Alien Vs. Predator
starring Samaa Latham, Raoul Bova, Lance Henriksen, Ewen Bremner, Colin Salmon, Tommy Flanagan, Carsten Norgaard, Tom Woodruff, Jr. and Ian Whyte
written by Paul S. Anderson
directed by Paul S. Anderson
I first saw this movie last summer in a movie theater and so I knew it was supremely silly when I decided to rent it on video and watch it again at home. And let me say right away that in the contest between the Alien and the Predator I side with the manoid Predator. But it was better diversionary entertainment than Secret Window, which I rented at the same time. Predator and Alien are the best, scariest extra terrestrials to come out of Hollywoodin the last couple of decades, and the question of which is better is not settled in this movie. By the end of it we are still left with the possibility of an “Alien Vs. Predator 2.”
Moviegoers are asked to forget what they know from Alien and Predator. Originally, the Alien films starring Sigourney Weaver were set a couple of centuries in the future. But in AVP the Alien is brought back into the present. Next, Predatorfans remember that the original explanation of the Predator is that he was a hunter attracted to heat and violence. But AVP rewrites the premise and paints the Predator as an ancient alien visitor to Earth who is responsible for the first Earth civilization and who taught humans how to build pyramids.
Lance Henriksen is the most interesting element here. In the original Alien movie he played the android, Bishop, whom Ripley hates. In AVP the same actor, Henriksen, plays Charles Bishop Weyland, a leader in the modern robotics industry. So it is funny that Bishop is cloned in the form of future androids that also take his name. It’s a neat way of recycling an actor who has been around Hollywood long enough - kind of like getting an actor to play himself in a movie about his own life, or something.