Dan Owen reviews
AVP: Alien Vs Predator
'Whoever wins... we lose'
Viewed at Odeon, Lincoln Wharf
Alien Quadrilogy: 
Predator Sp.Edn:
Predator 1 & 2:
- Cert:
- Running time: 101 minutes
- Year: 2004
- Released: 22nd October 2004
- Widescreen Ratio: 2.35:1 (Super 35)
- Sound: DTS, Dolby Digital 5.1, SDDS
Director:
(Mortal Kombat, Soldier, Resident Evil)
Producers:
Gordon Carroll, John Davis, David Giler, Wyck Godfrey, Lawrence Gordon,
Thomas M. Hammel, Walter Hill, David Minkowski, Henning Molfenter, Mike
Richardson, Matthew Stillman & Chris Symes
Screenplay:
(based on characters created by Dan O’Bannon, Ronald Shusett, Jim Thomas & John Thomas)
Cinematographer:
Music:
James Seymour Brett, Harald Kloser, Thomas Schobel & Thomas Wanker
Cast:
Alexa Woods: Sanaa Lathan
Sebastian de Rosa: Raoul Bova
Charles Bishop Weyland: Lance Henriksen
Graeme Miller: Ewen Bremner
Maxwell Stafford: Colin Salmon
Mark Verheiden: Tommy Flanagan
Joe Connors: Joseph Rye
Adele Rousseau: Agathe De La Boulaye
Rusten Quinn: Carsten Norgaard
Thomas Parks: Sam Troughton
Alien Vs Predator (AVP),
has been a project trapped in that cinematic abyss
known as development hell for 10 years now. Unfortunately, hell seems to be
defrosting recently, with the success of last year's Freddy Vs Jason
spurring 20th Century Fox to finally make this clash of the titans.
Set in the present time (just one of the movie's budgetary-influenced sins)
AVP finds industrial billionaire Charles Bishop Weyland discovering a
pyramid 2000 feet under the Antarctic ice. Weyland quickly assembles a team
to venture under the ice floor, where they find themselves caught in a
battle between Predators and Aliens.
The reviews have been pretty scathing for AVP, with fans sharpening their
knives way back when Paul W.S Anderson was announced as the writer-director.
Anderson is a British director with good intentions, but he lacks the
ability to create anything original with his limited abilities behind the
camera and formulaic writing.
Having made a niche for himself in Hollywood, by creating relatively cheap
and moderately successful video-game tie-ins (Mortal Kombat and Resident
Evil), Anderson was handed the reigns on Alien Vs Predator.
The idea has been in gestation since an in-joke in Predator 2 - when an
Alien skull was seen in a Predator's spaceship. It was an inspired moment
that quickly spawned a successful Dark Horse comic-book series, a series of
computer games... and now a Hollywood movie.
Putting aside the fact Alien Vs Predator is a ridiculous idea that should
have remained inside the pages of a comic; Anderson's movie is actually a
great deal of fun if you're looking for boneheaded action and an occasional
thrill for fans of either extra-terrestrial killing machine.
Anderson desperately tries to crank up the tension by slowly introducing us
to his cast of dispensable, clichéd characters. It's a laudable attempt, but
with a title like Alien Vs Predator it only serves to test the audiences'
patience. Anderson's 45-minute build-up is slow and painfully formulaic -
introducing us in mechanical fashion to the gutsy no-nonsense heroine, the
geek with a family, the handsome foreign scientist, etc.
Only B-movie stalwart Lance Henriksen (The Terminator), in an admittedly
neat link to the Alien saga, manages to carve out a half-way decent
character - as the progenitor of his Bishop character from
Aliens
and
Alien 3.
The rest of the underwritten cast just wander the screen as alien
fodder, spouting terrible dialogue designed to drive the hackneyed plot
forward.
However, for all its faults, the promise of Alien/Predator fisticuffs
manages to keep you entertained and occasionally thrilled - despite the loss
of make-up wiz Stan Winston, whose absence renders the Predators as
oversized wrestlers with silly masks.
Fortunately, the Aliens are brought to the screen with much better success.
Even their CGI doubles are more successfully integrated than in 1997's Alien
Resurrection. Well, for the most part, anyway...
Unfortunately, in a sly effort to increase Fox's profit, AVP has been given
a 15 certificate (PG-13 in the US!) So the blood-letting we've come to
expect from the Alien and Predator franchises is seriously diminished. The
potent, brooding fear of an Alien movie is missing - as is the blood-soaked
horror of the Predator films. In their place is a variety of fight scenes
straight from an episode of Power Rangers. Fortunately these contain enough
violence to wake audiences up - despite the manic editing and overused of
close-ups!
In a nutshell, AVP is a cynical crowd-pleaser for audiences who just want to
see Aliens versus Predators on the big screen. Anderson's attempt to weave a
back-story into the Alien/Predator mythology comes across as a flimsy mix of
Congo
and
Stargate.
His attempt to combine the two franchises only serves to
demystify the Predator character and ride roughshod over the Alien saga's
chronology
On the bright side, AVP sustains its runtime fairly well once the puzzle-box
pyramid traps the human victims inside to contend with the aliens. It
contains enough sequences to please teenaged fans of both horror characters
- particular the return of the Alien Queen; visualized here as a cross
between a Praying Mantis and a stampeding T-Rex!
If you don't take AVP seriously (and with a title like that, who will?) then
there is enough here to satisfy its target demographic. Connoisseurs of
either standalone franchise will find much to grumble over here, and it's a
shame budget/certificate restrictions limited the possibilities of the
project... but, this isn't the total turkey you may have been expecting.
DIRECTION
PERFORMANCES
PLOT
SOUND/MUSIC
SPECIAL FX
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OVERALL
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Review copyright © Dan Owen, 2004.
E-mail Dan Owen
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DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
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Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
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