I gave it 3 stars as well, but it definitely leans heavily towards 2 and "Kinda sucked!"
If you're looking for character development or a cohesive plot, go watch either of the first two
ALIEN movies, but if your only interest is in seeing monsters beat each other's brains out, then hey, this is the movie for you!
But be warned, you'll have to check your brain at the door, and by the time this is over, you may not remember how to put it back in.
SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS! YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!So an industrial billionaire named Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henrickson), using satellites, discovers an ancient pyramid temple buried under the ice in Antarctica. He puts together a group of archaeologists and scientists to go check it out, but once there they soon figure out that it's a training ground for coming-of-age Predators, who come here to hunt Aliens, and that the expedition group are to be the hosts for these Aliens. Pretty good idea, so what happened?
I fear it's all Paul W.S. Anderson's fault. He wrote & directed this mess.
I didn't care about a single character, human or otherwise. When your movie's only 97 minutes long, who's got time to get to know characters?
The direction and editing are choppy. Like LDG said, when the first big Predator & Alien fight occurs I could barely make out who was who and what was happening. I've waited all these years for this and now I can barely see it? What the fuck?
Plotholes & story continuity:
So, this movie takes place in the present, in 2004, which means that it's a sequel to the first two PREDATOR movies and a prequel to all the ALIEN movies if we're following some kind of coherent timeline. At the end we have a human survivor, equipped with a Predator weapon because I guess she's now been made an Honorary Predator. Anyway, after she makes it back to civilization, how, I don't know, wouldn't she spill the beans about everything she saw? Why is everyone so surprised by the appearance of the Aliens in subsequent films? Maybe the company kills her so she won't talk and then someday Ash (Ian Holm) can betray the crew of the Nostromo and then 57 years later Burke (Paul Reiser) could do the same to Ripley and the Marines?? Even in
PREDATOR 2 they refer to Arnold and his team from the first movie.
In the original movie, the Alien seems to gestate inside of Kane for at least a couple of hours before interrupting his dinner and then I think it's about another couple of hours before Brett meets his fate at the hands of the adult Alien. In this movie, Aliens seem to mature from egg to adult in a matter of minutes! (They grow up so fast. Sniff.)
When our heroine spears an Alien shouldn't she have been splattered with Alien acid blood? At least a little?
If the Predators come to Earth to hunt Aliens in this temple, then why was the Predator in the original movie even bothering with Arnold and his crew? Target practice? Isn't it akin to hunting kittens when you're used to hunting mountain lions?
The cast was dull and were all playing stock characters. Not a memorable one in the bunch. The tough chick, the brainy guy, the wimpy guy, etc. (yawn)
I hated the idea of a Predator teaming up with a human girl to fight their common enemy. He should've just snapped her in half the first time she got loud with him.
The spear & shield made from Alien remains? Silly.
I've seen characters in movies outrun explosions before, but the explosion in this movie was so massive that all I could think was shouldn't they at least be singed? They weren't that far ahead of it. And how did she, with those short legs, keep up with that really tall Predator? See, when a movie's not that good, your mind wanders and you think about shit like that.
The F/X were good, I even liked the "bullet time" facehuggers, but the whole movie just seemed kind of "small" somehow. I always expected an "AVP" movie to be kind of epic, but here even the temple didn't seem nearly as grand as it should've been.
Because of the PG-13 rating, everything seemed like
ALIEN LITE. This is the first Alien movie where they cut away from everything we've already seen in all the other Alien movies. It's definitely trying to appeal to the kids who have played the AVP video games and read the comics, but it's forgotten about the adults who first made these franchises what they are.
You could see that ending coming a mile away.
END OF SPOILERS!For God's sake, if you must see this, don't pay full price! Go to a matinee or better yet, go buy the Special Ed. DVD of
PREDATOR and use the free ticket inside to see
AVP. It'll be worth every penny.
Still, I enjoyed it more than
VAN HELSING. But not that much more.
Let's just hope for the best...
