible choice. The scuttling of the facehuggers prior to launching themselves from the egg completely takes away from the frightening aspect of their speed. The point is that they DON'T give you a warning. The leap BEFORE you can discern what the hell is going on. BEFORE "Trainspotting's" Spud (Ewen Bremner) is able to shoot one in mid-air while cocooned to the hive wall. Give me a break.
Also, since when did an Alien gestate in five minutes? OK, given what we know from the previous films, the only time we've seen an incubation from beginning to end is in the first ALIEN: total elapsed time? 25 hours including the hour he was up and about. The only other was Ripley's gestation of a queen in ALIEN 3 and that was several days. I don't believe its right to convolute something we know simply to fit the idea around the story you've made up for it. As much as I sound like an AVP version of a Trekkie, when you lay out ground rules, you structure your story around them. Then again, that's just good screen writing. Thus, in a sequel, you have ground rules already laid out and you can take liberties in certain areas (as yet unexplained history, for example), but others are unmalleable (is that a word?).
In ALIENS we hear a conversation between Bishop and Ripley that goes as follows:
BISHOP: "The acid blood oxidizes after the creature's death completely neutralizing."
RIPLEY: "That's very interesting Bishop but that doesn't really get us anywhere, does it?"
I'm willing to allow that the final Predator was able to us a recently severed Alien finger to burn a symbol into his helmet and himself, however, after roughly twenty minutes, the same finger would no longer be producing volatile acid. How, in god's name then, does the predator use it to burn a symbol into Sanaa's cheek. We know just how fast it neutralizes after being exposed to oxygen because we saw it happen in ALIEN. No more than a minute or two.
One last note: the Queen Alien dies from drowning!? Hypothermia!? You get my point.
VISUAL EFFECTS:
As far as the creature effects go, the Aliens were...beautiful. Aside from the design, they moved perfectly and Anderson's choice for animatronics and guys in suits over full CGI was a great choice. For some reason, once the Predator took its helmet off though, the mandibles seemed fake to me. The Predator head effects were less convincing than the ones in P1 and P2. Then again, that could be simply the film stock used in this was much clearer and flaws were obvious.
CAST:
The cast were primarily ineffectual. Sanaa Lathan did the basic job as the unwitting heroine, but she lacked any kind of spark to make her a memorable character. Lance Henriksen, although an interesting casting choice, was also as deadpan as the rest. I can't really say much more about this because nothing stood out about the cast to me. The performances ranged from bad to mediocre at best and it was obvious that this film was not about the characters but about the combat.
What do we know about these people? Nothing. Sanaa's character, for example, we find out that she is adventurous and responsible. She also either has an intense fear of the dark, or, more likely, a huge complex about being alone: hence her huge mood shift once all her fellow humans die off around her. She goes from strong, stoic, wooden and responsible to cowering, weepy and jumpy.
There is a moment between Ewen Bremner and some guy with a scarred up face about their children, and Ewen can't shut up about them at the beginning, giving some half-hearted attempt at audience sympathy for these poor, unwitting souls. However, it is so transparent as a trick that it evokes no emotional response whatsoever.
Enough about the ineffectual acting.
SCRIPT
Now, as much as the studio would have you believe, Paul Anderson is not 100% responsible for this script. In fact, he's probably about 10% responsible, noting the other name on the credit: Shane Salerno. He is a fairly prominent shadow writer in Hollywood. He's not a ghost writer, he does get some credit, but this is the guy responsible for the meat of Armageddon and SHAFT, where others will assume responsibility. Seeing how bad the script is, I don't blame him for allowing the studios to credit Anderson with a "Written and Directed by" tag. Anyway, it's BS.
Regardless, there are some interesting homages, some might say rip-offs from the original Dark Horse AVP comic (the chained up Queen, the marking of the female main character by the Predator, the idea of Predators infesting and hunting on planets for initiation rights, etc.). However, outside of that, everything is mundane and predictable.
The new gadgets the Predators wield are just rehashes of old ones. Nothing special. Frankly, I prefer the disc (Predator 2) to these crappy multi-bladed things. It seems that these fledgling Predators were on a budget. They were also given the crappy versions of the nets as well.
Disregarding the lowest common denominator dialogue, the horrible formulaic structure, the convoluted situations and the hackneyed and rehashed ending, the script also suffers from one more huge downfall: length. The film is 87 minutes long. It feels like the 2nd act was condensed into five minutes and we skip straight to the climax. We have a twenty minute or so set-up, then we are exploring the pyramid for another fifteen minutes while the Predators approach. Then everyone days in no more than a ten minute time span, and then Sanaa Lathan teams up with the last surviving Predator to result in a drawn out finale action sequence that really offers no thrill except for one move the Predator makes against the Queen, which, while predictable, did make me smile.
IN CONCLUSION:
Most people might find a few of the sequences fun at times but this 87 minute shlock-fest is simultaneously too long and too short. It is its own paradox. There was such potential in this film and it was absolutely destroyed by everyone involved with this particular production except for the animatronic artists and the guy in the Alien suit.
This film makes almost no effort to come close to the quality of its source material. I will say it was slightly better than Alien 4 and only because of the simple combination of the two creatures occupying the same cinematic space. Its design department was also slightly better. Alien 4's atmosphere was interesting, but completely inappropriate. That's another story though.
If you are a casual audience member and don't really care about quality, renting this might be fun. Multiple viewings are not recommended. If you are a fan of either franchise, however, in any way, avoid this like the plague. It will crush you. Also, if you know the slightest thing about making films, avoid this in the same anti-plague-like manor.
0/10