Alien vs. Predator (2004) Review

"Don't turn your back on me!"

-Charles Bishop Weyland

When his company discovers a mysterious temple buried in the ice beneath Antartica, Charlies Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen) puts together a team of scientists and explorers to go investigate. Deep inside the temple, they discover an infestation of Xenomorphs.  To make matters worse, a group of three Predators have also entered the temple.  A brutal showdown between the two species begins with the humans caught in the crossfire.

What Works:

To start, I think the premise for this movies works fine.  We get a bit more information on the backstory of both the Predators and the Xenomorphs, but they don't overdo it.  The story for this film could have been a lot worse.

The practical effects are really fantastic.  Both species look great.  The practical Xenomorphs are as terrifying as effort and the Predators have a lot of great detail to their designs.

I love that we get to see more of the respect Predators have for fellow warriors.  Protagonist Lex Woods (Sanaa Nathan) is not an interesting character, but her dynamic with the final Predator, Scar (Ian Whyte) is really cool.  I love the respect he gains for her as he watches her take down Xenomorphs.  And the scene where he gives her some warrior marks on her face is probably my favorite of the film.  This respect aspect really makes the Predators interesting.

The actual fights between the Xenomorphs and the Predators were pretty cool.  There wasn't as much of it as I would have liked, but what we do get is pretty solid.

Finally, I enjoyed that they brought Lance Henriksen back from Aliens and Alien 3 to give us more of a connection to the earlier film.  It was a nice touch.

What Sucks:

As I mentioned above, Lex Woods is not an interesting character, in fact, none of the characters in this movie are interesting.  They are boring cardboard-cutouts that don't do anything of note and I felt absolutely nothing when they died.  I get that they were there mostly as fodder for the main event, but we spend a good 45 minutes with these characters before things actually start happening.  It would have been nice to have somewhat interesting characters.

This movie is rated PG-13, which was a huge mistake.  There is virtually no gore in this film.  That is incredibly disappointing.  Besides the Predators, whose blood is green so they can show it, we get no memorable kills in the entire film.  When all of the previous films in both series were rated R, it's a shame this one didn't do the same.

The CGI looks pretty bad.  We get plenty of practical effects, but the CGI stuff is pretty terrible.

Finally, the first 45-minutes of the film are simply boring.  The characters suck and it takes too long for the aliens to get involved in the plot.  It starts to pick up after that, but it's a slog to get through the first chunk of this film.

Verdict:

Alien vs. Predator isn't the worst film in either series, but it's nowhere near the best.  It has some cool moments, solid practical effects, and some fun stuff with the Predators, but the characters are boring, the first chunk of the film is a snooze, the CGI is terrible, and the lack of gore is disappointing.  It's not a bad movie, but it's not good either.

 5/10: Meh