Alien Vs. Predator

Paul Anderson has proved a reliable crappy director in the past, overcoming the fact that he’s an unimaginative hack to make workmanlike products that could be enjoyed with the benefits of lowered expectations. His best was probably Soldier, which effectively mixed Ender’s Game with Die Hard and Rambo, but the Hellraiser rip-off Event Horizon had its good bits too (mostly involving 0-g effects and lovingly recreated exposed fractures), and even the shamelessly derivative Resident Evil had some deceptively clever scripting. So, for a director who’s better known for the technical aspects of his films and for stealing bits from other movies wholesale, the long-in-production Alien Vs. Predator must have seemed a wet dream: license to plunder freely from not one, but two iconic licenses which over the years have produced three movies that I would not hesitate to call masterpieces within their genres.
Well, Anderson fucks it up beyond any expectation. Like too many Hollywood cash-ins before it, this is an unremarkable, completely forgettable mediocrity from start to finish: there is no valid reason for this product to exist except to milk whatever money may be left to be made from two licenses that the studio perceives to be fading from the public’s memory. There is no doubt a good movie could have been made with the premise, but basing it on present-day earth, a terrible scriptwriter/director and cynical studio considerations pretty much kill that possibility.

I hesitate to try and describe the utter mess that the plot is, but I can try: a heat pulse under Antarctica leads a group of intrepid adventurers hired by the Weyland corporation to a pyramid buried for thousands of years under the ice. Turns out it’s an ancient proving ground where once every hundred years newbie predators get to prove their mad predatoring skillz against a captive alien queen. Of course, humans are needed as catalysts and hosts for the aliens to multiply. The team gets killed by both types of critters, and, of course, only the heroine will make it to the end for the climactic (one would hope) confrontation.
If this sounds like steamy, frothy, liquid excrement, well, it’s worse than that. There are two languages spoken in this movie: Cliché, and a hybrid dialect of bullshit and gibberish. The first, even a retarded 5 year-old would be able to guess with the volume turned down; the other, well, it would insult his intelligence were he to pay attention to it. Flawed as the premise is, it’s got nothing on the huge plot holes, moronic goofs, and sheer shittiness of the concepts put forward on this worthless flick. This could be forgiven if the action was any good, but it maintains the same pedestrian level, and to add insult to injury, abstains from showing any blood (as it might hurt profits).
Even the main attractions are pathetic. The badass Predators are reduced to hapless idiots who get killed almost as easily as the humans, and need the help from the heroine to be able to do their job. The aliens are unconvincing, with emphasis placed on a trembling lip effect that while familiar, looks ridiculous. Both are fetishisized (is that a word?) to a degree that is unintentionally funny. And it doesn’t help that the first alien/predator fight looks like a mid budget Power Rangers outtake.

Before watching this, please consider the tagline. Whoever wins we lose, indeed.