Once again we get to see 2 of the universes fiercest species battling out for superiority. Will things be any different this time or are we looking again at a sad cash in on two of the movie businesses most famous franchises?
Well, it has to be said that this is definitely a cash in, but it is quite an enjoyable one. Firstly the death count in AVPR is really quite high, I mean probably the highest I’ve seen in any alien or predator movie. Now does that make AVPR good? No, but it does crank up the fun factor quite a bit and it makes the 1hr 28mins go by a lot faster. Whilst maybe not as gory as say the Hostel movies, AVPR is really quite gory for an alien/pred movie, some scenes are genuinely quite gruesome and I’m glad to see the element of horror return in a prominent way. We get to see children and pregnant mothers being killed (impregnated), there’s no pulling of punches here, AVPR is going for the jugular.
The storyline plays out in a fairly predictable way, predator ship crashes next to a small town in the USA, local residents get infected, alien head count goes up, lone predator sent in to clean up the mess, things go up shit creek, blah, blah. It would perhaps be naïve to expect something special and its not, but for a run of the mill storyline it’s not too bad. It’s far from perfect though.
Characterizations are fairly one dimensional, there are no characters that really stand out, they’re fairly hum drum, cannon fodder for the alien masses really. The alien/pred’s are really larger than life, almost to the point of being ridiculous – actually it is to that point, but it does make for fun if you’re prepared to suspend belief. Pacing wise things move along fast, never did I look at my watch wondering when it would all be over, death after death, things keep building up to the final climax, which I won’t spoil for you.
One of the twists that AVPR brings us (and it’s no spoiler to say this) is the inclusion of a fully grown PredAlien (that being an alien born from a predator). Personally, I didn’t find the idea of a PredAlien very scary, none more so than a regular alien, but I guess it’s an attempt to bring some originality to the movie and does work to some extent. The special effects are impressive but this being a high budget movie released in 2007 I guess that’s to be expected, definitely nothing here to be criticised in AVPR in this regard.
To sum it up, you will enjoy AVPR as long as you don’t take it too seriously, there is a lot of fun to be had here and in my opinion I would say it’s a better movie than its predecessor. Alien and predator fans should enjoy it to some extent.
Ripley
Movie Details
Directors: Colin Strause, Greg Strause
Writers: Shane Salerno, Dan O’Bannon
Actors: Steven Pasquale, John Ortiz, Reiko Aylesworth, Tom Woodruff Jr
Release Year: 2007