IvanF's Cut and Paste, No-Name Theatrical Review of Alien vs Predator 2004...

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You know, I kind of miss the 80s... Am I willing to sacrifice all of society's sane fashion sense, just for some more decent movies for guys who like movies? I don't really know... BUT, I will tell you one thing... I do miss Predator.. and I do miss Aliens, even after how damn bad Alien Resurrection turned out to be (but let us never speak of that horrid film again...)...

There hasn't been nearly enough decent movies this century for guys who like movies... Terminator 3 may have been a favourite of mine, but my friends are still smoking and mocking that opinion of mine to this very damn day. And certain movies like Bad Boys 2 and Freddy vs Jason definitely did have their share of moments, but neither franchise really had the kind of pull to make any of us alpha males froth in anticipation of their respective releases...

But an amazing thing happens whenever Aliens and Predators are mentioned in the same damn sentence...

... hell, I think I saw some people cry in joy when the Alien and Predator first faced off in this film... Hell, I think I was one of those people...

Alien vs Predator has been a long time coming, and sometimes it's really hard to explain why... We guys just can't get enough of this "versus" crap when it comes to ass kicking series characters. I mean, why else would the Marvel vs DC comic book series be one of the most memorable series of battles in the history of graphical novels? Why else would every single living man and child on the face of the planet all agree, that Captain Picard versus Captain Kirk would always have the English Frenchie end up on top? Hopefully not in a 'shipper way on a starship, mind you... I mean, what other meaning is there in life, if guys can't dream of what would inevitably happen when an Alien gets locked in a room with a Predator, ready to 'wrassle it out with some kind of oil involved?...

... fantasies, I know... I'm sure... but definitely the kind that dreams are made of...

Alien vs Predator, in theory, is the dream match of every single freakin' guy on the face of the planet. And professors I'm sure, have written entire goddam rants of psychology reports on why, just oh why exactly why... And while I can always come up with those hokey, jokey, and half-hockey Oedipal Complex half-assed explanations of my own, the fact of the matter remains... I really don't care why... All I care about, is that me and my brother have been ever patiently waiting for Alien vs Predator to arrive in theatres, ever since Aliens first graced our television screens in the 1980s. It's been a long time coming... and definitely a longer time cumming...

Was Alien vs Predator everything that we cracked it up to be in the end? Is it even possible for the movie to be everything we wanted it to be in the end?... unfortunately, the film wasn't the greatest footnote for the summer blockbuster season. And part of that was because Paul Anderson just can't seem to make a decent movie if his very life depended on it (which I thought it would have been, considering how damn bad Resident Evil was)... The biggest gripe that so many fans had for the film was obviously that there was no character development in the movie. Every single member of the cast basically entered the pyramid with exactly the same damn personality they had when they left... even if they didn't leave in their own bodies...

But really, at least Paul Anderson understood one damn thing... Why the hell would someone ever want to go into an Alien or Predator movie, hoping for some goddam awful character development? Sure, Ripley was well developed in Aliens. And arguably, Arnold grew as an actor from the original Predator... But really, the name of the movie says it all: Alien vs Predator. None of us really cared if Alexa became a damn sympathizer with Weyland when it was all said and done. None of us cared if she even survived, mind you... All we cared about, were Aliens and Predators getting their Stella, steel toed grooves on. And in that sense, the film did manage to somewhat deliver...

... spoilers for those two of you who can't figure out the whole movie from the apple.com trailers...

It was impossible for Alien vs Predator to live up to the hype. But for the first half of the movie, I really did think the movie had a chance of being one of the greatest in either series... A lot of people complained that the first act of the story was too damn slow, with all the characters talking about nothing more than technobabble aboard an icebreaker ship that no-one really gave a damn about... But personally? I actually enjoyed the first third of the movie pretty damn much. Even if no character was developed, I was still left in anticipation on the ship, if only because we as an audience all knew that the entire crew was nothing more than cannon fodder... While some just claimed the movie was moving along too slowly, I thought that the first act of the film really helped to build some suspense. Even if we all knew who drilled the hole in Antarctica with a thermal cutter from space, and even if we all knew what happened to the Whalers in the 1900s, I still thought the film was pacing itself rather damn decently for a film of this scope. And I personally thought all the little personal touches to the film, like Bishop's moment with the letter cutter, and that one second of father-and-daughterness between Mr. Millennium and Lex (which led nowhere, might I add), helped build the suspense in the first half hour better than even Aliens did back in the day...

And the second act of the film? It was worth the price of admission alone... Now, sure we can all complain that for some goddam reason, pretty much all the damn good fight scenes were goddam ruined for us on Apple.com. And sure, a lot of fans of both series are still whining that it makes no sense, that the Predator boomerang could be immune to Alien acid but every other piece of weaponry they had was not. And hell, I even heard complaints from my brother's own friends after the movie, that the Predators were too damn wussy in their earlier fights (ignoring the fact that we'd be wussy too if we didn't have guns...). And of course, I guess I can complain that the humans simply died off too damn early in this film for any of us to care. Hell, I think I even laughed out loud when whats-his-face gave a speech about never giving up on their children, only to predictably die something like ten seconds later...

But dammit, the Alien and Predator fights were amazing in the second act of the film! The Aliens took everything but the Predator's gun to heart (quite literally), and they just still kept on ticking... Every single guy in the theatre felt chills run up and down their spines when the two nasties of the universe faced off against one another. And I'm telling you, that for the few battles that there were, no-one but die-hard Predator fans were disappointed by the outcomes... The name of the movie was Alien vs Predator, and it was only natural that the humans would be the monkeys in the middle. Sure, it sucked that the best of the humans barely even got a shot off in the movie... But while the team was still alive, being hunted by the Predators for stealing their guns? I personally thought the action in the film was the absolute best of the year so far (except for maybe the Shrek 2 Hero sequence)... The Predator cloaking devices were definitely improved over their 80s counterparts. And while the lack of R rating definitely ruined the human gore factor in the movie, I can't say the same about anything dealing with green blood in a film about aliens...

The first half of the film made me Ripley believe. Regardless of what the rest of the net said, the first hour or so of the film definitely had me on the edge of my seat... My only real complaint was that there simply weren't enough battles between Aliens and Predators to satisfy the male bravado ego (if it's even possible to satisfy the male ego). At just an hour an a half long, this film was just too damn short for its own good... and my only other real complaint?... well, I knew the film would go downhill after almost every single human died... but still, I didn't expect the film to become that damn bad...

My brother and I were only sure of one thing when going into the theatre: that Bishop Weyland would survive, if only to bring more credit to the Alien conspiracies out there... And then what the fuck happens? He dies? He dies a completely meaningless death? WTF?...

And from that point on, the movie just went completely downhill... First, we got a horribly in-your-face montage of a completely Stargate-ripped-off backstory, of the Predators being in control of planet earth in the past. And then we got absolutely no decent action between Aliens and the humans later on, because what good is running around from Aliens when you don't even have a frickin' gun leftover in a guy movie?... And then the worst part of the entire film happened... Just when I thought things would pick up again. Just when the crowd nearly cheered at the sight of the triforce laser pointer aimed at poor Lexa's head... Just when I was hoping to finally see some decent Alien vs Predator action again... then?... well...

... the two goddam enemies become best damn friends... Lexa and the Predator, I mean...

I mean, it wasn't the truce that annoyed me to hell. It was just how damn badly it was done in the end... It just looked completely pathetic of the Predator, to care for Lexa enough to actually arm her with a weapon. And even if he wanted help to finish off the Aliens, at least the director could've made the Predator seem more badass, by using Lexa as bait or some crap like that. And then we got the horrible running montage! I mean, like most sci-fi alien outfits, the Predator only looked decent up close. But far away, running like ass in a clunky ass clown suit? Honestly, I think the entire damn theatre started laughing at just how bad the whole nuke scene was in the end... And even the fight against the Alien Queen couldn't save the film, especially since the Predator got wasted, and especially because there weren't any frickin' guns in the movie anymore!... What point is there to a guy's movie, if there aren't any frickin' guns? I ask you that...

The idea of a truce wasn't a bad idea. Hell, it was even in the comic books... But the execution of it was just so damn laughably woeful, that it almost wiped out the mind-numbing orgasmic taste that the first hour of the film had left in my stomach...

... end spoilers... not like those were spoilers to anyone with Quicktime and internet access, of course...

Alien vs Predator was absolutely the movie my brother and I have been hyped about for years... And obviously, considering the stakes that had been stacked against it, there was absolutely no way that the film was ever going to meet our most wild of monster expectations.

But the movie really did give me hope, you know?... The first half of the film was half full of mounting suspense, and half full of the most amazing battles that a guy has seen since Aliens and the first Predator movie last left American theatres. And just a sci-fi geek, the whole atmosphere of the film was amazing... The special effects? I have to give absolute kudos to those. Because for the first time ever, I must admit that CG characters actually looked as damn good as the models in the movie. Hell, I'd even say that the Alien Queen at the end animated more fluently than its robotic self ever did before...

What really defines a movie as a classic though? Must we take the movie as a whole, or is the bitterness from the god-awful ending of a film enough to solidify its pure crappiness?... Sure, the first half of the film was amazing, with a decent death count here and a wily war waged there. But the second half of the film was just damn pitiful at best... The action was sorely lacking, the plot became laughably bad, and the absolute zero amount of character development in Alexa's character definitely started to whine and wane by the time she started staring at the Predator with starry eyes...

Some people hated the film for ruining continuity (although it never really did, considering Weyland's company probably learned of the Alien threat from Lexa... leading to their search for aliens far in the future...). And some people hated the film, not just for its second half, but because the first half was just too pansyass-PG-13 for the series' own good... The fans wanted a new Predator and a new Aliens. The problem was, they didn't just want a film as good as those two films...

... they wanted a film... I wanted a film... as good as our memories of those two films still are...

... and hell, at least it was a hell of a lot better than both Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection... but dammit, that's not saying much..."