Too many people to satisfy leave the film hollow

Rating: 4/10 (16 August 2004)

Hollywood has provided us with some magical movie pairings in its history. Martin and Lewis, Astaire and Rogers, Lemmon and Mattheu, to name a few. Our familiarities with these actors and their various characters have resulted in the multitudes lining up around the block for the next installment of their mischievous adventures.
Usually, the pairings are put together because they are perceived as nice people who are bettered by someone of equal stature. Though Lewis was the laughs and Martin was the straight guy, the two worked in harmony and were never better than when teamed together.
But a funny thing started happening in Hollywood in the new millennium. People started accepting opposites teamed together to fight against a common cause. Blade II had our title character teaming up with the same vampires that so craved his demise and in X-Men 2, our heroes joined forces with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants as they fought an ever-growing threat to their existence. (*Please don't e-mail me to belabor the point that films such as Frankenstein vs. The Wolfman have been around before color film was even created).
With audiences launching these new duos into number one weekend box office stature, it was no surprise to see two baddies in Freddy and Jason do battle in 2003. With a $100 million in box office bonanza and the opening of the door to other potential bad vs. badder films I thought it wouldn't be long before we saw Godzilla vs. King Kong, Critters vs. Gremlins or Bigfoot vs. Jaws (granted, I will agree that the logistics behind getting a land creature and a water dweller to stand battle are remote, but one can dare to dream).
But maybe the easiest to team in the present future were the Predator and Alien from their respective titled films. These two creatures had already fought in their own comic book series, did battle in trading cards, and threatened to wreak havoc on the world in a video game. Their progression to a duel on the big screen was therefore inevitable.
For those of you who may require an Extra-Terrestrial Reminder 101 course, Predator is the same creature that had the two Governors (Schwarzenegger of California and Ventura of Minnesota) do battle with the beast with dental issues in 1987. He has brute strength, the ability to become invisible and an arsenal of weaponry that can slice, dice and skin someone quicker than any of the late night infomercial giveaways. Mr. Predator has appeared on our planet twice, once thwarted by Arnold and another by Danny Glover in the 1990 sequel.
Alien has had a better string of sequential life. Well known directors such as Ridley Scott, James Cameron and David Fincher have all collaborated in bringing Sigourney Weaver's nightmare to the screen no less than four times.
The Aliens are a fast multiplying populous that use humans as hosts for their breeding. They have a razor sharp teeth and a jaw that jettisons like a cobra towards their intended prey. Their blood is a form of acid and their hunt is usually carried out in packs. The world has been lucky to avert bringing these creatures to our earth. Lucky that is, until now.
Alien vs. Predator is an interesting film concept for many reasons. Maybe most interesting is that the two title colliders don't speak -which can be both a blessing and a curse with these kinds of films. In order to try and explain the plot and to add some kind of pleasurable facials to the screen, director Paul W.S. Anderson constructed a story that included humans intertwined with the blood feud between these two species (to be true, the comic book stories had humans as go-betweens as well). As outlined, an archaeological expedition in the Antarctica reveals a pyramid that might date back eons before that of those in Egypt. As the team of explorers, led by moneybags Charles 'Bishop' Weyland (Lance Henricksen), enter the fortress, they soon find themselves between three young Predators that have come to the temple as a sort of training exercise to earn their right to Predatorhood (?). It's kind of like when Luke Skywalker went to Dagobah to be trained by Yoda, 'cept in this instance, there isn't a cute green puppet who talks like Kermit on helium. Instead, we have creatures that fight to the death, rip each other apart and although they don't have facial expressions, we get the immediate impression that these two species really don't like each other.
The second interesting detail in the film is like the Freddy and Jason clash, audiences will be split in who they root for. This isn't as clean cut as say Spider-Man vs. Doctor Octopus. Legions of fans have followed the career paths of both alien creatures and alliances have been formed. Although my audience tended to vouch more for Predator than Alien, I figured that it is probably a 50-50 split down the middle if Angus Reid ever decided to waste more of our country's time.
So now comes the easy part, the review. Alien vs. Predator, for all it's history, back story and the length of time it has taken to get these two faves in front of a mass audience, fails on so many levels. To critique everything that is wrong with the film would take much more of your (and my) time than should be licensed, so I'll just try and hit on the major pitfalls.
First was the violence factor. Movie aficionados can correct me if I am wrong, but the Alien and Predator franchises always carried the R-rating due to their excessive violence and bloodletting. 20th Century Fox, I suppose, has tried so hard to get a wider audience into the de-clenching of wallets and purses everywhere, that the film has forgone the way of the thrill and the spill and instead left us with a lot of jumping, running, yelling and off screen violence (I guess creatures killing creatures is less of a issue for the MPAA than having humans as the major dietary choice).
Secondly, I have to say that for the dialogue that the humans do get to orate, they do so with humorous results, and this is not intended as a good thing. Where their predecessors had such cool lines as 'I ain't got time to bleed' and 'Stay away from her you BITCH!', AVP offers 'You're one ugly motherf****r'. Yawn.
I was conflicted when thinking of how to evaluate the performance of the human actors in AVP. Although pivotal to the story they were not really developed. They help us understand the situation, (ex. 1,000 miles from help on the most isolated place on earth) but when one of the crew happens to read a few wall scribbles and utters 'This is all starting to make sense', I wondered how could anyone in their right mind be able to put these pieces together so quickly. That said, the humans are primarily a food or carnage source, so maybe I should take it easier on them.
Where I can take pot shots is with director Paul W.S. Anderson. Responsible for also the story and screenplay, Anderson just doesn't seem to be the right person to helm such an anticipated franchise, and maybe his lack of experience is exactly why almost every scene in the movie I thought was a rip off from another. The recruitment scenes reminded me of Sphere, the setting reminded me of John Carpenter's The Thing and the ending reminded me of every horror film ever made that wants to spin off to another sequel. Although I have no doubts that Anderson probably loved both these characters, I think he tried to tread too much water and keep the comic book people happy and the respective fans of both aliens. This, therefore he didn't allow for a lot of wiggle room in terms of story and Anderson doesn't go out on a limb and favor one species over another. Too bad.
But it was maybe the camera work that was the most disappointing (that and the fact they are in the Antarctica and no one seems cold nor has breath that is visible due to the temperature). The shots are all jumpy and the scenes of the two creatures doing battle is so quickly edited that I had a hard time figuring out who was on top of whom. You would think that with all the money they saved by having nary a familiar face in the cast (Lance, notwithstanding), that they could have used their budget to give us a battle scene that we would remember rather than one hard to follow.
So now that it is said and done, I am thankful that I don't have to read on movie message boards everywhere that this movie was in some sort of a development phase. However, now that it is completed, I do question how much development actually went into the film and it's final result.