Mini Review
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Director |
Paul W.S. Anderson
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Cast |
Sanaa Lathan
Raoul Bova
Lance Henriksen
Ewen Bremner
Colin Salmon
Tommy Flanagan
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Distributor |
20th Century Fox |
Running Time |
101 Minutes |
Certification |
15 / PG13
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Reviewed By
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Alex Ballard
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Buy this film
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ALIEN VS PREDATOR (2004)
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When I heard of Twentieth Century Fox’s plans to release this title I was totally overwhelmed with expectant excitement, envisaging wild fire fights in murky, confined interiors and frantic, pitched skirmishes across desolate open ground in a manner akin to the PC title of the same name. The xenomorphs would surely number in their hundreds, if not thousands, battling a handful of valiant yautja hunters armed with an array of brutal and explosive hi-tech weaponry, whilst the hapless humans caught up in unfolding events fought desperately for survival with heavy ordnance against seemingly hopeless odds. And I was almost right...
Initially, the appointment of ‘Resident Evil’ director Paul W S Anderson to this project was a little disconcerting as I felt ‘Res…’ suffered greatly from trying to be a little too stylish and Matrix-like for its own good, but at least there were plenty of zombies and many, many rounds were fired during the course of the movie, which frankly was all I wanted to see from that title. However the signing of Lance Henrikson (as Weyland, founder of the infamous Weyland Yutani Company) to the cast of ‘AVP’ was a welcomed strand of continuity for a die-hard fan of both the ‘Alien’ and ‘Predator’ licenses such as myself, and the teaser trailers and story board materials on the Web looked great, depicting as hoped for, hordes of aliens and predators warring for supremacy.
Then, after senselessly protracted teasing by Fox, it was finally released. And personally, I loved it! It didn’t matter that the story was wafer thin and so obviously a plagiarised coagulation of the ‘Aliens Versus Predator: Prey’ and ‘Predator: Cold War’ novels; it didn’t matter that the majority of the dialogue was clichéd, machismo nonsense; it even didn’t matter that some of the CGI effects made the creatures look a tad silly and cartoonish (the sequence where the xenos conspire to release their Queen from bondage particularly springs to mind); it featured aliens and predators fighting and that was all I ever wanted from this film.
I don’t really understand the majority of angry criticism made of ‘AVP’ by some fans of the previous ‘Alien’ and ‘Predator’ titles. For the neutral cinema loving purist, it probably is an unadulterated piece of rubbish featuring trite, childish discourse and a weak script that compensates by providing some delightful eye candy and viciously well choreographed battle scenes. And admittedly there could, and should, have been more aliens. However as the first of what will surely be a license yielding more titles, it’s not a bad start at all and for sci-fi action fans, what more could you want.
To judge it artistically is folly, as it has obviously not been made to compete with a piece made by the likes of Werner Herzog, David Lynch or Kim Ji-woon. And admittedly, I’m not a big fan of either director Anderson or his cast (Henrikson aside) but in all honesty, who gives a damn about them as long as the monsters take centre stage? The very fact that there are no teen ‘actors’ featured to sell the film is highly refreshing in a genre often driven by so-called ‘bankable’ young stars, and credit to Anderson is due for recognising who the real ‘stars’ of this film are.
I don’t feel that comparisons with its predecessors are reasonable either; it was never going to be the classic sinister masterpiece that is ‘Alien’ or the blood pumping science fiction survival horror that is ‘Predator’, and why? Simply because these films have already been made. Saying this, it probably won’t stand the test of time in the same manner as its forerunners (although saying that, ‘Aliens’, despite the seminal piece that it is, does look very dated in comparison) but as stated, it’s a good start. I just hope the next installation is a little darker and meaner, and preferably with an X rating.
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Score
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7 / 10
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