So I just watched AVP (warning: unboxed spoilers)

Cafe Society
1

I just saw Alien vs. Predator over the weekend. I have to admit, it wasn’t the suck-fest I’d anticipated. Don’t get me wrong, there was plenty I didn’t like about it, but I thought it had a few redeeming qualities. Namely:

  1. It didn’t directly contradict or negate any previous plot points from either franchise.

  2. As a horror / thriller movie, it was pretty nicely done. Slow build, fast action, a few jumps. I particularly liked the scene where Lex is all alone and the pyramid is pretty much dead silent except for her footsteps & the echos - a bit creepy).

  3. Yeah, the human & the predator team up. Cheesy, but you knew it had to happen. I liked the way they ‘communicated’ with hand gestures, object lessons, and what have you. They could have cheesed out & had the predator talk (a-la predator 2) or some auto-translato-circuit, but didn’t.

All in all, it was a fun movie. It wasn’t as good as the original in either series, but it was way better than Alien 3 & 4 or Predator 2.

I wouldn’t mind seeing an AVP2.

2

Yes yes yes, but where’s your outrage at the “extended edition”? I picked up the DVD to complete my collection and was intrigued by the “beginning never seen in theaters”.

Oh boy, a whole minute-thirty of a whaler running around in 1904 before a predator jumps out and gets jumped by an alien. Dizz-amn, that extended edition sure knocked my socks off.

3

Pfft. Unless it has its own disc, or is specifically marketed as the Extended Edition (a-la LOTR) I have pretty low expectations anyway.

FWIW, I’m glad they cut the little intro in favor of the slow buildup. I like it better that way.

4

Ah, but I did love that ending. It finally and officially validates our old “alien adults are influenced by the creature in which they gestate” theory.

5

Officially, nothing! This movie isn’t canon and I’ll fight anyone who says it is!

6

::Reads lnos post::
::Checks lnos location::
:smiley:

7

When you consider how idiotic the predators have to be to not, say, X-ray corpses they bring onto their ship after an alient hunt…

Really, they’re obviously a species too stupid to live. Good riddance.

-Joe

8

Well Merijeek, one could argue that point. I mean, their captive queen was stored in the deep-freeze on Earth. Now that she’s dead & the entire alien population is wiped out, the predators need a new queen. According to the movie, the predators have been a little more successful in keeping the aliens captive than humans have been. So maybe they knew their boy was ‘impregnated’ but figured they’d better keep him anyway if they wanted another hunt.

It’s not too big a stretch to imagine that scenario, but it was definitely a poorly conceived & poorly written final scene.

In the commentary, Anderson says he didn’t wan’t to give the impression that the Predators were the dominant species, but I think he failed that miserably. The very concept that the predators keep the alien captive, and release & hunt them at will means the predators must be the dominant species.

9

Argh. A perfecly good nearly-finished post kill by stupid Messenger.

The fact of the matter is, unless the room they put the corpse in is actually a super-security cell that just happens to have a great view, the Predators are too stupid to live, and they might as well be destroyed. Good riddance.

[/QUOTE]

Hey yes. I’m one of legions of people totally convinced that the only reason Anderson gets work is because he’s got blackmail material on someone very very high in the studio system. He’s just totally incompetent.

Anyways, fact of the matter is, if I’m hunting lions on my own private Game Preserve, I am the dominant species. The lions might get lucky occasionally and whack one of my paying clients…but they still only leave the preserve one way, and that’s mounted on plaque.

-Joe

10

I saw it for the first time this weekend also!

It was a lot better than I expected given the poor reviews it received here. I’ve decided I have to get the whole Alien series and both Predator movies and buy AVP also. No the films aren’t great but I think they’re a ton of fun and rewatchable.

Well they’ve been fighting these things forever so I would tend to think they’ve taken appropriate precautions. It looked to me like the room the dead Predator was in could probably be an airlock or something in which the Alien could easily be jettisoned.
You know the Predators could easily be the Mafia of space.

11

lno is right. The extended edition (which does have its own DVD, I think) sucked unwashed llama ass.

That said, the movie is bad, and entertaining all at once! Hee!

12

I bought it from Wal*Mart. They’ve got the big display up which says “NEW ALTERNATE BEGINNING!!!”, but both the theatrical version & the ahem special edition are on the same disc.

13

Plus the “new beginning” is the only addition to the movie that I saw. I did go through it at 16x, though, looking for new footage…

14

I don’t see how you draw this conclusion. The Predator timeline makes no sense:

[ul][li]~5000 years ago: Predators build four pyramids on Earth, in Egypt, Cambodia, Central America and the Antarctic. The first three are understandable if it’s accepted the Predators like warm temperatures, but at no time in recent geological history (i.e. within the last 7-20 million years) has Antarctica been anything other than a frozen wasteland. Since no humans live there as breeding stock, the reasoning behind this pyramid’s contruction is unclear.[/li][li]The Predators get over-run by the Aliens at the first three sites and subsequently abandon them. The implication is that they set off mini-nukes to destroy evidence of their existence but no explanation as to why the pyramids are still standing, nor why the Predators should care about such things.[/li][li]The Antarctic Pyramid is forgotten, for some reason. The Predators lie low for a long time, since we have no record of them. They start to return to Earth individually as far back as the eighteenth century, possibly recognizing that humans are finally challenging enough prey with their invention of handheld firearms.[/li][li]In the early twentieth century, humans finally get close to the buried Antarctic pyramid, by building a nearby whaling station. The extra opening sequence of AvP shows the result, but the Predators don’t seem to realize that once all the humans on this station get wiped out, there won’t be any more Aliens, and thus no hunting.[/li][li]The Preds returtn to hunting humans on occasion. They still like the heat, apparantly, and enough of them visit Central America to foster local legends about the Demon that makes trophies of men. Strangely, there’s no record of them in, say, Vietnam, or any other tropical warzone. In the late twentieth century, one Predator accidentally involves himself in a human commando mission and pays the price.[/li][li]Several years later, another Predator decides to go urban, in the middle of a violent gangwar during a Los Angeles heat wave. Sounds like fun, I suppose, if you’re into that sort of thing.[/ul][/li]
I jsut can’t quite reconcile the pyramid-building with the safaris. Is the former some big ritual thing where killing an Alien and marking your forehead with its blood is significant, while blowing away humans in hot weather is something teenagers do for laughs? The mistake of the film was to imply a hugely significant role in human history for the Preds, yet show their efforts to cover their tracks by nuking everything in sight. Had it been set in the future, after spacefaring humans had encountered Aliens, tried unsuccessfully to tame them, began to track their origins, stumble across the Predators, have hybrid-Ripley scare the crap out of them, etc. it would have worked a lot better.

15

The first three are understandable if it’s accepted the Predators like warm temperatures, but at no time in recent geological history (i.e. within the last 7-20 million years) has Antarctica been anything other than a frozen wasteland.
I don’t have a problem with the “heat vs cold” aspect. That’s like saying Humans strap boards to their feet & ride across the water when its liquid & when it’s frozen solid - no way!

The Predators get over-run by the Aliens at the first three sites and subsequently abandon them. The implication is that they set off mini-nukes to destroy evidence of their existence but no explanation as to why the pyramids are still standing, nor why the Predators should care about such things.
That’s not what I got out of it. I thought it was clear the nuke was a “weapon of last restort”, to prevent the aliens from over-running the face of the earth. That way the cattle (read: humans) would survive until the next hunt.

The Antarctic Pyramid is forgotten, for some reason. The Predators lie low for a long time, since we have no record of them. They start to return to Earth individually as far back as the eighteenth century, possibly recognizing that humans are finally challenging enough prey with their invention of handheld firearms.
I don’t see where that’s implied or stated. The extended edition shows the preds came back in 1904. Would there be any way to know if they’d been there in 1804? 1604? 0004? Who’s to say they didn’t kidnap a few humans & throw a few facehuggers at them? As far as having a record of them - I suspect the predators don’t care much whether we worship them or not. If we go down to the ‘sacrificial chamber’ willingly, that’s good. If not, they’ll just grab up a couple of humans and forcibly toss them down there. No big deal.

n the early twentieth century, humans finally get close to the buried Antarctic pyramid, by building a nearby whaling station. The extra opening sequence of AvP shows the result, but the Predators don’t seem to realize that once all the humans on this station get wiped out, there won’t be any more Aliens, and thus no hunting.
Considering there was an Alien in that opening sequence, I’d say that by the time the viewer gets there the humans had served their purpose and the preds can kill them at will. The hunt was already on.

The Preds returtn to hunting humans on occasion. They still like the heat, apparantly, and enough of them visit Central America to foster local legends about the Demon that makes trophies of men. Strangely, there’s no record of them in, say, Vietnam, or any other tropical warzone. In the late twentieth century, one Predator accidentally involves himself in a human commando mission and pays the price.
Well, I for one don’t believe that we have an exhaustive catalog of every legend humans have ever told about a scary guy eating people in the woods. Heck, for all we know that one predator has been coming around central america for 30 years or so. Say five or seven instances of guys being skinned alive over 30 years - that’s enough for a local legend, don’t you think? And the fact that he’s killed by Arnie - well, it was bound to happen sooner or later, right?

I jsut can’t quite reconcile the pyramid-building with the safaris. Is the former some big ritual thing where killing an Alien and marking your forehead with its blood is significant, while blowing away humans in hot weather is something teenagers do for laughs?
It’s funny - in the commentary, Anderson says pretty much exactly that.

16

That doesn’t follow, though. The Preds had the entire planet to choose from; why build a pyramid in the least hospitable place? Government planning?

The Aliens simply don’t multiply fast enough for this to happen. With the Pred’s tech level and those laser-cannos, they should be able to massacre a swarm of Aliens pretty casually, even if it isn’t sporting. Besides, what was motivating the Preds who faced off against Arnie and Danny? The second one epecially was about to blow himself up in the middle of Los Angeles, with no Aliens in sight. That would have killed quite a lot of “cattle”.

Well, the Preds were running around Earth well before 1904, as evidenced by the duelling pistol given to Danny Glover at the end of P2. The idea that the Antarctic pyramid beacon “summoned” then in 1904 makes no sense.

Meh. All the more reason to have set the movie in the future, after the Aliens movies, so the humans would have better weapons and a better idea of what was going on, and thus would be able to play a more active role in the story, rather than get mowed down.

17

It would appear that Predators are sore losers and when they lose, they set off those nukes on their arms. This appears consistant across all films.

MWAAA HAA HAAA HAAAAAAA MWAAAAA HAAAA HAAAAA HAAAAAAAAA <Boom>

At the end of Predator 2, they give Danny Glover a flintlock pistol from 1776 IIRC.

18

In reference to the OP, I too was pleasantly surprised. I expected it to be not just a bad Alien movie, but an incompetantly made film in general. But it wasn’t.

To be sure Anderson is no Ridley Scott or Jim Cameron, but he gave McTiernan & Fincher a run for thier money. And he made Jean-Pierre Jeunet look like the bumbling Jerry Lewis clone that he is!

In other words, I thought AVP was miles better than Alien4 and even both Predator movies. Predator 2 is just a mess, but even Predator 1, while a cool idea, is still just a goofy Ah-nold cartoon (come on, he winds up fighting a laser-cannon armed space alien with a bow & arrow and leaf bombs?!?)

And while I agree pimping the extra 90 seconds at the begining as an alternate opening was sleazy, I thought it was a great way to start the film.

******* S P O I L E R S ********

Something that impressed me: When Lex first kills an alien I was amazed they didn’t go all cliché & cheeseball and have her do it to bond with the predator by saving him at the last minute. She just got in a lucky shot with his spear to save her own ass. But it still made sense that the predator had to acknowledge that, luck or not, she just accomplished what he was supposed to.

I thought it was much more realistic & mature to have them ‘bond’ by having the Predator watch her blow her friends brains out to save him the pain of a chestbursting. And even then there was no typical exchange of ‘acknowledging nods’ between them. The predator just watched, then hung around for a second to squish the chestburster.

All in all, I wish I had seen it on a big screen!

19

Right you is.

We also bought Army of Darkness that day n’ THAT one had the director’s cut on a second DVD. My bad.

Alternate beginning! Yeah! A whole minute and a half of extra crap BEFORE the actual movie begins! Hee. Amusing.

20

Maybe I’m missing something in the Alien lifecycle, but a single male warrior alien can’t reproduce, can it? Only the queen can produce facehuggers, right? So, having a single alien burst from the dead predator wouldn’t do much to repopulate the species.

I always took it for granted the aliens were all over the galaxy, popping up on different planets, stowing rides on ships, kind of like interstellar zebra mussels. Each movie spotlighted a particular alien infestation. hey’re never in danger of extinction.

On a side note, I love Alien 3. It suffers in comparison to Alien 2, 'cause Alien 2 was an action movie. Alien 1 & 3 were suspense movies. People jacked up on all the action were let down by the slower pace. Alien 4 was a crap movie.