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 Chris' Review: I don't really have a strong opinion of this movie. I even waited a few days to let everything kind of sink in, and I still don't have that much I really want to say. The film has dozens of plot holes and scientific impossibilities...but let's face it, we're talking about a couple of fictional alien species battling it out with humans caught in the middle. If your suspension of disbelief isn't thrown by the plot as a whole, you're not going to care that the heroine is standing in the Antarctic wearing only a sweater. So I'm just going to let that part of it be. The story itself had an interesting twist, making the Predator species into deities. Their principal rite of passage? Starting a race of "Aliens" and then hunting them. Long story short, it was practiced every 100 years, and every once in a while the Predators would actually lose and be forced to vaporize the area. So in 2004, it's the anniversary. And they're back. The humans kind of screw things up this time, though...and the Predators are without their weapons. I actually liked that part of the story. It's like the Predators have sacred weapons that they only use during the hunt, and they have to retrieve them from the temple maze, which kept shifting to confuse Predator and prey alike. You can see where this is going. So I won't bother with any more synopsis. The special effects were astounding. This movie is worth seeing on that premise alone. No wires, no unrealistic computer generated stuff, no seams between the live action and the special effects. Every ribbon of smoke from the acidic blood of the "Aliens" to the fluorescent blood of the Predators was great. It all sparkled with realism. (One minor flaw, near the end, the "hero" Predator dies and they pull back for the tear-jerker shot... and it looked more like green Playdoh® than fluorescent blood.) Both the Alien series and the Predator series have always been Sci-Fi/Action/Horror amalga... but this movie ended up being more of a buddy action flick. I (along with a few of my fellow movie goers) kept expecting to see Joe Pesci pop out. "What Leo wants, Leo Getts! Get it? Getts?" The final human (naturally the only one who didn't want to come out to this site, thought it was too dangerous,) befriends the last of the Predators. There are some very hokey moments that make this into the most interesting buddy action flick I've ever seen. If you can appreciate the cheese for what it is, then the movie works on a much greater scale. If you assume that the writers were trying to be serious with this match-up.. then you've missed the point. The acting by everyone was marginal. Nothing really to report. You won't see a single one of these people up for an Oscar® in this film. I think that's why I really didn't have much to say about this film. Everything was marginal with the exception of the special effects. The concept is great, but they didn't do great things with it. The Hollywood machine just pumped out another soft, long, brown bough of unimaginative movie fare, and decorated it with some pretty flowers, hoping that we wouldn't notice the stench of mediocrity that lay beneath. So I give this movie one thumb up. It entertained me, it even had me gripping the armrest in a couple places, but overall it really didn't do much with the material it was siphoning from.   Jim's Review: Some movies confuse me. It's not that I don't understand them, heavens no. Most films nowadays aren't TOO challenging in the plot-comprehensibility area. It's just that I can't fathom the reason why they were conceived of in the first place, much less written, shot, and released upon an unsuspecting public. I often find myself wondering "Who ASKED for this film?" "Alien Vs. Predator" is NOT one of those films. Looking at it, I'm able to figure out EXACTLY why it was put together, and who was asking for it. However, it still confuses me a little...even if it’s for entirely different reasons than most. Fans of the separate (but not exactly equal) ancestors of this film began to salivate over it long before frame one was ever committed to celluloid. Much like the Marvel vs. DC comic book crossovers of a few years ago, and last year's "Freddy Vs. Jason", "Alien Vs. Predator" was cooked up for one reason, and one reason only: To please the fanboys. The overgrown schoolyarders who used to loudly and emphatically argue over whether Green Lantern could beat up Superman. The guys who thought it would be cool to see Sonic try to out-platform Mario. "Let's put a bee and a praying mantis in a jar, shake it up, and see if they’ll fight!" Sad that, even when aiming at a low-end, bottom-feeding target demographic such as this, the film still phones it in. Anyone who's seen 1979's "Alien", 1987's "Predator", or any of their diminishing-returns hellspawn sequels knows who the king and queen of the chessboard are. In this corner, wearing dreadlocks, laser-sights, and switchblade gauntlets, it's the Master of the Blaster, Da Predataaah! And in THIS corner, wearing all black, with the razor-sharp tail, acid blood, and thousands of children who just want a (face) hug, The AYYYYYY-lee-unnnn! It's an age-old struggle writ large: Technology vs. animal instinct. Heavily-trained battle skill vs. brute bloodlust. Calculated precision vs. berzerker rage. So why is it so damn boring? In the opening scenes, what comes to be the battle arena is introduced with the flimsiest of pretenses...Private satellites from the shadowy (and never well-defined) Weyland Corporation have picked up an unusual heat signature a mile beneath the ice of Antarctica. On the preliminary overheads, a shape emerges from far beneath the frost: A pryamid. Yeah. A pyramid. Under the ice. Of course, this makes zero sense on a dozen levels...and continues not to. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. In order to be among the first to claim the nascent find for mankind, corporation head Charles Weyland (Lance Henriksen, looking even more craggy and haggard than is his trademark) assembles a crack team of archeologists, expeditioners and experts to head to the big ice cube, and check it out. Once they get there, the team discovers they're not alone. Someone (or someTHING) has decided to begin their work for them. Inexplicably, there is a 20' wide tunnel bored into the ice leading to the front doorstep of the subterranean ziggurat, but there's no other crew or equipment in sight. Of course, having seen the preceding scenes, we know the score, and can see what’s coming. Once the adventurers, led by Alexa Woods (Sanaa Lathan, whose character's surname gives a good approximation of her acting style) reach the structure, things REALLY start to get confusing. The team's hunky head relics expert Sebastian (Raoul Bova) reasserts his earlier ludicrous conclusion that because the pyramid contains elements of Incan, Egyptian, and Cambodian design, it must have been built by all three. The rest of the cannon fodder on the crew hardly bats an eyelash before accepting his explanation that three civilizations thousands of years and millions of miles apart could have somehow, and at some point, all occupied ANTARCTICA, plus had the tools and resources to build an enormous pyramid a mile beneath the ice. This is forgivable, provided the filmmakers hadn't expected the audience to swallow it as well...But they do. Before long, the titular baddies show up, and begin a heavily stylized, H.R. Giger-choreographed dance of death in which the last beastie standing will be declared the victor. The humans caught in the crossfire wind up just as baffled as the audience as they stumble around like bulls in a china shop tripping traps, falling down holes, and generally making nuisances of themselves just as much to the audience as to the extraterrestrials. What follows is a ridiculously convoluted excursion through a massive, ludicrously mechanized Rubik's cube of a monument where the team is first disoriented, then separated, then systematically eliminated by either one side or the other. Of course, in typical Hollywood fashion, the surviving human characters eventually have the obligatory standing-around-talking scene where they somehow manage to figure out exactly what’s going on, and the purpose of the structure, despite their environment offering little clues to either them or the audience. At that point, a clear plan of action emerges apropos of not much, but it’s all eye-rollingly contrived, dishearteningly obligatory, and more full of holes than a cheese grater. Thus, by the time there emerges an obvious side to root for, there is no longer much of a reason to care much who "wins". When all’s said and done, "A.v.P." turns out to be a niche film made to appease the die-hards, but it’s destined to leave everyone else with a less-than-savory taste in their mouths. Especially once the credits roll, and the tacked on denouement once again proves the old saw about not being able to please all of the people all of the time. "Alien Vs. Predator" gets a flat score. No thumbs in either direction. It was simply average in every way. All that saves it from edging into negative numbers is the undeniable, time-tested cool of the title characters, and the admitted thrill of the nifty (albeit fewer-than-you’d-hope-for-given- the-promise-of-the-title) scenes of them kicking the intergalactic doo-doo out of each other.
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