“Alien vs. Predator” (2004)
Starring Sanaa Lathan, Lance Henriksen,
Raoul Bova, Ian Whyte
Screenplay by Paul W.S. Anderson, story
by Anderson, Ronald Shusett and Dan O'Bannon
Rated PG-13 for violence, language,
horror images, slime and gore
I did not find this one at Dollar Tree, but after getting into these franchises decades after everyone else and given my love of crossovers even if the separate properties aren't high on my list, I figured “Alien vs. Predator” was a fitting way to wrap up this month's series of Halloween-adjacent movies and comics.
I'm not going into great detail about the other movies in either franchise, but there will be a few spoilers as I recap my abbreviated experience with each.
Although both were sci-fi classic movies first, I always thought the crossover originated in the comics. Several online sources indicate it was pitched by an editor at Dark Horse, which published both Alien and Predator comics, with the first story appearing in “Dark Horse Presents” #34, more than a year before Danny Glover spotted that Xenomorph skull at the end of “Predator 2.”
Honestly, that's the movie out of both franchises that interested me most, even though the original “Predator” features more U.S. governors than both major 2024 presidential tickets combined. I have nothing against Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I found Glover to be a more compelling action hero – perhaps because I expected it to be Roger Murtagh pursuing the sometimes-invisible hunter while lamenting he was too old to be doing so. Glover played a more traditional action hero role, and I also discovered, when finally watching “Predator 2” this year, that I had seen a lot more of it than I thought on TBS years ago, including the whole ending.
I missed the Alien skull though, probably because I hadn't paid much attention to that franchise. I was not born for the first one and too young for the second. By the time “Alien 3” and “Alien: Resurrection” debuted, I just wasn't on board.
Good-natured ribbing and disbelief from some co-workers got one of them to bring me “Aliens,” but, being the completist I am, I had to start at the beginning. I don't think I'm going to shock anyone here when I say “Alien” was good, “Aliens” was better, “Alien 3” had a slap-in-the-face beginning but was OK and “Resurrection”... well, it was a spiritual prequel to “Firefly” and, more importantly, “Serenity.” With “Predator 2” viewed in its entirety, it was time to move on to the second-most-appealing-to-me entry, the crossover.
Leading the expedition is Alexa Woods (Lathan), an expert arctic guide who thinks it's a bad idea but agrees out of concern for the well-intentioned but seemingly hapless scientists also drafted for the adventure, including archaeologist Sebastian (Bova) and chemical engineer Graeme (Ewen Bremner).
They arrive to find someone** has already opened a route to the pyramid by cutting a huge path through the ice. Assuming it's just another corporate raider, the group makes their way down, while the armed personnel up top are picked off by a trio of Predators.
Down in the pyramid, by the way, are Xenomorphs, left there by Predators so they could come back for a ceremonial hunt every hundred years. In exchange for humans being willing, and later unwilling, incubators for the Xenomorphs, the Predators helped them build cool pyramids and stuff, and if they ever got overwhelmed by the aliens, they would just wipe them out with some kind of energy weapon that I guess explains a lot of historical mass disappearances.
That's revealed thanks to Sebastian's translation of the writing on the pyramid walls, which combine elements of several ancient Earth languages. Before we get to that though, there's a lot of buildup that felt really, really slow, especially since we know this is a movie called “Alien vs. Predator.” There's not a lot of mystery as to where this is heading. I get that you probably don't want to just have the titular beasts duking it out right away, and you do need a little time to develop passing attachment to the humans. Perhaps it was a nod to the other movies or just a structural choice to not show everything up front.
When things do start moving, though, they move fast. Human characters are picked off a lot faster than I expected, but you do still manage to feel bad for Sebastian and Graeme, who was documenting the trip on his digital camera to show his young sons that their dad was cool.
The initial face-off between a Xenomorph and Predator*** is pretty cool, even for someone who knows of the comics and has known for 20 years this movie exists. I imagine it might have been even more exciting for fans of the franchises, especially ones unfamiliar with the comics, to see it on the big screen for the first time.
Pretty soon, it's down to just Alexa, who has reasoned that the enemy of her enemy is her ally and joins forces with a Predator (Whyte) to stop the Xenomorphs from reaching the surface and wreaking havoc on Earth hundreds of years before a clone of Ellen Ripley allied herself with not-completely-evil space smugglers to do the same. She winds up the sole survivor, with the last remaining Predator taken back aboard the ship by his people, where a little Predator-ized Xenomorph bursts out of his chest.
I see this movie has gotten generally bad reviews, but I think it delivers. No new ground is broken here, but – as my friend who loaned me those initial DVDs said – Anderson "understood the assignment." He made a movie in which aliens fight Predators, and it was not dull.
Despite the slow start, there's not an abundance of exposition and it really isn't needed. We learn who the characters are pretty organically. The gun-toting security guys aren't given much beyond being gun-toting security guys, but their fear is visceral and they aren't treated as just nameless casualties to goose the body count. Even Weyland isn't the soulless avatar of corporate greed you might expect based on what his company becomes.
I get the desire to have a female led out of deference to Weaver's classic Ripley, but it also puts Lathan at a bit of a disadvantage. Then I think about how that would sound if I said it would be tough for a male to follow Schwarzenegger or even Glover and it sounds kind of dumb. Still, I would argue that Weaver's performances elevated Ripley to a rarefied level among male or female characters and anyone would have a hard time living up to those performances. Regardless, Lathan portrays Alexa as tough, capable and human, which isn't a bad nod to Weaver and Ripley.
The decision to make the movie PG-13 was a surprise, although not an unwelcome one. The violence and deaths are still necessarily unpleasant without being exceedingly graphic. I can understand why some people may have been frustrated by that, but, again, it gets the job done.
I've written here before that I enjoy big franchises, sprawling worlds and crossovers, so I'll probably watch “AVP: Requiem,” even though the word of mouth I've gotten for it is even worse, before going on to the more recent entries in either franchise. And “The Purge.” And maybe eventually catching up on “Transformers.” And the various incarnations of Godzilla. Who knows? I might even watch an original movie without a prequel, sequel, remake or crossover somewhere along the way too.
* - Well, when 2004 was the present.
** - Surprise, it's Predators!
*** - Which I know are called Yautja, at
least in the comics, but I only know that from wikis,
so I don't want
to come across like a poseur.
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