Wanting vs. Having
Alien vs. Predator is an Imperfect Gift

In 1997, I concluded my review of Alien: Resurrection by asking 20th Century Fox to give audiences what they want in their next franchise installment: Alien vs. Predator. Well, it took seven years, but they finally delivered the movie that fans have been clamoring for since the skull of an Alien appeared in the spaceship trophy room at the end of Predator 2. The downside is that years of desire have built expectations to the point that no film could ever deliver.

The idea of seeing these two science fiction franchises clash in some interstellar free-for-all has been around for years. Dark Horse Comics did a series called Alien vs. Predator in the late 1980s, and since then fans have played video games, card games, and waited in eager anticipation for the movie that would finally pit the two species against each other in a battle for galactic dominance. The resulting movie, however, is heavily geared toward the gamer fans and anyone who isn't familiar with the titular creatures is likely to be left in the dark.

The story is set in the year 2004 -- centuries before Ripley will discover the aliens aboard the spaceship Nostromo in the film Alien. A Weyland Corporation satellite discovers a pyramid deep below the ice in Antarctica. The company founder, Charles Weyland (Lance Henriksen), assembles a team of experts to drill into the ice and explore it before anyone else gets wind of it. One of the experts, Alexa Woods (Sanaa Lathan) believes it is too risky of a venture, but her concern for everyone's safety forces her to accept the assignment.

As for the rest of the crew, who they are and what they do doesn't really matter much. The characters are all very two-dimensional, and they won't be around long enough to care about anyway. Before you can say "Oops," the intrepid explorers accidentally activate a hidden mechanism that brings the pyramid to life. The pyramid, it seems, is a ritual proving ground for Predators. They go there to hunt the Aliens and, in surviving, prove their worth to their species. To accomplish this, they have an Alien queen on ice (as it were) that is defrosted when they need her to lay eggs. Once she lays the eggs, humans are sacrificed to allow the alien parasite to implant their embryos into the human host. Aliens hatch out of the human host and instinctively start killing everything in sight.

The problem with this film is a matter of scale. A handful of humans are sent on this adventure, so only a handful can fall prey to becoming hosts to the parasitic Aliens. That means that only a handful of Aliens will be hatched. In addition, it appears that only a small number of Predators are sent to Earth at any given time (it is unclear exactly how many -- but it appears to be three or four). So, the resulting "cosmic free-for-all" is at best a skirmish. The humans do little but get in the way (except for Alexa who, I'm sure, will become the great, great, great grandmother of Ripley).

Just when things started to get interesting, the movie is over. The "battle" between Alien and Predator is little more than a few one-on-one confrontations. The climax, while interesting, is a letdown. I fully expected reinforcements to arrive on both sides, resulting in a battle that would pit a horde of Aliens against an army of Predators (as seen in the trailer). This image is a flashback, however, a story that an archeologist reads in the pyramid runes for the sake of explaining the history of the monument. I wanted to see Aliens spill out across the continents, making more hosts and multiplying like cockroaches, and then to see the Predators land like a bunch of galactic exterminators to clean up the planet. Sadly, it appears that will have to wait for the sequel, assuming there is one.

The movie has a few nods to the future history of the Alien films. The Weyland Corporation is part of the same Weyland Yutani Corporation that appears in Aliens. And it is no surprise that Weyland looks so much like the android named Bishop that Hendrickson played in those films.

In an effort to broaden the movie's box office draw, the gore and horror of the two franchises is watered down to allow for a modest PG-13 rating. This is the first film, in either the Alien or Predator franchise to carry less than an R rating. The result is a film that avoids the horror angle (which is probably for the best because, let's face it, you know what's going to burst out their chest cavities) and reduces the violence to a video game level. Things blow up, monsters get ripped apart, and humans die -- but all in a comic-book style that aims for style over realism.

I liked Alien vs. Predator enough to buy it when it comes out on DVD. In fact, I probably liked it as well as either of the Predator movies and better than Alien3. Regardless, I have to admit that I am disappointed. After years of waiting for something explosive in the science fiction genre, it's depressing to see something that doesn't live up to its potential.

MY RATING: 6 out of 10.

RATED: PG-13
RUN TIME: 87 min.