It’s not that bad. It’s just… not very good.
I did enjoy the Italian scientist saying “they use metric time, so the pyramid reconfigures itself every ten minutes” then glancing at his wristwatch, counting down the seconds… in base 60.
There were so many stupid, bullshit plot-holes like that…
however, that is one that I did not catch…
And HP Lovecraft would probably roll over in disgust. They take the idea of an ancient alien city in the antartica with dead aliens roaming about…and they get…this monstrocity.
You don’t say… EVIL GRIN
I think he’d be pleased. It would be further vindication of his philosophy that mankind is helpless in the face of soulless, inhuman, inconceivable cosmic horror.
This is why I think he’d also have been a big fan of The Other Sister.
You’re speaking about the quality of the movie, yes? And not it’s subject matter?
I mean, yes, it sucked, but in a wonderful “Oh Jeebus that hurt but man, it was actually sort of fun” sort of way.
We went in knowing it would be the greatest suck that ever sucked a suck, but I walked out of there thinking “Hey, at least it was better than Event Horizon!”… lno then kindly pointed out we were dealing with the same director :o It even sucked less than Van Helsing!
If you can suspend… well… everything really…- just a little - and go in without any expectations, it’s actually a fun popcorn movie. You get to see some alien/predator ass-whooping. Goo. Acid blood. Plenty of humans get to bite the dust… and you see it coming a mile away… kind of in the same way one can spot a “red shirt” a mile away…
Yes, it sucked, it was pretty bad, but hell, it was still kind of FUN.
You can’t go in there expecting your 25+ y.o. brain to react the way you did when you were 14 and saw Alien(s) for the first time! That said, considering I had, next to me, a bouncing lad going “Oh boy oh boy oh boy” (pretty much behaving like a 12 year old on speed) who was able to be a geeky kid again, the experience was totally amusing and fun.
How Lex didn’t freeze her cute little tooshie off, I’ll never figure out, but hey, there were pretzels and popcorn, and all was well.
… and lno, going “Squee!” a lot.
… and both of us turning to each other saying “von Daniken is loving THIS!” at the same time.
On further reflection, there wasn’t anything about this movie that related to the previous ones. Yes, we have Charles Bishop Weyland on hand, but he dies before telling anyone what he saw, so this doesn’t in the least explain why the Weyland (later Weyland-Yutani) corporation is still interested some centuries later in the aliens. It comes down to a goofy meaningless CSI-worthy coincidence.
For that matter, wouldn’t it have worked better if the character had been named “Charles Weyland Bishop”? Thus his presumed descendant from the third Alien movie could be named “Bishop”, too.
Further, the predators apparantly were quite conspicuous, having humans build pyramids for them in Cambodia, Egypt and South America. Even if climate changes made their Antarctic proto-temple uninhabitable, it’s not clear why they abandoned Earth for 2000+ years, nor why their existence is unknown to modern archeologists. Sure, there are some rumours among a bunch of Central American hicks about the beast that makes trophies of men, but you call that marketing? Hmph.
Anyhoo, assuming the pred’s own culture is extremely static (they’ve been conducting these rite-of-passage alien hunts for a looooong time) why did they stop coming to Earth? Was there some kinda touchy-feely PETA-like human-rights movement in the pred’s society forcing them to drop the practice of putting chestbursters in people, recently discredited? Apparantly ripping human spines out doesn’t count.
For that matter, these preds got aliens man! Why are they hunting puny humans in the first two Predator movies? And losing!
I’m glad I got to see this movie for free. Worth every penny.
I curse thee, Bryan Ekers! (You took the “worth every penny” line I was going to use :p)
My biggest beef with the film? Two words: Pre-Dictable. It wasn’t just a matter of knowing who was going to die, I knew the order they were going to die in. Every plot twist was so telegraphed that if W.S. had entered the scene shouting “That was a plot point! Did you see the point there?! Did ya? Huh?” it would have been a refreshing note of subtlety.
And sure, Aliens, Alien 3, and Alien Resurrection all had that alien-blood-only-as-acidic-as-the-plot-requires BS. but at least they
didn’t have the aliens going from embryo-to-chestburster-to-seven foot-xenomorph in ten minutes. I mean, I know the aliens are practical biological organisms, but that’s just too much.
And did that ending say “AVP 2” to anybody else (shudder!)
[slight highjack] Did anybody else feel the setup for Alien 3 was the worst in the history of sequals? [end of hijack]
For “sequals” read “sequels.” Me speak English goodly.
Thank God the video game to this is still out. It had a much better plot than the movie.
I have not seen it yet but still plan to because I have the mentality that no matter how bad it is I will force myself to enjoy it…is it possibly one of those movies that are so bad they become funny and enjoyable to watch?
After looking at the previews I have to admit that the new resident evil looks pretty badass not to mention that chick is freaking gorgeous!
Yesterday morning, I heard on the radio one movie critic say “Oh, don’t get me wrong. It’s no *Gigli *. I mean, it’s not an unmitigated disaster.”
It cracked me up. I love that the best thing he can say is that it’s not as bad as GiglI
You know, the other night, that movie was on one of the many HBOs we get on digital cable. I considered watching it out of morbid curiosity, but there was something else on that I was actually looking forward to seeing, so I didn’t. Has anyone seen it? What’s it like (as if I don’t already know)?
The middle of that period would be the Solstice, around December 22. As for October, it depends on your latitude. I’m sure as hell not going to put money in Anderson’s pocket to find out exactly where the movie is set.
In the middle of October, if you’re just inside the Antarctic Circle, you’ll get about fourteen hours of daylight. If you’re actually at the South Pole, the Sun won’t set.
I was just disappointed that they had the opportunity to have two standard horror movie open endings and they took the lamer one. The better one would have been to
[spoiler]Show the alien queen falling into the water and freezing (again) and then having the chick wait for the mornig when the boat comes to see what’s up. They see the top of the water tower bobbing in the waves and leave a team to bring it up.[/spoilers]
The biggest problem I had with it (besides the fact that apparently CUBE was his prime source material) was that these temples had been around for thosands of years, presumably used by hundreds of generations of these things and the current crop predators managed to destroy them in a few minutes.
I also couldn’t figure out how they managed to be in Antarctica and not be able to see thier breath. There was snow, but apparently it was at least 60* out.
That said, I’m off to rent Predator 2. I’ll let you know if I survive. I really wish I picked up some of the AVP TPBs at the Comicon. I really loved those when I was a kid.
Aaarrgghh!! This just legitimises bad films, which means we end up with even more bad films! It’s the most vicious of entertainment-based circles!
This whole opening weekend nonsense has to stop; it’s a poor judge of anything, and yet is held up to mean the ultimate judge of everything.
That’s not true. With the way most films are marketed and released these days, the opening weekend is all-important. Especially when you have a movie like this, which critics are going to hate. The bad reviews and word-of-mouth start catching up after the first weekend and the movie will probably make about half as much during the second weekend as it did the first. So if it doesn’t have a big start, it’s probably never going to do anything and the backers won’t recoup their investment.
What sucks is that non-crap action movies are using the same pump-and-dump style these days. I guess they also want to avoid press and word-of-mouth in case they happen to be negative.
But that’s what should happen. We want people to realise that backing movies made by talentless hacks should be discouraged, as they will not recoup your investment.
You wouldn’t be the first.