Nobody goes to AvP expecting Citizen Kane. It’s a fan-boy movie, plain and simple. (“Heh-heh! Wouldn’t it be cool if the Aliens fought the Predators?” “Heh-heh, cool, yeah, that’s why Dark Horse has comic books about it.” “Heh! Cool!”) The only question one’s going to take in with them is: does the movie suck or not, and, if it does, how badly?
Remarkably enough, this movie doesn’t suck.
It’s no Citizen Kane, all right. It’s not even Aliens (which it parallels almost disturbingly). But it rings all the right bells, and plays all the right tropes, and surprises you and even impresses you in a few places. And if it’s a breathtakingly rushed 90 minutes long, that just means there will be some really cool bits in the (inevitable) Directors Cut Super Platinum Extended Edition DVD.
If you like either franchise, or just want some B-movie blood-and-guts-and-acid action, AvP will suit the bill, at least enough to satisfy matinee prices.
Spoilers — seriously — below …
- Plotwise, the movie is structured pretty similarly to Aliens — big corporation funds ostensibly well-prepared expedition to investigate something weird, which turns out to be a bunch of aliens who proceed to take them all apart, except for the buff take-charge-but-with-motherly-instincts who, alongside a warrior sidekick, blows them all to flinders, except for a torqued-off queen who gets dispatched into the cold depths.
There are other parallels as well, if you stretch a bit, and there are some visual and throw-away homages to the Alien and Predator movie franchises to boot. Pleasantly enough, though, they’re simply swift winks to those who recognize them — those who don’t aren’t going to be bothered by them in the least.
And the parallels to Aliens (and, to be sure, any number of other Kill the Monster flicks) are not necessarily bad ones. It worked in that movie, and this movie has enough differences to make it work, too. And if it doesn’t have a Newt (for good or for ill), it does have a similarly interesting ensemble cast — albeit ones who get a lot less screen time before they get done in.
The basic plotline of the Predators building a initiation dungeon on Earth, manned by human cattle and filled with defrosted Aliens, is pretty cool, to be honest, and the “pyramid” dungeon, with its odd, claustrophobic passages and huge, spooky chambers, and its regularly shifting walls, really makes this movie work.
For all that does work, there are two basic flaws, both of which can be laid at the feet of writer/director Paul Anderson. First off, the movie is way too short. Everything plows along at high speed, allowing for minimal suspense. An article I read the other day said that a distinct effort was made to keep the Aliens from showing up immediately, and it’s true that they don’t. But they still show up too quickly, and even if, arguably, there’s no need to drag out a lot of people getting bushwhacked, the time interval between “He’s in trouble” and “Oh, he’s dead now” is disturbingly short. Ditto for most of what else goes on. Characters barely get a few words, gestures, and moments for the audience to say, “Hey, she’s cool, I wonder — oh, she’s been killed,” or, “Hey, I wonder if we’ll see another scene with — oh, he’s dead, too.”
Rush, rush, rush.
The other major plot flaw is that, when all is said and done, nothing has changed. The main protagonist stays pretty much the same (aside from some new scars, an interesting walking stick, and, one would imagine, both a lot of bruises and some serious frostbite). She hasn’t really grown, that we’ve seen. She hasn’t resolved any internal issue. Aside from some interesting experiences in the Antarctic, she could be plopped right back into where we first saw her and she’d seemingly never bat an eyelash.
Since she’s literally the only human survivor, that’s about that for that. Everyone else dies, quickly or slowly, with only a scream or a curse. And she simply just walks/SnowCats away, making us wonder exactly what she’ll tell the folks back on the ship.
As for the very end of the film — yeah, okay, we needed something to punch it up. Does this spell sequel? It could. Or it could simply be a mediocre twist ending.
- The action scenes are okay, even if there’s a lot of jerky action, quick camera cuts, dark shadows, and other obscuring bits. Yes, we get to see plenty of Predator kicking Alien butt, and vice versa, and if that’s what you’re looking for, you’ll probably enjoy it.
- The sfx were also decent, if uninspired. The pyramid was fabulous. The CG Aliens were a bit less so — some nice poses in some places, less so in others. And the “Eliza crossing the ice” flight through the whaling village toward the end — just didn’t quite gel. The CG and overlays were too obvious.
- Why does some Predator equipment get eaten away by the Alien acid, and other bits don’t? If there was a reason, it escaped me, which made me think it was poor writing.
- Acting-wise, it was a decent enough cast. Lance Henriksen as Charles Bishop Weyland was a bit of a poor man’s George C. Scott, but cruised along nicely nonetheless; whatever the spottiness of Weyland’s motivation probably can be blamed on the ankle-deep cutting room floor. Sanaa Lathan as the protagonist Alexa Woods is no Sigourney Weaver, but she does a decent enough job with what she is given. Raoul Bova as Italian archaeologist Sebastian de Rosa doesn’t give me any reason to look up his other movies (more on his character below).
Ewen Bremmer is, to be sure, a lot of fun as geeky Scotsman Graeme Miller. His immediate lovability should be a sure sign that he’s doomed to die horribly, and the writer definitely drags that doom out over a couple of scenes.
The rest of the cast is visibly distinct and each person gets a line or two to establish their character. But they are too quickly swept away like leaves in a firestorm, including, alas, the cute Vasquez analog, played by Agathe De La Boulaye.
- Original music by Harald Kloser. Um .. was there music? I guess there was. Certainly nothing that distinguished itself. Some vaguely Aliens-like riffs, but that was about it.
- The Italian archaeologist is without a doubt the most annoyingly expositional character I’ve encountered for a while. He makes huge leaps of understanding, and then tells us all about stuff he couldn’t possibly know. I don’t believe that Aztec numbering was Base 10, and I’m pretty certain they had a lunar calendar, meaning his instant translation of today’s date is something a bit less than believable. (Indeed, it was, ironically, the least believable bit in the movie.) He tells instead of shows, and serves as a short-hand way for the audience to understand what’s going on, somehow.
- It seems to me we had a lot more chest-bursting and cocooned folks than in Aliens (or most of the other Alien movies). Maybe it was designed for folks who haven’t seen those flicks a dozen times, but some of it felt gratuitous and unneeded.
- How fast to Aliens mature? Because either there were some warriors down in the deep freeze (which we didn’t see), or we had adult Aliens within no more than an hour of chest-burst, as far as I can tell.
- The big gotcha plot development is that the humans — food and incubators to the Aliens, cattle and target-fodder for the Predators — find themselves caught in the middle of the conflict between the two groups. Indeed, by their unexpected meddling (via one too-clever-for-belief archaeologist) they have handicapped the Predators, meaning that the Aliens may actually escape and menace the world.
Thus, Our Remaining Hero manages to ally herself (via grudging respect) with the remaining Predator. Can this Odd Couple survive without killing each other?
Well, evidently, yeah, if they save each other’s lives enough. It all seems to fall together too easily — and the Predators being strong, silent types makes the interaction between the two of them perforce sketchy and limited, so we don’t figure out why the Predator doesn’t simply gut her and take his gun before she can try to parlay.
And, yes, he begins to cut her some slack after she somehow manages to kill an Alien. The immediate turn-about, especially given his mission/goal, feels contrived.
As usual, I harp above more on the bits that struck me badly than on the bits that struck me well. I liked the ensemble (though I disliked the too-brief opportunity we got with each). I liked the visual look of the film, particularly in the central set piece, and how it drove the action. I liked the backstory, and l liked the main thrust of the plot.
And, yeah, watching Predators and Aliens duke it out was (when you could see it) pretty cool.
Not Citizen Kane. Not even Aliens. But quite a bit better than I thought it would be, and one I will probably be waiting for the Extended Edition DVD on.
Regarding point #2, I will only say this:
You have not seen shakey fight-scene camera work. I venture to say you have never in your whole life seen shakey fight-scene camera work, until you have seen Bourne Supremacy (and god help you if you have).
That is all 🙂
Being so close to the screen probably didn’t help with that bit, to be sure.
Mirrored to Blogcritics here .
1. Didn’t care for the direction. I hate those obligatory freeze-the-action shots that turn up in movies these days. At least the holographic-map-to-live-action shot was only used twice; it was old by that time. And, while not necessarily the director’s fault, haven’t we seen the ol’ jump-across-the-broken-bridge-and-barely-grab-the-crumbling-ledge bit more than enough times by now? Sheesh!
2-3. The scenes of Predators fighting Aliens were too clearly CG. They had a jerky, almost stop-motion look about them.
6. Okay dramatic score. (Much better than the pounding drums and too-loud electric guitars of Justice League Unlimited!)
7. Even if the Aztecs did use base 10, did they measure time in minutes of 60 seconds? I don’t think so! Way too many intuitional leaps in this movie. I doubt that the Aztec symbols could be translated into English with such precision, for one.
9. In just 10 minutes, actually! The face-huggers attack, and by the time the pyramid shifts (at the first convenient 10-minute interval) the adult aliens are attacking.
10. I was sure the Pred was going to mimic (as was done in Predator) a particular line, and was very surprised that I was wrong. (You know which line, right?)
11. No Magellanic penguins in Antarctica! They’re found in South America! Crikey. And speaking of Antarctica, both characters who mentioned it were educated travellers who should have known better than to pronounce it “Antartica.”
All in all, I wish I had just waited for the DVD. There was little suspense in this movie (very surprising, given that Dan O’Bannon co-wroteit), and suspense is what made the first two Alien movies work so well (and Predator, to a lesser degree). If it hadn’t been so loud, I might have fallen asleep.
I think the lack of suspence was due to the breakneck 90 minute run time. An extra 30 minutes could have led to a lot more “quiet time” between gruesome deaths (as well as characterization, too).