Better Than You Think

Rating: 7/10 (22 April 2018)

Call it lowering standards or blind fanboyism, but I place myself in the 'AVP is sort of good' camp. While the film definitely has its issues and doesn't live up to the potential of, say, the 1991 Peter Briggs script or certain fan fiction, it is not the train wreck people make it out to be.
15 years in the making, after a 1989 comic book followed by an easter egg in 1990's Predator 2, AVP was finally there in summer 2004. Fans were concerned about the choice to let Paul W.S. Anderson write and direct. While he's definitely made some mistakes along the way, it actually seems like a pretty logical choice in retrospect. He made a pretty entertaining Alien knock-off with 1997's Event Horizon, and his 1995 Mortal Kombat adaptation is generally considered to be one of the better video game movies out there. The same can be said for the original Resident Evil, his last film before directing AVP, which, unlike some of the sequels, wasn't half bad.
Granted, Anderson is no Ridley Scott or John McTiernan. While he is a superb cinematographer who really creates a sense of dread and impending doom in AVP's lengthy set-up (aided by glorious set design), when the action finally begins it is somewhat underwhelming. The camera is shaky, the editing is choppy and the amount of actual Alien/Predator fights is quite limited. We get one major showdown with the lead Alien, 'Grid', and one climactic battle with the Alien Queen. Between that, the action is limited to several short skirmishes including the welcome return of the Predator's plasma cannon.
AVP's characters are not as engaging as Alien's or as iconic as Predator's. Still, Sanaa Lathan - who I was unfamiliar with beforehand - manages to fill the huge heroine-shaped void left by Sigourney Weaver in this first Ripley-less Alien film. Lathan's portrayal of Lex is stern and righteous, even if she has little to work with. Lance Henriksen serves to connect the film to the Alien mythos by playing an ancestor to Alien 3's Bishop II (it's obvious Anderson is more of an Alien fanboy). The human/Predator team-up is a bit cheesy, but makes sense strategically - Predators function in a higher manner like humans, and working together against the Aliens was the rational thing to do.
Much has been said of AVP's maligned PG-13 rating. While I think horror in general is brought down by too much emphasis on gore as cheap shock value (I'm looking at you, Alien: Resurrection), the rating does result in a bizarrely bloodless chestburster scene, which is as great an offense as Live Free Or Die Hard's neutered 'yippee-ki-yay' line. Then again, the second AVP demonstrates that more gore does not a better movie make.
But let's focus on the positive things here - even if they could be better, the Alien/Predator confrontations are a thrill to finally see on the big screen. It's great fun to see the two creatures interact and how their abilities play off against each other, given that they were never designed to co-exist. It's amazing happenstance, for instance, that Aliens established that the creatures don't show up on infrared, which just so happens to be the Predator's way of tracking its quarry. Also, the amazing set design and cinematography make the film look like a 100+ million tentpole flick, when in reality it cost about half as much. There is also a plethora of easter eggs and throwbacks to previous films, especially the Alien half, that will please many fans. To top it off, much of the film looks great SFX-wise. The CGI looks a bit dated now, but is used only when necessary. Much of the creature effects are physical, and look better than ever. The poop-brown color and excessive slime from Alien: Resurrection are wisely ditched, and the Predators retain their tribal look (admittedly, AVPR had better looking Predators).
In the end, I think many detractors had been waiting for an AVP film so long they already had a perfect vision of it in their heads, and the film betrayed that vision by being something else. AVP could have been much more and things really hit a snag with the awful sequel. The perfect AVP film is still out there somewhere, waiting to be made.