When scientists discover something near Antarctica that appears to be a buried Pyramid, they send a research team out to investigate. Little do they know that they are about to step into a hunting ground where Aliens are grown as sport for the Predator race.
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I know that the AvP aren't canon to either franchise, but there's so many things that don't make sense in regards to the Alien universe, like the movie takes place in 2004 and Mr. Weyland is played by the same actor who played Bishop in Aliens. It doesn't help that he's called "Charles Bishop Weyland" in the movie.That's not the only things that don't make sense. 1) When we first see our main character she's climbing up a frozen cliff on a mountain. There's a wide shot where we clearly see that there's nothing but snow on the plateau above. By the time she gets there there's a helicopter and its pilot up there who... flew there without her noticing!? 2) Mr. Weyland gives his speech at the briefing while standing on a bridge inside the ship's hangar BEHIND the characters 3) Our main character and I will just call her by her name Alexa Woods (*great name*) from now on is taking a helicopter to fly to the icebreaker where the team is located. Why not land the helicopter on the ship while it's still in a harbor and save gas? 4) It's never explained why Alexa decides to stay on the ship.The story of this movie is really not that special. Who thought it would be a good idea to make this a archeology movie? In the beginning we go from one place to another over and over again within minutes. "Rogue One" did the same, but in that movie it worked because the things that happened in those different places were actually relevant to the story. Here they're not.All of the actresses and actors except Lance Henriksen are really bad in both their line delivery and facial expressions. The acting is better than the "acting" in "Alien: Resurrection" though.Let's talk about the "characters". We're supposed to care about Alexa the most, yet we don't know anything about her. Oh well we do, there's a ludicrous ATTEMPT of an emotional scene where we find out about the story with her dad. We're supposed to care about Graeme, yet all we know about him is that he's OBSESSED with taking photos to the point where it gets really annoying. This is my first Predator movie. In this movie they do nothing but kill humans and xenomorphs. The xenomorph queen looks amazing of course, but why is there visible electricity all around her? And she's tied up, laying spores/eggs, whatever you want to call them but I'd rather call them spores because that's what it says in the menu of my Alien Blu-ray, similar to "Alien: Resurrection", where the xenomorphs are caged. This movie takes so long to get to the point which makes it really boring. Aliens did that, too, but it worked because the team we spent our time with was interesting and they were good characters. The human characters in this movie are hollow, boring and uninteresting and they suck at acting. They are really dumb as well. Once they're trapped in the pyramid they decide to enter its even lower levels.Once we get the facehuggers they jump out of the spores in slow motion for some reason. That was absolutely pointless. There's a lot of overuse of slow motion in this movie.In the original "Alien" there was quite some time between the facehugger leaving the host's face, the host waking up and the xenomorph bursting out of the person's chest. In this movie it's taking minutes or even seconds. The moments we've all been waiting for, the xenomorph and predator fighting look like garbage. It's just shaky cam, which is a shame because they have really good xenomorph props and the predators look really cool, too. And why can xenomorphs fall through the floors of the pyramid? I don't think they're THAT heavy. By the way, why can't the xenomorph queen outrun a human?And there's no way I can review this movie without mentioning the jumpscares. For example there's a scene where we're made to think a xenomorph is about to show up but it's a penguin. SECONDS earlier Alexa touches Graeme from behind with the most clichéd loud music.This was my first Paul W. S. Anderson movie and everyone says his movies are terrible and he's a terrible director and this movie was written by him as well, so I was very concerned about what I was going to see. And here's my opinion: He's a bad director, but he's even worse as a screenplay writer. What I hate most about his writing is that there's so many exposition scenes. Or maybe it's the stupid twist that the character have to team up with the predators. It's ridiculous when they say "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".I think Pepsi and National Geographic regret their product placements.Oh and the credits go on for TWELVE MINUTES.
Well, if Bishop died, it would mean that Alien vs. Predator is not a "prequel" to the Alien quartet, since he appeared in Alien 3. However, the end of Alien Resurrection clearly shows that earth is no more, which would mean that AVP, would then have to be a prequel.One of the many questionable plot lines, that I guess could be answered by altering previous truths and intentions. Apart from that, AVP proves to be somehow the freshest of the sequels (It's sad that W.S. Anderson may have given a better product that James Cameron), though perhaps not the best, while of course, it still suffers from the same basic issues this entire franchise is plagued with.AVP substitutes a spaceship, a colony, a jail and another spaceship, for an underground pyramid, then follows the exact same overdone Alien franchise blueprint that excels mainly in under delivering.The Predator's origins on earth involving the aliens was not bad, and it's what really gives this installment some level of edge over the other sequels. The action was pretty much the same with the benefit of more advanced cinematic technologies, and the sequence of this film, in terms of how many people, predators and aliens are involved, dead and alive was not well presented. 5.3/10.
After so many years I took the effort of watching this again but the impression is still the same. PWSA is a good director of movies based on crappy writing and stupid ideas. It seems he is one of the rare actually willing to do so. No one with just a tiny bit of common sense would swallow such nonsense as this movie. I'm not talking about the general idea here. Predators hunting aliens and humans? Why not? But not with so many plot holes, undeveloped characters, bad FX, dialogues stupid beyond belief, illogicalities and all other kinds of stuff that would make Ed Wood proud. Sometimes one needs to watch such movies at least two times before forming the final opinion. Anyway: avoid, then avoid and then still avoid. It may look entertaining but it's actually insulting your intelligence.
I really do not have anything else to say about this film aside from the fact that it was just average, but not needed to be made at all. I do think that the soundtrack was pretty decent and there was good action scenes, almost even great. But I didn't care for the characters at all and the effects seemed almost too realistic for their own good. I know that it sounds odd for me to say that, but that was just how I felt about the whole thing. So with a good soundtrack and action, but bad acting and too realistic effects, the film just ends up being totally average.