Avp: Alien Vs Predator review

Aficionados of either the Alien or Predator series (and the chances are they are the same people) will find plenty of connections to the previous films in AVP. A strong female leader, a character named Bishop Weyland played by Lance Henriksen who played Bishop in Aliens 2 and 3 (Weyland of course being the company that sent the Nostromo to outer space in the first place), several iconic, and possibly ironic, shots of the monsters copied from any of the original films, along with humans getting their heads covered in newly-born aliens. Not to mention of course a reprise of the notorious stomach-bursting scene form the very first picture of either franchise.

Paul W. S Anderson's film is more than just a hommage to two of the most successful sci-fi series of all time, but it's not much more. What seems like a ruthless money-making exercise along the lines of Freddy vs Jason turns out to be just that, thanks to a plot that is so banal that it's a wonder how it was chosen out of the apparent forty different ideas producers were offered to combine the two films.

Set very much in the present day (effectively between the events of Predator and Alien), the film concerns a deep heat source emanating from Antarctica discovered by billionaire industrialist Bishop Weyland. Weyland then persuades the world's leading underground explorers, among them tour guide Alexa Woods (Sanaa Lathan), hieroglyphs expert Sebastian de Rosa (Raoul Bova) and engineer Graeme Miller (Ewen Bremner) to mount a search mission as to what exactly is under there. Unbeknownst to our intrepid gang they are about to enter a deadly lair where for some reason best known to themselves, but to do vaguely with ancient rites and a lifelong blood feud, our old friends the Aliens and the Predators are about to commence battle. Strangely it takes the assembled humans an hour of the film to figure this out.

You know the kind of movie you're in for when the tour guide sets out her first rule as 'nobody must leave the group', only for the next scene to portray someone doing precisely that. It's a film where everything that you think might happen does in fact happen, and the thorough predictability of it all is a real suspense killer. The only thing mildly interesting about the plot is that the film's title is a bit of a misnomer. The purported war between the two extra-terrestrial species turns out to be little more than the odd skirmish.

As soon as you can say 'don't go near the sacrificial chamber', the motley bunch is reduced to an inevitable one and for some reason sides immediately with the Predators, possibly on the grounds that they look like John Travolta in Battlefield Earth. A thoroughly expected climax ensues and despite its attempts to chill, the only thing deep about this space movie is the sleep it is likely to induce.