Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Alien VS Predator





A mysterious heat signal is coming from the Antarctic; Weyland Corporation wants to discover this heat signal for themselves. Gathering a team of professionals they head to an abandoned whaling station and descend down a shaft (that they assume is manmade) and into the ice. Discovering what seems to be a temple that predates written history, the group continues to explore. Meanwhile an alien species called Predators have landed and have started killing the men above the ice. Unaware of what is happening up above them, and what the temple really is the team unknowingly powers up the temple awakening the queen alien from a cryogenic sleep, causing many new Facehuggers to be born and creating more aliens. This causes a war that the humans can only hope to survive.


(Lance Henriksen as Weyland and Bishop)

“AVP” is not the greatest film in the world, but nor is it the worst. The concept behind the film was based off of an older comic book that combined two of science fictions greatest creations the Predator series, and the Alien series. Now though this brought only one cast member from any of these series (Lance Henriksen) who plays Charles Bishop Weyland, which is funny because in the Alien series he played Bishop, I believe this was a play on words from the writers. Now though he is the only one that has acted in an Alien or Predator series the rest of the cast does a decent job, but will not blow you away with their performance. Not all the blame can be put on them though the script was not very strong.


(now that’s a face only a mother could love)

Now to the plot, what can I say it is not that strong and really can’t hold its own and the only reason you will find yourself going back and watching this film again is because you love both series and just cannot help it. The action is ok, the writing is subpar, and you will find yourself yelling at the screen saying “NO YOU IDIOT DON’T TOUCH THAT” and then subsequently saying “told ya so” when someone dies from touching something you told them not to. The story is ok in the fact that they drew the two sci-fi stories together well with the predators having to kill aliens as a rite of passage and the reason the temple was underground was to protect the rest of the civilizations from an alien attack.

All in all, “Alien VS Predator” is a sci-fi first combining two historical franchises together, but fails to do it well. With that said if you love both series and have not seen it, if it is on TV make some popcorn and watch it if nothing else it will kill time.
Good:

-Lance Henriksen being involved in the film

-OK action

-Ties the two franchise together well

Bad:

-Plot is weak

-Cast is only OK not superb

-Writing is not the greatest

-Moments when you say why did you do that are often

Scully Rating: 5 out of 10