Alien Vs. Predator - 08/29/04

Written by: Paul W.S. Anderson (story/script), Dan O'Bannon, Ronald Shusett, Jim & John Thomas (characters)

Starring: Sanaa Lathan, Raoul Bova, Lance Henriksen, Ewen Bremner

Official Site

I don't know why so many people are down on Paul Anderson's movies. They are on the cheesy side, occassionally, sure. But I think he's got a keen eye for directing exactly the kind of movie he wants to make. The amount of imagination and energy he spends on a project really gets projected onto the screen, in my opinion.

Sure, there's Mortal Kombat, one of the first big budget video game movies. A pure and simple situation that boiled down to this one thing: You can't please everyone.

After Kombat, Anderson directed one of my favorite space horror films, Event Horizon. I love this movie. It's beautiful to look at, it's well acted, well shot, well written and well directed.

He would follow that film up with Soldier, written by sci-fi scribe David Peoples. With a semi-weak script and a so-so budget, Anderson was still able to put together a coherent sci-fi film that was fun, and only took itself seriously half the time.

Anderson then went back to the video game genre with Resident Evil, writing and producing the film as well. Comparable to the look of Event Horizon, Evil was another one of those situations where you can't please everyone. He got in a lot of the material from the video game... he got in some of the gruesome parts of the game... but you can't do everything that you want to do, and the film came off slightly flat.

Well, this is the major problem with AVP. And what exacerbates this is the films rating. PG-13.

All of the films that are associated with this franchise are rated R. This isn't much of a surprise to anyone... this point of the AVP film has been talked about in some detail on many of the movie sites online, so I won't make too much of it.

But... (everyone I know has a big but)... it stopped the film from become as violent as its predecessors, as gory, and kept the language down to a minimum. Meaning, it kept out half the fun.

But, you have to get the kids in the theaters, right? What with all the AVP toys, and comics and such... blah.

In regards to the acting, we didn't really get too many breakout performances. Standard stuff, really, though I enjoy Henriksen and Bremner's work a lot in other films. We get some decent work from both, but not enough, in my opinion.

A great few inside jokes with Henriksen's character... funny stuff.

Sanaa Lathan is the main character here, and she does a decent job. The only work of her's that I'm familiar with is her part in Blade... she does a decent job in this film, but nothing that blew my skirt up. No, I don't wear a skirt... it's a figure of speech.

I found that the script we got from Anderson was pretty intelligent. Sure, there were your cliche moments that made you stop and shake your head. Sure, you'll find these in a lot of films that are given the accelerated greenlight. You have to expect it.

But I found that Anderson gave us good characters, a good plot and a good reason for the battle behind the two species.

It should be mentioned that writer Shane Salerno (Shaft, Ghost Rider) worked on the script as well, working closely during the entire pre, production and post process, but never received co-writing credit for the film.

I've read some pretty bad reviews of this film, and I can understand why. I can't tell, though, if these people are pissed because they are fans of the franchises, or because they just don't like Anderson's films, or because they were fans of the Alien Vs. Predator comic book series.

I was a HUGE fan of the comic book series. Written by Randy Stradley and drawn by Phill Norwood and Chris Warner (by far one of the best Alien and Predator comic book artists around), the series was wildly popular at Dark Horse comics. Dark Horse had done a number of series with both franchises, but they pioneered the VS. theme in the comic industry with this series.

Having re-read the series, you have to give credit to Stradley, whose story has some strong elements that made it into the film. This is the second time that I've come across a film that used elements from the comic, but whose writer wasn't recognized in the credits. The first being The Punisher
.

I don't think that the comic series would have been filmable, at the budget of this film (approx. $60 million). It was a little too ambitious, and took place way in the future, off world.

Soooo... I think it would be difficult to say who should get the credit for the plot of this film... but for those of you who are anti-AVP, you shouldn't just blame Anderson, and do some research before you go and trash talk the guy. I feel that those who didn't like the film are just Anderson bashers, and can't help themselves.

Still, I sit here thinking about Anderson's (and Salerno's) plot for this film, and I'm still impressed with his/their imagination. Following through with the production, art direction and creature designs, I think Anderson did as good a job (at PG-13) as anyone with directing this film.

Hopefully we'll get a nice DVD R rated version of the film, with about half an hour worth of additional scenes, violence, cursing... all of the things that made the last six films so enjoyable.