ALIEN VS. PREDATOR
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2004 David N. Butterworth
** (out of ****)
There's a certain inalienable truth (no pun intended) that if you put the
Alien franchise and the Predator franchise together in the same room we, the
audience, have absolutely no chance of winning.
It's the classic juvenile debate. In a fight, who would win: 100 ninjas
or 100 WWF smackdown champions? In a fight, who would win: Freddy or Jason?
In a fight, who would win: two turtledoves or a partridge in a pear tree? Just
as long as the filmmakers leave room for a sequel it doesn't much matter (and
yes, "Alien Vs. Predator" leaves the door open--wide open--for "AVP2").
To date there have been four Alien movies and two Predator movies so right
there you have some sense of our mortal kombatants (sic.) respective popularity.
That staple of a "rag tag bunch of space derelicts" movies Lance Henriksen
("Aliens," "Alien3," "Alien 49 7/8") is featured as asthmatic "Money" magazine
cover model Charles Bishop Weyland of Weyland Industries. As the film opens,
he's assembling a crack team of drillers and riggers for a secret mission to
the wilds of Antarctica on the icebreaker Piper Perabo led by tough cookie cutter
Alexa Woods ("Out of Time"'s Sanaa Lathan) after Weyland's trans-global researchers
discover a huge pyramid buried some 2,000 feet beneath an abandoned whaling
station. The pyramid looks part Aztec, part Cambodian, and part Egyptian. The
question is, who built it and why? (Nobody, not even "Trainspotting"'s Ewen
Bremner, seems to notice those rather obvious Alien vs. Predator hieroglyphs
cut into the stone.)
Others, it would seem, are also interested in the pyramid. Predatory, outer
space others with dreadlocks, cloaking devices, and hand-operated Cuisinarts.
Directed by the chiefly Brit Paul W.S. Anderson (not to be confused with
"Punch-Drunk Love"'s P.T. Anderson) with the same kind of mechanized murk he
brought to the likes of "Event Horizon" and "Soldier" (with Kurt Russell), "Alien
Vs. Predator" is a superfluous if not entirely boring romp, littered with inanities
and inaccuracies and logic loopholes you could drive a Hummer 2 through (if,
indeed, people drove through holes). It's all rather grimy and silly and low-lit
and once the pyramid starts closing up every ten minutes, not unlike the Rubic's
cubist house in "Thir13en Ghosts," all hell (and reasoning) breaks loose even
further.
Sure "Alien Vs. Predator" is junk, but it's mindless junk, and I didn't
hate it nearly as much as I ought to have, thought I would, and/or everyone
else. I still find H.R. Giger's alien a rather fascinating creation and it's
all here in its gelatinous, gooey glory--facehuggers, chestbursters, and the
big momma queen herself (to which, it would seem to be a series requirement,
at least one person calls an ugly S.O.B.). The Predator doesn't do much for
me though: just a guy in an invisible suit. And when it teams up with a Ripley-esque
Woods in the final showdown, well... that's just plain ridiculous.
Face it. "Alien Vs. Predator" isn't a film, it's a marketing ploy, a promotional
abbreviation that reiterates the same exact thinking as when Universal first
paired Frankenstein with the Wolfman some 60 years ago. Kids love movie monsters--the
film is rated PG-13--so why not put their two favorites together in the one
film?
My money's on the partridge, son.
--
David N. Butterworth
dnb@dca.net
Got beef? Visit "La Movie Boeuf"
online at http://members.dca.net/dnb
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