AVPR SUX
I wrote a brief rant on Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem for UGO, because we didn’t have one, but this is largely the review that I would have written for here (with less swearing). What a disappointment.
Any other fools happen to waste their time watching interspecies battling?
OpenCritic
My heart is so heavy from how much I didn’t like this movie. And my expectations were low going in. What an uninspired waste of these wonderfully inventive screen creatures.
I will post a danviews column of some of the movies I saw over the holiday week.
i’ll write everything when i get back to ny.
but this was sad and pathetic – yet it was exactly what i expected…actually…maybe even a little better since there were more fighting moments than the first battle. i dont know though…
how does something like this even happen?
it confused me more than anything else. about how it is what it is.
🙁
Maybe I had lower expectations for the original AVP than most, but I actually liked it when all was said and done… and think it’s a better movie than this drek. I mean, after Alien Resurrection, how could you not have zero expectations for a film in this world?
I will def see but how in the hell could you guys have any expectations after the last one?
The first two alien movies had strong characters and were psychologically thrilling as well as action-packed horror movies.
The third attempted some interesting arcs for the characters and had a signature style, but was ultimately too bleak (and disrespectful of the previous film’s arc) to really be engaging. But it had merit.
The fourth was a cluster fuck all around – putting gore above all else and suffering from stunt casting and a flawed script. The best elements of the story (ripley being a clone, an alien hybrid child) were poorly handled. This movie was a big misfire to me, but it tried.
For years we’ve had comic books telling stories of aliens and predators which ranged from brilliant to hokey. The AvP movie may have lacked strong characterizations but it was decently acted by capable (if uncharismatic) actors and it at least tried to please fans and newcomers alike by expanding on aspects of the films — predator culture, the weyland-yutani corporation, etc.
I liked it. But then, I like Paul Anderson – I think he’s the polar opposite of Ewe Boll — he takes on franchises as a fanboy, he does a decent job at creating tension & atmosphere while handling effects, etc. He ain’t no master, not by a long shot—but he always gets the job done. He’s a solid B minus student.
The first AvP satisfied my lust for one thing – seeing aliens fight predators. And I liked the Predator-human relationship. Also loved the Queen battle. And the story, while a stretch, actually made some sense to me. I thought it was a good way to mix Aliens, Predators and humans into a new environment.
I loved that the sequel took place SECONDS after the first film. I was hoping they’d paste together into a fun epic.
Cuz that’s what my expectations were—fun. Thin story, thin characters, but fun. What I did not expect was such a terribly empty experience. Such a teen slasher pic. It was a betrayal of genre, a round peg jammed in a square hole. Someone confused AvP with Freddy Vs Jason and for that there can be no forgiveness (and we know I’m forgiving).
It was such a waste of potential that it could never hope to recover. And Paul Anderson’s capability as a B- director is only solidified by watching this fucking mess, a total D- job by two idiot brothers who confused Ridley Scott’s minimal use of monster shots with Emmerich/Bay’s penchant for blurry action.
The movie is geographically, emotionally and narratively confusing. You never know where you are, you never know why, and you never know what you are looking at.
…Except when it’s a teenage girl’s ass.
…but I guess I’m writing a review. I will save it for its own post.
As soon as I heard, long ago, that this film was going to take place in some modern-day midwest town I knew two things: 1. There’s no money in the budget. A midwest town is just one notch above Studio City effort-wise. So I knew all around this film would be a cheap piece of shit. 2. Everything special and unique about these two icons is gone. They’re now just monsters of the week (weak) at a time when a studio can put out any horror crapfest and make a small profit. So why treat them with respect?
It’s only a matter of time before they establish that the Space Jockey in Alien was actually a Predator.
I shouldn’t be wasting any more time with this movie but it annoys me that in a film this dopey I didn’t really get the last line SPOILER if anyone actually cares…
When the guy said about the Predator weapon “but this isn’t for our world, is it?’’ was that some refrence to the video game (there seemed to be emphasis on the woman’s name, I wondered if she was a character from that), or was it just meant to set up yet another sequel – for a second I thought it was meant to be a set up to “Aliens” like they wanted you to think AvP2 happened BEFORE that movie, and that the idea to build the colony on the Aliens planet stemmed from all this…but then I thought that was way too smart a wink for a movie this stupid.
I still can’t believe they had the nerve to have that one pud yell “get to the choppaaaa!” , and had that one chick holding the little girl like Ripley and Newt. Way to keep reminding me how much better the other movies were.
Why do I care about the last line, or any of it, ugh, I wish The Water Horse had come in and stomped everybody, he’s the only creature to root for this holiday movie season.
All the alien movies have a company called Weyland-Yutani, which is the company that wants to get their hands on the Alien.
In the first movie, they tell the android that the crew is expendable.
In the second, Paul Reiser works for them and accompanies Ripley and the Marines on their mission. Bishop the android is also of their creation.
In Alien 3 they show up at the end of the movie to try and get their hands on the alien inside ripley. The company man who shows up looks exactly like Bishop, and we presume the android was designed by him, in his own image.
In Alien 4 we are so far in the future that they say (in the extended cut) that Weyland-Yutani was eventually bought out by Wal-Mart (no wonder they cut that originally).
In AvP, which takes place many years before the first Alien movie (a century at least) the man who heads the expedition is a man named Charles Bishop Weyland (also looking identical to the Bishop android from Aliens).
We’re meant to believe that this man is half of the team that would form the Weyland-Yutani corporation.
And so, at the end of AVP 2, you see a woman referred to as, “Miss Yutani.” Take possession of the predator weapon. Big, tacked-on, fanboy bullshit. By then, who the fuck cares.
Oh! Thanks. Jeez a halfway decent writer could’ve read the above mythology and come up with a pretty cool script. But no. Instead we got retards searching for car keys in sewers.