Entry Twenty: Alien vs. Predator (2004)

Alien vs. Predator (2004)

Dir: Paul W.S. Anderson

"Whoever wins, we lose."

Dark Horse Comics had real "chocolate and peanut butter" moment when, in 1990, they decided to combine their Aliens and Predator licenses into a comic book miniseries event.  The series was an instant hit; a no-brainer for fanboys that went on to spawn more comics, novels, several video games and a toy line.  A film seemed like a given, but Fox was reluctant after Predator 2 and Alien3 under-performed at the box office.  When New Line's Freddy vs. Jason proved to be a surprise hit in the fall of 2003, Fox finally decided to jump on the bandwagon.  However, instead of doing it right (an A-budget film that would bring the Predators in to the futuristic Alien universe), the studio gave the project to schlocky auteur Anderson (Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil), who promised to have the low(ish)-budget film in theatres within a year.  You can practically FEEL everyone involved not giving a fuck with every scene.

When one of his geo-mapping satellites discovers a mysterious temple deep beneath the ice of Antarctica, terminally-ill industrialist Charles Weyland (the great Lance Henriksen, who looks pretty bored here) assembles a team of tired stereotypes (tough hot chick, tough butch chick, sinister corporate British guy, macho guy who goes to pieces when the shit hits the fan, sensitive, male-model-looking archaeologist, wide-eyed scientist who guarantees his early death by showing off pictures of his cute kids to everybody) to explore it and claim it in the name of Weyland, giving him one final, great legacy.  Once there, the team discovers that the pyramid is actually an ancient training ground for the Predators, who use human beings to breed Aliens for hunting purposes.  The humans are killed off one-by-one, until only Tough Hot Chick Lex (Sanaa Lathan, Blade) is left to take on the alien queen with the final surviving Predator.

This movie is really stupid.  It shits all over the mythologies of both franchises: the contemporary-Earth setting is problematic from an Alien standpoint, for if Weyland-Yutani knew of the existence of the aliens because of this encounter, why didn't they focus their future resources on digging beneath the arctic, rather than sending the Nostromo off to check a suspicious signal on an out-of-the-way planetoid.  The aliens have always been shown to take several hours (maybe even more than a day) to gestate and emerge from their host bodies, yet in this film face-hugged victims are birthing creatures in a matter of minutes.  Due to budgetary constraints, effects company ADI was forced to re-use and modify alien suits and designs from Alien Resurrection, which were designed to be extra-fleshy looking due to plot elements unique to that film and make no sense here.  From a Predator standpoint, the predators had, in the previous films, been shown to be proud hunters who only attack armed targets.  Here, they kill the shit out of everybody, including a crippled guy and a sick old man.  Also from the previous films, we're told that the predators choose hot, steamy climates to conduct their hunts...THE FUCK ARE THEY DOING IN THE ARCTIC?  The newly-designed predators in this film look like 'roided-out fucking linebackers and move like the Michelin Man.  Did I mention yet that this movie is fucking PG-13?  If you're expecting any graphic chest-bursting, spine-ripping or corpse-skinning (and why wouldn't you be, in a movie that combines Alien and Predator?), look elsewhere.

If this film has one saving grace, it's ADI's redesigned alien queen.  They use a nice mix of practical and CG effects to bring her to life, I just wish it had been in a better movie.  If you can divorce this canonically from it's source material and take it as it's own thing, I suppose you might get a few chuckles out of the (unintentionally funny) fight scenes (a few beers wouldn't hurt).  This is certainly the spiritual successor to Universal's classic monster mash-ups Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man and House of Dracula.  Those movies signaled the END of the Universal Monsters era, and this film (and it's even shittier, rushed, "strike-while-the-iron's lukewarm sequel) marks the end of the once-dignified Alien franchise (alien-less sort-of-prequel Prometheus doesn't really count, though at least it wiped this shitpile from continuity).

At least they got the tagline right.