Review
ALIEN VS. PREDATOR
Starring Sanaa Lathan, Raoul Bova and Lance Henriksen
Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson
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Last year two horror film heavyweights (Jason Voorhees and Freddy Kruger) went toe to toe in the cinematic battle royal Freddy vs. Jason. For some of us geeks it was as good as seeing Robert De Niro and Al Pacino share screen time in Michael Mann’s crime opus Heat. This year, Fox Studios pits the reigning champions of sci-fi, Alien and Predator, against each other. The result is about as entertaining as a root canal.
It’s 2003 and billionaire Charles Wayland (Lance Henriksen) has found a pyramid in Antarctica(!?!!??) He hires an archeologist, a group of drillers and a rock climber (Sanaa Lathan) who leads the crew 2,000 feet underground where the pyramid resides. There they discover (through reading hieroglyphics) that there once was a race of "gods" (Predators) who, every hundred years or so, sacrificially use humans to breed "serpents" (Aliens) for the sole purpose of hunting them. The team soon realizes that they were lured down to the pyramid by the Predators because, according to an ancient clock, it’s hunting time.
Believe it or not, this was one highly anticipated movie they screwed up. What went wrong? There’s plenty of source material to draw inspiration from: four Alien films, two Predator films and a comic book series called Alien vs. Predator. Director Paul W.S. Anderson – not to be confused with Magnolia’s Paul Thomas Anderson – decided to go it alone as sole screenwriter. And he blew it. The acting is terrible (forgivable for this type of film), the story is weak (also forgivable) and the confrontations between the two legends are lame (totally unforgivable!). We geeks pay good money to see cool special effects and epic confrontations. What we get instead is unending exposition and a human/Predator alliance that is without a doubt the most laughable pairing since Elizabeth Berkley rode Kyle MacLachlan in the swimming pool in Showgirls. Hey, at least that scene had nudity.
The real crime here is that the geniuses at Fox made cuts to the film to allow for a summer-friendly PG-13 rating. Yes folks, this would be the first Alien movie suitable for all ages. And it’s the shortest, too, running a scant 87 minutes. An R rating would have given each victim their requisite 30-second death scene filled with the gore that fans have come to demand from each franchise. There was approximately six full minutes of carnage left on the cutting room floor, all in the name of target marketing. That means we get treated to quick cuts just before or just after each character’s impending doom, which makes for one anticlimactic film experience. It’s like getting the rub, without the tug.
Don’t the clowns at Fox know that had they given AVP the expected R rating that the kids would have snuck in anyway? They did for Freddy vs. Jason. |
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