Where's the heat?

Rating: 5/10 (18 August 2004)

I, like many, have been looking forward to a movie that pitted Alien against Predator for quite some time now. And I have to say that I'm fairly disappointed with the result. Having to wait so long and reading the synopsis ahead of time, I didn't go in with high expectations. However, this movie was littered with so many faults that it's difficult to leave the theater satisfied at all. It's as if they took the canon related to both species and threw it out, without consideration. Being a fan of both movies the creatures came from, I did expect the pyramid below the ice to become literally hot inside. Not for the sake of seeing the actors strip, but because that is the environment the Predator hunts in and the Alien lives in (or at least, the climate in which the eggs are kept). I'm not being too "fan-boy" here, but I do feel the movie didn't stay true to its sources and fans. Speaking of. Did they forget us, when they chose the script? It seems to me the producers picked the one that would garner the PG-13 rating, because it would attract younger audience members. Most of the people who wanted to see this movie are the fans and the fans are around fourteen years older than they were the first time they creamed themselves at the sight of an Alien's skull on a Predator's ship. The script is written as though the writer had no respect for his audience's intelligence. We're told too much of what we can figure out for ourselves. 'Told' being the operative word. A good writer doesn't tell anything. A good writer shows the audience what's happening. They even failed to do that well. For at least the first half of the first fight between Alien and Predator it's impossible for the audience to see what's going on, due to poor cinematography. The camera's either in way too close, at a terrible angle or jumping around as if the camera-person had both tourettes syndrome and ADD. The following fight scenes aren't much better. While you can see more clearly what's happening, they are too short. Very much like the whole movie. The movie's pacing is too fast, which leads into other problems with logic. Can we say no gestation period? And while I started to like the characters, I just didn't care when they died. There is practically no character development in this movie. Aside from that, the acting was well done and it was fun to see both creatures on the big screen at the same time. As others have put it, it's a very "popcorn" movie. And I don't think anyone likes facehuggers in slow-motion.