Movie Plot – AVP: Alien vs. Predator: During an archaeological expedition on Bouvetøya Island in Antarctica, a team of archaeologists and other scientists becomes embroiled in a battle between the two legends. Soon the team realizes that only one species can win.

Director: Paul W.S. Anderson
Writers: Paul W.S. Anderson, Dan O’Bannon, Ronald Shusett, Jim Thomas
Cast: Sanaa Lathan, Lance Henriksen, Raoul Bova, Ewen Bremner

Alien vs. Predator

Looking at Alien vs. Predator, it seems like the creator simply picked two cool characters and crafted a story around them to make a guaranteed cracker. Yet this really disappoints and is the weakest film of them all.

The film begins with Alexa Woods receiving a phone call. She is an adventurous extreme sports babe who is asked by a wealthy businessman to lead a group of scientists on a mission to Antarctica. Once there, they find a wondrous pyramid deep under the ice. What at first seems to be the find of their lives, turns out to be the hunting ground of the Predators, who hunt there for the ultimate prey: the Alien.

After a rather slow start, the film really gets going with the arrival of the Predators and Aliens. The Predators, as well as the Aliens, do look design-wise.

Underwhelmed

The predator films are characterized by an emphasis on action. The Alien films focus more on suspense, although the later films have begun to focus more and more on the action element. AvP is not really exciting for a moment like Alien, for example. Also, the art direction, which was so characteristic of the first Alien films, is not found at all in AvP.

The cast is one of the biggest issues of this film. I don’t get why they looked for a decent cast, this was just bad. All the characters had cartoonish characteristics. Sometimes that’s a good thing, but this wasn’t the case. In addition, there is a silly team-up which I simply didn’t get why they went for that route.

There is one thing that the Alien and Predators movies have in common. You felt the danger for the characters. Sure there was danger in this one too, but it was never about the humans. We want to see the two legends fight each other without having to care about the humans.

Fight!

There is splashy action though in the battle between the Aliens and the Predators. The hard-hitting and beautifully filmed action scenes show what this CGI spectacle is made for. As a result, the humans become quite superfluous to the film at one point.

Still, I remained hungry. I believe this was largely due to the focus on humans. It also takes a while for the two creatures to fight each other and I would have preferred to see a little more. However, this can be a nitpick as you might find this to be the right amount of action between those two.

Conclusion

Alien vs. Predator was not what I expected. It disappointed me as someone who has seen both franchises.

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