IMDb

Ben
This is the fifth movie featuring the Alien species that I’ve watched in the last week and to be honest, I’m a bit over them by now. After the first two movies, there is a large drop in quality in the films that follow. Alien vs Predator is a fantastic idea on paper. The predator and the alien are two of the most iconic movie monsters in cinema history so putting them together on the silver screen seems like a no brainer. Unfortunately, the movie is executed poorly and doesn’t give the audience what we want. We want aliens and predators fighting each other for two hours, but the human characters always get in the way. The humans are not very interesting, most of them are cardboard cutout characters that are instantly forgettable. You don’t care about their plight, you just want them to get out of the way so that aliens and predators can smack down with each other. The only person you remember is Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen), but only because he played such a prominent role in the second film of the Alien series.

If humans were required for this film, I’d have preferred them to be some variation of the colonial marines seen in Aliens. They were badass in James Cameron’s brilliant sequel, and it’d be interesting to see a new group of marines coming up against the aliens as well as the predators. Setting the movie in present day feels like a missed opportunity. Setting the film in the future where the human characters could have access to better technology and more futuristic weapons. I’d still love to see this movie if it was made; there is an audience for these movies. They just need to be done right.

In saying that, this movie is not terrible. It’s more of a disappointment than anything because this film had the potential to be amazing, but it’s really only pretty good. When the aliens and predators fight each other, it is really entertaining. These scenes are few and far between though, because too much time is spent introducing human characters you don’t really care about.

As average as this movie is, it’s a best picture winner compared to the sequel, Alien vs Predator: Requiem. The sequel is so terrible that I don’t even own it. As we continue through my collection, you’ll soon realise what a bold statement that was. I own some really crappy films, but for some reason, the shitty alien vs predator sequel didn’t make the cut.

Rating: C+

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Sally
The one good thing I can say about this movie is that it is short. Not that I expected a movie that combines increasingly slimy aliens and hunting enthusiast predators to be Oscar calibre, but I thought it might be more entertaining. Instead it’s just predictable and boring.

Maybe it’s so bad because the main antagonists just remind you of the superior movies that first brought them to the screen. Maybe it’s because the human actors are not Sigourney Weaver or Arnold Schwarznegger. Maybe it’s because the sets look like something out of a theme park. Whatever it is, it’s just disappointing.

Thankfully Ben never bought the sequel.

Rating: F