AVP: Alien vs. Predator

The Alien is degraded to a drooling hopscotch, leaving the remnants of its sophistication in the original tetralogy - and mainly because of that, Anderson loses again with me this time. While the unsympathetic main characters acquaint themselves with the chilling environment and themselves, it's more boredom than a major annoyance. But when the alien newborn hatches a few minutes after meeting the facehugger, the queen agilely runs around and the predator senselessly respects the insignificant human, I wearily bury my head in my hands and leave. Shameful. (28/12/2004)

Alien vs. Predator is surprisingly well-filmed with nice special effects, dynamic editing and brisk action. And though the first fight between the Predator and the Alien was unwatchable, it still filled me with the rapture of my teenage years. What drags the film down to the level of average, however, is the UNBELIEVABLY stupid screenplay. The fact that Paul W.S. Anderson only steals wouldn’t matter so much, but the way that he sticks the stolen bits together with even more careless glue is a sight to see. With a better screenplay and longer runtime, this could have been excellent entertainment. P.S.: I was a bit bothered by the overall “humiliation” of the Alien race. Personally, I have more respect for it than I do for the plodding Predators. (08/11/2004)

Oww. Utter idiocy and Anderson's unintentional handbook for "How to not make a great movie, or any movie at all". Anderson takes two of the MOST BRUTAL sci-fi creatures and throws them into a PG-13, places the story on the ground, which matters not one bit because the whole thing takes place in the parrot-eyed bowels of some kind of pyramid, and throws in a hodgepodge of characters so stupid and unsympathetic as fodder that you struggle to identify with at least a nearby piece of ice. To find so much as a relationship with even one of them is a task for the greatest masters of empathy, because when they're not commenting on what we're seeing, they're analyzing facts at the level of elementary school children (first grade). The relationship between them is always implied with one shot of about a second and that's the end of it. Another certainly calculated move was to pick from these maximally murderable characters the absolute most nerve-crawling and make her the protagonist and the predator her pet. Then we can indulge ourselves solely on the action, and there are two action scenes... one of them an absolute mockery of the aliens as creatures and isn't worth much, and the other one with the mother of the aliens is actually pretty good (that's probably the one star). All in all, AVP is a terrible B-movie, unlike the decent second installment, but it makes itself out to be a big-budget film and I won't forgive it for that. Dreck shit crap evil. PS: The film contains an incredibly funny scene where a pyramid hologram appears in front of everyone in the briefing room and Weyland says: "Our leading experts have learned that it's shaped like a pyramid." Why didn't any 14-year-old boy get a job on the script… (31/08/2004)

Ugly and uglier, as one of my friends aptly proclaimed. And in the midst of the ugly, a group of more or less handsome humanoids are desperately trying to survive... Paul W. S. Anderson filmed a very grateful theme, but instead of an atmospheric mix of claustrophobic tension and dynamic action, as offered by the computer game of the same name, an initially thrilling, then extraordinarily predictable murder story with an emancipated heroine and a ridiculous story emerged from it all. Unfortunately, the heroine isn’t anywhere near as good as Ripley, and her survival journey is full of pretty nice action sequences, but she lacks suspense and the ability to grab the viewer’s attention. It’s too bad, because the introduction to the film is quite promising, but then, unfortunately, the tension disappears in the regiments of quite-visible monsters. Anderson just shot a B-movie with average A-movie effects. A pleasantly-killed hour and a half, but the film’s credit does not increase in any way with the ugly (Predators) and the uglier (Aliens), quite the opposite. AvP is just a parasite... 50% (04/10/2004)

To embrace Anderson's latest film is, figuratively speaking, not to put your hand in the popcorn, but to go straight into it with your whole body. Even then, AvP is hard to accept. That said, technically there is not much to complain about, the effects are fine, the animatronic models of the aliens are really good, and the film has a brisk pace. But a rather fundamental problem is the absence of two important ingredients in a movie, there’s hardly any atmosphere and suspense. And the script? Everything follows tried and tested templates, without any surprises, and a plot that is transparent and predictable. Anderson's basic idea of the story makes sense, but it's rather dumbed down. Besides, what must McTiernan have thought when he saw that his formerly uncompromising hunter had become a damsel in distress? Please don't do that. The 2 stars are too much, taking into account the fact that I don't like crossovers, and their cold financial cynicism. Now I'm just waiting for someone to come up with a Red Riding Hood vs. Batman movie. That would be awesome! (08/01/2005)