05

Alien vs. Predator (2004)

There's nothing worse than when a much anticipated film turns out to be disappointing. Actually that's true for everything, not just movies. Once my friend Nani and I were in a diner on the upper east side with some other friends, and I ordered onion rings because I always judge a diner by the quality of their onion rings. It's usually a pretty good gauge for how tasty the rest of the food is. When the waiter put down the plate of golden, grease-shiny fried onions, everyone at the table was instantly envious. "Those look soooo good," remarked my tablemates. But after I bit into one, I shockingly said "These are bad!" They looked wonderful but tasted awful, it was the strangest thing. You know what else looked good but tasted bad? Alien vs. Predator.

For some reason I didn't see A vs. P in the theater, either because I've never been as big of a fan of Alien as I am of other evil foe, or because all of my friends told me that they saw it and it was lame. So how did I come to watch A vs. P now, you ask? Because Target was selling a box set with Predator, Predator 2, and Alien vs. Predator for just twenty bucks and I couldn't resist. They also had Omen and Amityville Horror box sets. I LOVE the Halloween season!

I'm just going to go ahead and compare this movie with Freddy vs. Jason, since they're essentially the same movie: Two big scary things that LOVE killing humans get together and get into a kick-ass, no holds barred, brawl to the death. Humans die along the way but are essentially inconsequential to the plot until the very end when they help one bad guy win. The end.

Kudos to the A vs. P people for getting at least two semi-recognizable actors in their film, which is something that F vs. J failed to do (although that doesn't mean I didn't love the faux Jason Mewes character), Lance Henriksen from previous Alien films and Ewen Bremner from Trainspotting (1996). I guess the lead actress Sanaa Lathan is recognizable in some circles, but since movies like Love and Basketball (2000) make me throw up in my mouth a little bit and I don't watch Nip/Tuck I haven't seen much of her previous work.

This movie starts out bad and then goes wrong in so many ways, let's start from the beginning. A mysterious millionaire discovers an underground pyramid in Antarctica that's 2000 feet underground which his "experts" believe to be older than any known civilization on Earth. He recruits a team of people who are knowledgeable about mysterious underground pyramids and heads south. Leading the group is Sanaa Lathan's outdoor-saavy character who doesn't take any guff. Since she is (gasp!) not only black but a woman, many of the other team members won't listen to her or follow any of her orders. They all die within the first half hour of the film. The movie is semi-tolerable (I mean for hardcore Alien or Predator fans) from there until the end, when Sanaa Lathan teams up with Predator to kill the Aliens. WHAT?!? Predator would've smoked her ass without thinking twice, even if she did help him kill Aliens. There's this really particularly awful scene where Predator gives her tribal warrior markings with Alien's blood to show that she earned his respect, my eyeballs almost fell out of my head they were rolling back so far.

Another thing that does this, as well as many other movies, a disservice is the gratuitous use of CG imagery in place of traditional props and effects. Everyone knows that CG effects done improperly just look cheesy (new Star Wars movies, anyone?) and this movie is a very good example of that. Original Alien looked super cool because it was essentially a giant beautiful moving sculpture designed by HR Giger. A vs. P Alien looks like a giant stupid cartoon that wouldn't scare your grandma, with CG generated acid-blood to boot. Lame-o! And when you see the world in Predator-vision in this film you forget for a moment that you are in fact watching a movie and not playing World of Warcraft, because it looks like a freaking video game.

There are some things I like about this movie: when the pyramid shifts to trap people in different spots it's pretty visually stimulating, and the fight scene where Predator swings Alien around like they're playing ring around the rosie is kind of fun. But if you want to watch a really good movie about monsters in a cave, rent The Descent (2005). The acting is much better, the monsters are way scarier, and the female heroine is much more believable.