Eshin Direct

Alien vs. Predator had the potential to be big since it already has a rich comic book heritage to draw from. The film wasn’t as great as I was expecting nor was it as bad as I was expecting. The Alien franchise lost its way after Aliens and the Predator never made a third sequel. This should tell you something about what essentially amounts to Alien 5 and Predator 3.

It felt like I was watching a trailer rather than a whole film. The concepts, characters and storylines were not developed to any great extent and it was a little rushed. One suspects that it’s a case of too many cooks spoil the broth too. You probably had the two franchises duking it out to make sure that their elements, genre and styles for their monsters made the right showing. Combined with the need to include those pesky humans in it all, you had a three-way dilution of sorts rather than a single masterpiece that was contributed to by three rich sources.

It wasn’t an Alien film with the necessary suspense and fear woven into the atmosphere. They did what they were supposed to, but there wasn’t the right element of fear. Of course, after four previous films, the Aliens have become too familiar and it would have been hard to recreate the glory of Alien. More deadly than the Predators, this didn’t seem to quell the notion that they were still weak and reduced to nothing more than cannon fodder.

It was perhaps more of a Predator film. Probably a Predator 2 film. Nice idea but crap execution. They took certain elements of the two Predator films and made them into gospel in this film. Almost fifteen years from the first film, the Predators seemed to be more powerful. They seem to have learned from the ass-whooping they got from Arnie and Danny and actually improved their technology. They also seem to have a more rigid code of honour, in that they won’t kill unworthy prey. It’s taken to the extreme in some instances. One of which is the notion that they can only kill when the prey is armed. But it takes away from the awe that the Predator generates when you pump him full of strange “human” emotions like compassion and sympathy.

The biggest gripe of the film is the predictability. The film was painfully cliched with phrases like “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” being hashed out. From the moment that the first Alien was revealed, the storyline became all too clear and this was all confirmed in the film way too early on. Essentially, there were no surprises. Conceptually, atmospherically or anything. Part of the problem was that there were too many Aliens and Predators. One Alien and one Predator would have been sufficient to create the right amount of suspense.

Somehow I did enjoy the film. I only wish that they took their time to make a decent film.

Tags: Movies