This afternoon I was compelled to join a friend and his cousin in seeing this... horrible movie, and aside from making me wish that I had that 86 minutes and $5.25 back... I left encouraged to not go back and watch the first Alien vs Predator movie (which I've never seen) or any of the original Alien movies (one or two of which I've seen), let alone read any of the comic books or give any more thought to the experience than what will be involved in writing this post.
This movie was bad, so very very bad. Not a Michael Jackson "you know I'm bad, I'm bad - you know it" bad, a Shredder "It feels so good to be so bad" bad, or even a "oh know my Windows Home Server burned down with the rest of my uninsured house and now I have nothing" bad ... but so horribly awful that... aside from wishing I was having dental work at the time, forgiveness for my friend and his suggestion of this film may never come and yet amazingly... it did have inklings of potential.
There is obvious some kind of back story to this movie other than "The Aliens and Predators try to kill each other", and had some of the following topics been covered... or at least included as captions at the bottom of the screen during the opening... some clarity would be gained:
- What is the relationship between the Aliens and Predators?
- Why is there a hybrid Alien/Predator?
- Why does a single (implied) bad-ass Predator have to strip a fallen one for the equipment needed to take on the Aliens just after he arrives?
- Why is the original Predator ship so stocked full of dangerous specimens?
- What is the relationship between the crashed ship and the Predator who comes to clean up after it?
- Why is that clean up a one man job?
Just to name a few.
I will give the Predator credit though... he does seem to be a firm believer in the Prime Directive as demonstrated by his careful removal of all physical evidence of the Aliens... but then I don't recall Captain Kirk or Picard killing and skinning someone who found them cleaning up.
I should mention that I am not a fan of horror or slasher movies... if I were I'm sure I would have enjoyed the fact that I fully expect that the following conversation likely occurred on set at one point:
It just occurred to me, we haven't gratuitously killed anyone in over 5 minutes.
Yea, we should fix that
I know lets have the stereotypical quasi sex scene which turns bad in the high school pool to try to keep the teenage boys interested
Good idea, hey though, we are starting to run out of money so lets lets turn down the lights a bit so as to hide some of the cheesiness
That's not a bad idea... in fact lets just stop using extra lights all together and break out some overused rain, not only will it add to the atmosphere, but will also let avoid those expensive and complicated long shots
My friend and his cousin dared to call this movie science fiction, a concept I balked at and said "if so... what was the lesson, moral or contemporary issue that it dealt with?"
The only explanation I could think of was that it had to do with trauma often caused to the average American family through the deployment of a parent overseas and the problematic reunifications that occur even when the parent returns unscathed.
The moral of the story was that that kids should be extra thrilled their fighting parent is home and tell them so immediately and without delay, never once letting them feel guilty for serving their country or being absent from their child's life for even a day... cause if they don't, their father is likely to be eaten by an alien and their entire town is will be nuked by their own government.
Lesson learned!
The one upshot of this movie... was that after seeing it I felt only slight less dumber than I had after watching the Sci Fi channel's horrendous mini-series "Tin Man"... (something I've yet to blog about) as I'd only wasted 83 minutes on AvP while I'd wasted ~4-6 hours on Tin Man (depending on commercials).
Read the complete post at http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IHateLinux/~3/206322404/aliens-vs-predator-requiem-omg-wtf.html