This is it, the two bad asses of science fiction cinema finally clash. Fans have been waiting years for the chance where we’d see them finally go head to head, and we get… this. In the right hands, with the right people, “Alien vs. Predator” had the potential to be a balls to the wall action packed epic, and that’s what’s sad. Anderson is not a good writer, decent director, but no good as a screenwriter. There’s not a lot of set up until we get to the actual plot at hand. Anderson surely wastes no time in taking us to what is the actual point of the movie. But it wouldn’t have hurt to spend time with the characters before we got into the action, which would have made us care more for these people who were basically trade offs. I didn’t really care who died or who lived because there’s nothing for us to care about in this movie.
Even the main character Lex isn’t much of a heroine because she’s a basic rip-off of Ripley, and we don’t get to know her very well. Secondly, Anderson is getting to that point where he’s run out of ideas so he’s now borrowing from the concepts of his own movies. This basically has the exact same mood as “Resident Evil” did. Throughout the whole movie, I spent a good portion of the time thinking about what could have been, what potential it had. I ultimately just took it for what it was, a basically very flawed and mediocre science fiction film. It’s ruined two of the best movie franchises of all time, that’s for sure, but Fox entrusted Anderson. Need I say more? I blame both FOX and director Anderson, because if these people had any respect for the fans, this would have been a violent, tense, and creepy film with enough action to satisfy us.
Anderson never pays up when it comes to the truly good stuff. The dialogue is often terrible, and there are stupid plot devices and the only time the aliens and predators do clash, it’s pretty abrupt and lacking in excitement. It’s often times too fast to get into, especially the climax which was pretty disappointing and rushed. The editing is really choppy so it’s hard for us to get what exactly is going on, and Anderson betrays the actual continuity and themes of the original movies and subjects us to clean off-screen kills that never really follow what the original movies paved the way for. What happened to the predators collecting the humans heads? Anderson takes the Aliens and cuts them down for his convenience. They take a very short time to progress into adult aliens, where as in the original films, they took a long time, and what’s worse Anderson has no flair for originality.
There isn’t anything shown on-screen that we haven’t already seen before, along with the inevitability that comes with every one of Anderson’s movies. The plot hole. And there’s plenty of them. Has Anderson ever seen any of these movies? If by some chance the aliens trace back to the Egyptian era, then how did they get to space? And would they still be aliens if they originated from Earth? Since when can the aliens turn invisible? Why can they see the predators if humans can’t? If the aliens and predators have been rumbling for centuries, how come the entire base isn’t damaged from the previous battles? If the previous Egyptian base was destroyed, why is it in perfect condition? How can the aliens’ acidic blood damage the predator’s armor? It makes no sense. Wouldn’t that be what the armor was for?
Protection from the aliens’ blood? It disputes the other very sloppily. And these aliens have been being bred and bred again and again for centuries to be hunted for sport, yet they think of releasing their queen near the climax? It contradicts the intelligence we’ve seen from them in the past movies, what happened to the predators skinning humans alive and taking their heads for trophies? And worst of all, the ending, though predictable and meant to be a surprise makes no sense whatsoever. I liked the whole set up of the Predators being hailed as gods and using the aliens as training dogs for their young warriors as rites of passage. As far as characters go, the only one I really liked was Lathan’s character. In the end, “AVP” is forgettable, and fails to stack up to its predecessors.