Just saw Alien Vs. Predator

And it's pure, unmitigated shit. It's filled with woodenly acted cardboard characters who utter inane, cliched dialogue -- most of them die quickly, and since you've never gotten to know any of them beyond the most basic stereotypes, there's zero tension in their respective demises. The action and battle sequences are especially inept -- Anderson directs so sloppily that much of what goes on is confusing and murky and is then made worse with Matrix-y bullet-time shots. The CGI is the equivalent of an average PS2 cutscene at best -- there's a bit with the Alien queen where she seems to change size arbitrarily for no reason. Oh, and you can apparently run around in sub-zero Antarctic temperatures wearing only a long-sleeve shirt and light pants and be just fine -- hell, your breath doesn't even show.

Yep, this is actually much worse than Van Helsing. There was much derisive laughter from the audience.

Both franchises are officially dead as of now.

About an hour and forty-five minutes, approximately. Half of this time is spent with dull, endlessly expository scenes where one character explains something only to have another character repeat it back to them.

Here's an example:

Latino Translator Guy: Do you know what my people call the moon when it is that big and bright?

Plucky Scientist Girl: What do they call it?

Latino Translator Guy: La Luna Cacciatore.

Plucky Scientist Girl: La Luna Cacciatore?

Latino Translator Guy: Hunter's Moon.

Plucky Scientist Girl: Hunter's Moon.

Then they both laugh, and the scene moves on. There's quite a lot of exchanges of this calibre.

By hiring Paul W.S. Anderson to write and direct it, apparently. Seriously, this actually gives me an appreciation for RESIDENT EVIL, for pete's sake.

There was zero buzz in the packed theater -- no applause or perceived audience connection. The film was just...boring. Even if I was still twelve years old, I doubt I would've enjoyed it. It fails to deliver on pretty much every level. The violence is especially tame -- there's pretty much no red stuff at all, just a lot of slime and glowing green Predator blood.

It IS PG-13.

Funny that you mention Boll. I noted quite a few similarities between the action scenes in AVP and HOUSE OF THE DEAD, incidentally. Particularly the ridiculous bullet-time shots (the facehuggers jump, and then we spin wildly around them -- whoopee!).

Point of fact...I saw this with a group of people who run the entire viewer gamut. Mixed in this group are folks like myself who adored the first two ALIEN films and the first PREDATOR as well as folks who dug PREDATOR 2 and the last two ALIEN films (poor bastards) and even a couple of innocent souls who went into AVP with a clean slate, having never seen ANY of the previous films.

Not one person in the bunch remotely enjoyed it.

There were also several kids in the audience, and it's notable that they got fidgety and inattentive pretty quickly.

SPOILERS AHEAD....














WARNING...TURN BACK IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW THIS....














SERIOUSLY, LAST CHANCE....







Yep, that's exactly what happens. She gets chained to a water tank and dropped into the icy depths by Sanaa Lathan's character, who at this point has stripped out of her weather gear and is fighting alongside the last surviving Predator without being at all phased by the fact that it's about fifty below zero (something that is actually noted at the beginning of the film, in fact). The fx for the Queen REALLY stink here -- she barrels along like a T-Rex on two legs at lightning speed and changes size from moment to moment -- she's about as big as King Kong when she takes the plunge.

Another amusing bit. Since the entire second half of the film takes place in real time, the aliens can now apparently be implanted in a human, burst through the chest, and then grow to full size in about five minutes.

And their acidic blood, which needs only the tiniest drop to BURN THROUGH THE HULL OF A SHIP, can apparently be applied to human skin in the same quantities and only leave a cauterized burn.

Okay, some more SPOILERS...
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SERIOUSLY, THESE ARE MAJOR
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LAST CHANCE
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Handy Latino Translator Guy deduces from a quick read of the various (and hilariously dorky) hieroglyphs that the Predators came to Earth thousands of years ago and helped create human civilization. The humans worshipped the Predators as gods and built pyramids around the world to honor them. The Predators, in return for this generous genuflection, picked the greatest of the humans (yes, they actually refer to them as "The Chosen Ones") to serve as hosts for the aliens that they brought to Earth to hunt. This was apparently considered a great honor -- and the humans did this willingly all over the world.

For some unknown reason, there is no record of this, and now the Predators have a hidden pyramid in Antarctica that they power up, hoping that it will attract humans into it like a spider's web in order to breed some more aliens. But then the Predators also arbitrarily kill off a bunch of the humans just for the hell of it. And then, even more confusingly, one of the Predators decides to let Sanaa Lathan tag along and help him because she manages to kill ONE alien. He cuts off an alien head and straps it to her left arm as a shield and gives her the alien's severed tail to use as a spear. The acid from the severed alien parts doesn't seem to affect her at all. But then he rips off a facehugger finger and gives her an acid "war mark" on her cheek.

After she helps kill the alien queen, the Predator mothership decloaks ABOUT TWENTY FEET ABOVE HER HEAD and we discover that it's been there all along, and that at least fifty other Predators have just, you know, been standing around invisible and hanging out. They make Lathan an honorary Predator and take off, leaving her standing alone and proud (and wearing thin clothing) in the subzero temperatures.

So yeah, the mythology may as well not exist.

Okay, let's get one thing out of the way. Not only am I familiar with the original comic miniseries, but I'm also good friends with Mark Verheiden, the guy who wrote it. The thing about Mark's script that was refreshing was the fact that the characters were layered, interesting and intelligent. He took what could've easily been a rushed, campy premise and instilled it with depth and intrigue -- the characters were delineated and well-conceived, and you actually cared about them and remembered who they were throughout the course of the story. I could buy the lead character heading off and joining the Predators in the end because that part of her character was established from the outset. Lathan's character was a screaming wuss who managed to kill a single alien warrior and help destroy the Queen through sheer, stupid luck. World of difference there. The characters in AVP are so thin that they don't even qualify as stereotypes. At least stereotypes would've been recognizable.

Aside from ripping off a few salient points from the series, AVP has nothing to do with the comics. It also has very little to do with either of the franchises its based on, and the assertion that it is its own franchise is foolish -- it's a combination of TWO ESTABLISHED FRANCHISES. Ignoring obvious rules set down in the two earlier series (the Predator's love of heat, the alien's lifecycle) is sloppy and pointless. It weakens the storyline for the sake of dumbing it down for the mouthbreathers in the audience.

To be frank, I went in with low expectations as well, and even those were dashed. It's not nitpicking to point out glaring, incredibly obvious logical flaws when they're shoved right in your face. I *knew* there'd be some folks who came on with the clarion call of "it was only dumb fun," but that only comes into play if you like your fun on a mindnumbingly, near-mentally-handicapped level of stupidity.

And as for declaring it a visual masterpiece? Not a chance. Only if you find murky visuals and poorly directed action sequences replete with blue filters and bullet-time visually stimulating. Me, I've seen all this before multiple times -- fuck, even Michael Bay can direct a better action sequence than Anderson.

HERO is a visual masterpiece.

CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON is a visual masterpiece.

ALIEN is a visual masterpiece.

AVP looks like what it is -- a movie comprised entirely of shoddily-directed PS2 cutscenes. There's not a single awe-inspiring shot in the whole mess. There is, however, a pretty awful flashback of the Predators fighting thousands of Aliens on a pyramid in Aztec times that's pure CGI crap. It's the worst film I've had the displeasure of seeing this year. And I've seen both CATWOMAN and VAN HELSING.

Nope, they're outside in the freezing cold. Lathan strips off her jacket and runs around without a care in the world, wearing only a thin, long-sleeved shirt and light pants -- you never once even see anyone's breath, as the whole thing is a very obvious set. The Predators' hatred for cold is entirely forgotten, as well.

Sadly, there wasn't even any nippleage.

Also, all the Predators now roar like lions every few minutes. And the classic "Predator-vision" is over-simplified. Doesn't look anything like it did in the original films.

Actually, Jamie, the hatred is pretty palpable on the main board. The most positive sentiment I can detect is along the lines of "well, it's bad, but it's not as bad as it could have been." Note that the film wasn't screened for critics -- that's a pretty big indicator right there.

Who am I to call this for what it is? Well, I'm a viewer with a modicum of intelligence whose incredibly low expectations weren't met in the least while watching this wretched piece of hackwork. I'm someone who has enjoyed bad movies in the past (hell, I found DREAMCATCHER to be a hoot and laughed my beer-addled ass off while watching it). I'm also someone who knows a thing or two about mise-en-scene, framing, lighting, special effects and all the other work that goes into the production of films from having worked on them myself. Additionally, I'm someone who knows quite a bit about crafting a well-told story in screenplay form -- I mean, that's my *job,* after all.

But above all, I'm an informed, discerning viewer who is sick and fucking tired of people making excuses for shit movies that can't even offer proper visceral thrills. If people are entertained by stupidity and rank amateurism, that's fine for them. Me, I got over that a long time ago.

I could care less about changing someone's opinion, particularly those whose opinion isn't thought out well enough to go beyond the basic "I just liked it `cause I thought it was cool" exclamation.

Do I analyze every film I see? Hell yeah. I dunno about you, but I *like* using my brain, even in an action film. I don't like having to turn it off entirely to get past logical points that even a ten-year old would catch. I explicitly laid out every single reason why the film didn't remotely work for me, Jamie, plainly stated. It's all right up there.

It's certainly interesting that those who dislike the film can actually give *tangible* reasons for doing so, while those who enjoy it keep using the same tired "it's just dumb fun" line. There's your difference right there.

Agreed 1000 percent.