Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

I don’t know. I’m sitting around one spring Saturday and I don’t have anything to do. Or at least anything I want to do since the lawn needs mowing, the cabinets need painting, TV shows need editing and other menial tasks which give me no pleasure need doing. But I do have a refrigerator full a food, a DVD player and a nice TV. I’ve had this copy of Alien Vs. Predator lying around for years but never felt like watching it. I saw the sequel at the theater as part of my Decode Magazine duties and that movie was summarily awful which certainly didn’t endear me to watching this original / sequel. Plus folks crapped all over this movie. But I was bored with nothing to do and Sanaa Lathan has been on my short list of women to birth my child, with my wife’s permission of course, ever since Sanaa gave birth to Blade. So how bad could this movie be, directed by Paul W. S. Anderson who is just a rung above Uwe Boll in the eyes some film watchers? Well it’s not all THAT bad. I mean it’s better than the movie that followed it and that fourth alien movie. For whatever that’s worth.

Ms. Lathan is Alexa Woods, some kind of environmentalist something or another who is recruited by big time corporate guy Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henricksen) to lead an Antarctic underground expedition. What they are expediting is the sudden appearance via satellite of a pyramid 2000 feet beneath the surface of this old mining facility. Seems like everybody disappeared from this facility back in 1904 and yet nobody knows why. Hmmm….

So we have this crew of scientist, mercenaries and diggers ready to go to this underground pyramid but damn if there isn’t already a big ass perfectly round hole in the ground leading to where they want to go. Hmmm…. I’d be concerned but our crew simply considered it their good fortune.

I should mention that a spaceship full of Predators is on their way to where this crew is going and in the pyramid the mother of all Aliens is defrosting and is subsequently dropping mucho face huggers. So our crew is busy exploring and our resident cryptologist, Dr. de Rosa (Sebastian Bouva), has found some kind of time clock release thingie. The time clock’s last setting is on the same day in 1904 when everybody in that camp site above us disappeared so let’s say we set the new time clock to today. Yeah, let’s do that because nothing bad could possibly happen to us could it?

Now face huggers are everywhere and these are the super genetetical kind that take like 8 minutes to gestate. Face huggers of course leads to slimy, acid blooded, ridiculously violent aliens, and the Predators are in town to take them out and any humans who have the misfortune of being in their path. Thing is there are A LOT of aliens and due to some bad Predatoring, only one Predator is left. Good thing the lovely Alexa Woods, in addition to being hot as hell, is also blessed with the predator gene. As our soon to be dead cryptologist has quoted ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. Now side by side, Predator and hottie must stop these Aliens before they reach the surface or it is all over. For real.

Though I didn’t think ‘AvP’ was all that bad as popcorn movie it was pretty damn silly. First I think there were like nine or ten humans in the crew yet there were aliens all over the place. Were our aliens like reusing humans? Can they do that? The cryptologist dude was like the best cryptologist of ALL TIME! I mean this dude can read Predator cryptology man, and reads it fluently complete with cut scenes. When he described the part when the Predator like nuked the earth to clean out all these nasty Aliens they had created, who in the hell was around to write that conclusion on the ceiling of the pyramid? As fine a specimen as Sanaa Lathan might be, I’m thinking if I’m a seven foot Predator in the fight of my life this 125 pound sista by my side is probably going to be more of hindrance than a help, but hey, me and The Predator apparently have the same taste in women so I can’t be too mad at him about that. This movie is just plain stupid. Albeit in an entertaining way. And actor Colin Salmon probably might request the next time Anderson kills him in one of his movies can it be some other way other than slicing a brother to death since this is how he dispatched my man in his Resident Evil movie too. And as has been addressed time and time again about this movie, you simply can’t have a PG-13 rated Predator or Alien movie and expect to receive any love. Let alone combine the two and make it a bloodless affair. That’s just plain wrong.

Now the movie rides on rails, literally in some cases such as the mechanical winch that had to outrun a nuclear blast. Outstanding. As ridiculous as all the junk was in this flick the cast treats this ridiculous as if it’s the gospel truth, almost anything that comes out of Lance Henricksen’s mouth sounds like the words of Zeus. The set design was nice and the Alien / Predator battles were sweet, just needed more of them.

Anderson gets a hard way to go but I haven’t seen a movie of his yet that sucks total ass. I haven’t seen one yet that’s all that great either but the similarly skilled Michael Bay doesn’t get nearly the grief that this guy gets and this cat is a better filmmaker in my opinion. ‘AvP’ is an acceptable and completely ridiculous time waster with my only real problem with the movie, outside of the silliness of it all, is that they left my girl on the South Pole. What’s up with that? The king Predator gives my girl this stupid ass murdering device, which is cool and all, but unless she can ride that thing all the way back to Detroit, she’s screwed. You’d think a sista could get a lift.