Written by Shane Salerno
Directed by Colin Strause & Greg Strause
I went into this will severly lowered expectations, I never bothered with the first film in it's PG-13 form, I purchased the unrated DVD, but I was never able to make it past the 30 minute mark, it was just too boring for my tastes. I did like the reference that Lance Henrickson was playing Weyland, it made the android modeled after him work perfectly, but on the other hand, it just made me sad to know this is the kind of crap he is relegated to these days, and this was a great job for him, in comparison to the other stuff I've seen him in at Blockbuster.
So of course I saw the introduction of Yutani coming from miles away, but I'll give them credit, they actually went through with it, whereas in the original AvP, the Yutani character got cut altogether. I mean, the ending of this film introduces the character, but it's like the end of Terminator 3, where the audience is like "Wow! Way to conclude with what we know!" Now, I liked Terminator 3, I felt it was well done, and they did well connecting the loose ends that would lead to what we already knew. This film, however, doesn't do that good of a job, and for the most part it's a mess on many different levels.
The plot, as inexplicable and unneeded as it is from the beginning, only gets in the way of this movie. I'll keep it short, because even after you see the movie, you won't care about the plot or the characters, you're never given a reason to, nor do you, the Alien and Predator fan, really want to. You want to see the Aliens and Predator do war, which they do, to an extent. Don't be mistaken by the tone of this review so far, I liked the film, but it could have been so much better than it was. I liked the nature of the fight scenes, if not the execution and style in which they were achieved. Yes, there is much more bad filmmaking in this installment, as there was I'm sure in the Paul. W.S. Anderson version before it.
So, the plot. Aliens invade a Predator ship, not sure where, that type of information was seemingly deemed unworthy of this spectacle, and the ensuing fight causes the ship to land on Earth, somewhere in Colorado. Here's where the humans become involved, and start meddling and intermixing with the Predator, as the Predator is being hunted by the Aliens, who are hunting around town, face hugging and wreaking general Alien havoc. The humans have their own little storylines, along with a thinly veiled rip off of Dreamcatcher's third act, but that's not the point of this movie. Since that's the second time I've said that, you may begin to wonder what the point actually is. Well, I'm not really sure.
So Aliens (could be anywhere from 8-34 of them, it's never really shown) are feeding on humans, impregnating them, and tracking the Predator, of which there is one. This Predator sees the video of his crashed comrade's demise, and sets out to Earth from the Predator planet (which is shown for all of 4 seconds, should have been a lot longer) to avenge his friend, or so we guess. War ensues, with the Predator being like a Mafia clean up man, dissolving in acid the bodies of the dead humans, and spent facehuggers, and anything else organic he can find.
In the meantime, it is show that a Pred-Alien is created, but for reasons I'll discuss in the coming paragraphs, you never actually get a good look at it. Yes, this movie is that inexplicable and badly edited, to the point where the high point of the movie is very well hidden, which seems intentional. The Aliens and Predator bang all around town, fighting here and there as they go, with the action cutting back to the humans, who are fighting the virtually faceless enemies, at least from their point of view.
My biggest disappointment with this film was the stylistic choices made (or lack thereof), the incoherent screen direction, and editing so fast Michael Bay would get a headache. Really, for about every foot that had light on screen, there were 10 feet of darkness. On a 25 foot screen, this is not good news, you spend half the time trying to figure out what an image is, but as I mentioned, due to the quick editing, you are never given the chance to figure it out. Literally, the cuts are so quick you'll get a flash of an Alien tail, Alien teeth, and then a body being removed of a limb or something. You have no time, or no sense of the image at hand to truly understand what just happened, and then it's off to the next really fast shot. I honestly can't understand the theory behind this, at this point in both of the series, no one is surprised by the element of the Aliens or Predator, so I don't understand why they don't just show them in full light, in all their glory. Honestly, you can't make out any of the details on either creature, and it gets annoying trying to keep up with the images, with flash faster than you can think, resulting in a kill where you don't know who or what is responsible for it.
The editing and lighting aren't the only abusive elements, the screen direction and composition themselves add to the confusion. Every time the Pred-Alien is shown, you never get a full shot, it's always the feet, or a close up of the mouth, which are also shown VERY briefly, and in super low light. This is not a style, it's lazy, bad filmmaking. Not to mention you can never gauge what is happening on screen, as the camera spins and moves so fast, that you don't have any reference for the people in the frame to the Aliens or Predator, one shot they're on the left side, the next shot is from the Predator's POV (another annoying element) and then in the next shot the person is on the ground dead. You can't understand the action if it is never properly presented to you visually.
Despite all of this, I liked the movie, I really wanted to see more though, and like I suspected, all the gore in the Red Band trailer was pretty much all the gore in the movie. Edited together into a 2 minute spot it looks very promising, but very lazily spotted across an 86 minute film, it becomes lackluster compared to the expectations you've set by the time you go to see the film. All of these techniques and errors combined to really disappoint me by the time the film ended, which by the end, I had to ask myself "That's it?" The film could have been so much more epic, with large scale battles and time spent on the Predator planet. Instead, you get a clip show of everything, and the audience is never even shown how many Aliens there are, let alone what they're doing the whole time. Enjoyable for hardcore fans that can conceive of what is going on for themselves, but overall disappointing, and really, just a poorly made action picture. The script is basically what I expected, I think they found a pretty good balance of human action vs Alien/Predator activity, but the fanboy in me would like to see an all out war or something along those lines on the Predator planet. Disappointing, it's the only word I keep coming back to.
5.2/10
No comments:
Post a Comment