An Insult to longtime fans everywhere

Rating: 3/10 (13 August 2004)

>>>>>***SPOILERS GALORE----I JUST SAW THE MOVIE*****<<<<<
After just watching the movie...I have this to say.
I am a huge fan of the Alien series, and a pretty big fan of Predator. For an indicator of how long I have been a fan of the series, I will tell you first off that I saw Aliens when it came out on video tape in the late 80s and saw Alien 3 in theaters, I obviously saw Alien after its mid-70's release, and it scared me like few movies have ever been able to do since. I saw Predator later, and very much regard it as a good movie, in that it told a well thought-out story, had excellent characters, and an original plot, not to mention a great villain.
I believe a making a good movie means telling a good story, and telling it well. This movie has neither a good story, or, as it seems, a good story teller. What made Alien and Aliens stand out as excellent movies was the fact that Ridley Scott and James Cameron are superb story tellers, which means they make movies that resonate with the audience. The characters in the movie(AVP) are, at best, instantly forgettable, and the dialogue is stupid, unoriginal, and gives no indication any of the characters have a personality. Anderson makes a very feeble attempt to get you to care a little about Lex and Sebastian by giving them each(and a few other characters) painfully boring monologues about "My dad died on a mountain, blah blah here, clichÃ© line here, meaningless dribble there", and letting them have(a few) more than 4 lines to read. What happened to good movies with memorable characters, good plot, and good dialogue? Are those times past us now? Since when does a single monologue pass as character development?
I have no idea of the names of any of the other characters whatsoever, except Charles Bishop Weyland. Which brings me to that point. Lance's character was horribly dry, unemotional, and when he dies, I didn't care, or even notice really. Not only that, the movie tells you nothing of his character, except you assume he is rich beyond all comprehension, and he does something with robots. Which to me, seems like just a passing, muttered excuse to have Lance Hendrickson in the movie. There is nothing even remotely clever about his wasted role, and no discernible relation to Bishop the android is made, only assumed, and definitely not explored or even attempted to explore. It also completely disregards the fact that in Alien 3, the man claimed he was the designer of the Bishop android...so...it just makes no sense, and it just kind of tries to spoon feed you that for some reason, this is the real creator, and not the guy in Alien 3, and doesn't ever even try to tell you why its right.
There are many many many wasted scenes, but one that particularly comes to mind is the sacrificial chamber scene. The scientists seemed to already know they were in danger when the eggs arose, although they should not have had any clue whatsoever about what the eggs were. They showed no curiosity, and immediately drew weapons, then were easily facehugged, and quickly spawned aliens, faster than in any earlier Alien film, literally within minutes of being impregnated there was an embryo bursting from the victims chest...which begs the question, why the hell would you bring weapons to a remote location in Antarctica, and not bring exploration or excavation equipment of any kind? I don't think automatic rifles(with laser sights) and 45 cal. automatic pistols are common equipment for an archaeological expedition. Makes no sense...and some of you may end up accusing me of nitpicking, and you're damn right, I expected a brilliant movie to rank with the works of James Cameron, Ridley Scott and John McTiernan because that's what was promised, and yes those movies are what I judge this one by. There was not a single scene in any of those movies that was blatantly unexplained, or was not logical in terms of the story. There was so very much that was illogical and wrong with this movie.
As for the Predators...of the three, two were brutally slaughtered very quickly, it seemed as if they had no chance at all. The Predator in the original movie was a fast, agile hunter that used clever tactics and stealth to quickly bring down an entire special forces unit, one at a time, in the heavy jungles of South America, by hand, alone. There were 3 of them in this movie, and it seems that the single predator in the first movie could have killed, not only all of the people in this movie by itself, but all three of the Predators in this movie by itself. These predators were slow, easily sneaked up upon, and had no seeming idea of what was going on, but just seemed to kill because that's what they felt like doing...or...something. In the original Predator, it was coming AFTER Arnold and his team, and there wasn't anything they could do about it. In this movie, the Predators just kinda...well...acted like guys in suits. The Original Predator could leap 20 feet in the air from tree to tree, these could kinda wobble around and run kinda. The Original Predator was like a ghost, these were just dead. And things just went from cheesy to outright goofy when Lex and the 'hero' Predator(who, without hesitation, murdered about 4 people a few minutes earlier) became friends and teamed up against the Queen...I thought they might even kiss at one point. And they even had a slo-mo running from danger scene reminiscent of...any movie where a big dude and his hot chick co-star triumphantly defeat whatever it was they're supposed to defeat, and are running from an inevitable explosion.
I basically take this movie as an insult, a spit in the face, of all serious fans like myself. The end is obviously open for a sequel...I say, bring back Ridley Scott or James Cameron for the love of all that is holy...because they are the only ones that could save this franchise now. I only wish they could have had a triumphant end, and not silly garbage like this.
RIP