Ahoy, squirts! Quint here, fresh from tonight's not-so-early screening of the latest masterwork from Paul W.S. Anderson. I step into some pretty spoiler-heavy territory, so fair warning.
You know, it wasn't as bad as I was expecting it to be... BUT I was expecting trash on the level of HOUSE OF THE DEAD after reading the reviews that I posted last night. What I got was more along the lines of RESIDENT EVIL... shitty characters (all of them), moments of cool (chestbuster neck snap), moments of shit (MATRIX face-huggers... no shit) and a movie that should have been badass and ended up just being "eh..."
But that's Paul W.S. Anderson's work to a T. With the exception of SOLDIER (which I hold as being nothing but a huge waste of acting talent), Anderson's biggest fault is his mediocrity. There are some genuinely cool scenes in AvP, scenes that made the geek inside me smile... The Predator vision seeing the Chestbursters in human bodies... the nod to ALIENS when we first meet Weyland (you'll know it immediately)... the one time we really see a Predator being a badass motherfucker taking out a facehugger and an alien... All were great. But that's, in total... perhaps 3 or 4 minutes of the movie.
For every one of those, there's at least something as shitty as the MATRIX facehugger swoop around in mid-air shot or something as laughable as slow motion running predator with his dreads flying in tandem with the heroine's hair... You know, the BATMAN AND ROBIN shot of slow mo running straight at the camera. Or how about the tender scene between the heroine and a Predator at the end of the movie which caused someone in the audience to shout out (literally) "What the fuck is going on here?"
Without the great moments, this would have been on the level of Uwe Boll, a dark, dank pit of despair the likes of which are only rumored to exist because how could something that terrible and ugly truly survive? Without the geekastic moments, this would have been utter shit. Without the super shitty moments, this would have been fantastic. But, combine them both and you have Paul W.S. Anderson's trademark mediocrity.
He also uses the exact same structure that pissed me off about RESIDENT EVIL. He kills off the badasses of the group first and leaves only a few characters to be Predator game or Alien mommies in the 2nd and 3rd acts.
As I feared, the PG-13 rating does hurt this film. You don't feel the full terror and pain of the chestbursters... You see a bit of green blood being splashed around, but nothing graphic enough to make the eyebrows raise. The fights between the Predators and the Aliens are shot in such a way that it's confusing and hard to tell what's happening and I feel a lot of that is due to keeping it PG-13
What next? Pacing? Ending? Effects?
Let's talk about the pacing a little bit. I actually really liked the first hour. Not to say I thought the characters were well-written. They certainly were not... But I didn't think I was going to like the pyramid setting in the Antarctic and I found myself really liking it... even if it was covered with ridiculous "art" that got many laughs from the audience. What I think I liked the most about the first hour was the pacing... It felt like slow build. But then it got to about the half-way mark... and you can spot where the movie really turns south. Just mark when the Ice-Climbing leader chick and the Italian archeologist enter the "flash-back room" where luckily enough for us the whole history of what the Aliens and the Predators do are marked in glyphs like comic-book panels around the whole room.
At that point it's like the filmmakers just remembered they had a lot more to tell and started rushing things, but the worst of it comes when Sanaa Lathan makes friends with the last of the Predators. This could have been a great sort of forced alliance, but because it was rushed it comes off as being totally against the character of the Predator and doesn't make any damn sense.
While we're on the subject of the Predators how about we get to their ass-kicking ways... or lack thereof. Two Predators get taken out immediately by an alien because they don't have their guns. How did they become so wimpy? These Predators are supposed to be master hunters... even if they're teenagers or the young in their trial of manhood, I still expected them to be more badass. Instead, in predictable PWSA fashion, they're quickly disposed of to leave only room for one Predator.
And this one, last Predator takes off his mask near the end of the movie and looks awful, which is a big surprise to me because up 'til that point Amalgamated Dynamics effects were great... But seriously, that hero Predator face looked like it had the same coloring as a semi-expensive Halloween mask. And the mandibles! You know how in the original PREDATOR film when we see the Predator's face for the first time and the mandibles actually look like they're part of its jaw? Now, for whatever reason, the mandibles spread up and out from the face and just look retarded. A friend of mine, Kraken (who is a huge PREDATOR geek... He owns the life-sized Sharper Image Predator and loves both PREDATOR and PREDATOR 2), kept calling this Predator "Corky, the mongoloid Predator" because of how retarded it looked.
But on the other hand, the effects work on the Aliens was great. Each and every one of them, from the Queen to the facehuggers to the drones. The CG work was surprisingly natural and looked fantastic (for the most part). Unfortunately, Anderson decided to speed up the life-cycle of the Aliens to a ridiculous rate. In the span of 20-30 minutes (movie time, not sitting in the theater watching time) we see the egg hatch, the facehugger deploy, the chestburster... well, chestburst and the alien reach maturity. I know Harry was questioning the time frame after the movie, but you can't deny it. Paul WS Anderson built a time table IN TO the movie (the pyramid changes every 10 minutes), so you can tell exactly how much time passes by each change. It's not possible to miss one of them either because it's not like the characters just stay around in one room for 2 or 3 changes, so if they're in the same room when we cut back to them then it has been under 10 minutes.
I don't know... You can definitely say this movie is better than ALIEN: RESURRECTION, but I wouldn't say it's better than PREDATOR 2 or better than ALIEN 3, which is a movie I loathe. I hate what they did to the characters from the previous film. It feels like a slap in the face for ALIENS. BUT it is a solid movie with good, complex characters and heavy, heavy atmosphere.
AvP is just plain. I hate that they make the Predators so wimpy, I hate that they don't give us one human character that we can give a shit about, but in the end the movie is a non-entity for me. It didn't hurt me to watch it, like HOUSE OF THE DEAD did, but I won't ever watch it again. As an ALIEN or PREDATOR fan I didn't feel either of the titles were lived up to and if that rumor that was out before production started on AvP about James Cameron and Ridley Scott giving 20th Century Fox the option to drop AvP for an ALIEN film that was to be directed by Scott and written by Cameron was true, then there's something to genuinely hate this movie for. If we really could have had a Ridley Scott directed, James Cameron scripted ALIEN film instead of this forgetful mess then I hope it doesn't get out because Paul W.S. Anderson's life might be in jeopardy when the fans get scent of what could have been. I wouldn't condone or advise such action, but there are some whackos out there.
So, I can't really give this film any stamp of approval, but I also don't feel strongly enough to try too hard to keep you from seeing the film. Its weaknesses outnumber its strengths, but it's not a wholly terrible film. Even those that defend it call it a bad movie... but a "fun bad movie." I just thank god there were no Predator wrestling moves... maybe that's in the director's cut?
Anyway, that's it from me on this. I'm finally getting around to transcribing those SKY CAPTAIN interviews, so keep an eye out for those, squirts. 'Til then this is Quint bidding you all a fond farewell and adieu.
-Quint
I also got a this other review from someone who really dug the hell out of the movie. I really won't argue the reviewer because I don't feel that strongly about it, but saying it's a massive boot to the ass of both franchises is a bit of an insult to the actual good ALIEN and PREDATOR films, in my opinion. And her/his audience seems radically different than mine, who started making fun of the movie in the last act. Which side of the fence will you fall on? Be sure to let us know in the talkback below!!
Hey, Moriarty, I got into the Boston sneak preview and I thought I'd pass along a review.
The showing, to be totally blunt, was a knockout; the audience walked out incredibly enthusiastic about the movie. I walked in with a free ticket that I had stumbled across. My expectations were low: Paul Anderson generally sucks and I had the sensation this had been rushed into production to exploit Freddy Vs. Jason. I was honestly expecting total crap.
Before we begin: I don't go to these movies expecting them to be "canonical", whatever that is. If I were doing a AVP role-playing game, then I care about the "rules." Otherwise, screw it, I just want the movie to deliver fun action sequences with a fast-moving plot and a lot of violence.
Does "AVP" deliver?
Like FedEx, baby.
The reaction of the audience best sums it up. At one point, about halfway through, in a quiet spot, somebody blurted "This is so cool!" The entire audience roared and applauded. C
all me a plant all you freakin' want, I loved this movie. Everything that should be a detriment just isn't. The PG-13 isn't a problem; the vast majority of the violence is actually between Aliens and Predators, and believe me, there is a LOT of violence. Also, frankly, the movie's more effective because most of the REALLY brutal stuff towards the humans is off-screen. We just see invisible Predator blades covered in blood, or Predator's eye view of stabbings.
This isn't "Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie", don't get me wrong. Anderson goes for all the cliches here, but he makes them work, because he just does not let up; this movie is VERY fast-paced. In fact, two of the biggest audience applause moments were two that had no right to work; the bullet-time face-huggers and the old Temple-of-Doom race for the door. But they worked anyway; I honestly thought Anderson was going to crush the poor bastard trying to claw his way out of the door...and then for good measure the bastard tosses in a Predator shuriken!
The effects work was also pretty top-notch. Far less CGI than you would expect, a lot more man-in-suit and practical work, and it's fairly well-integrated. More to the point, the CGI is generally very well disguised, most of the time. I suspect the effects team shot to make the CGI look like the practical models, which no doubt helped the integration.
I will cheerfully admit the Aztec/Egyptian/Cambodian idea is all really pretty goofy, although I would point out it's a lot closer to the Lovecraftian roots of both "Predator" and "Alien" (submerged in the former, but they are there); "At the Mouth of Madness" done as a big summer movie. That said...yeah, it's still goofy.
Not all of Anderson's directorial decisions are good ones either; the first Alien/Predator fight is way too Michael Bay-style for my tastes, although it's made up for by the Predator bashing the Alien against big-ass stone columns, swinging him around by the legs. And, yes, the endlessly shifting pyramid is all too conveinent.
But big f**king deal. I've suspended my disbelief for far greater things.
Basically, I enjoyed the hell out of this movie. It is a powerful boot to the ass to both franchises. Provided you don't nitpick the thing to death, and just enjoy the ride, this is a great summer movie, something we've been sadly lacking for a while.
And while I was there, I got a ticket to another free movie.
"Anacondas."
Well, you can't win them all.
Theta
