Saturday Night Premiere: Alien vs. Predator

Saturday, October 08, 2005

Tonight's Saturday Night Premiere, 2004's Alien vs. Predator, comes to us from HBO. Now when I put this movie on I expected it to be cheesy and stupid. I was a fan of both the Aliens and the Predator movie series, and I really had no idea how they could bring the two series together in a somewhat believable way. Can we all remember Freddy vs. Jason everyone? Now I say somewhat believable because the concepts of both movie's is so out there, but this didn't matter. Both series were quite successful, and the Aliens series continued making movies through the 1990s.

This films seemed to have been destined to be made. Back in Predator 2, a brief scene in which an alien skull was seen by those in the audience spawned a series of comic books in which these two fought. The working title for the original predator movie was in fact Alien Hunter. These two were forever to be linked it seems.

Now the premise of this movie has an expedition sent out to discover the source of an unexplainable heat signature in the middle of the Antartic - a thousand miles away from any known civilization. One man finds the heart signature from a satellite, and then tracks the source to a pyramid underneath the ice. The man, Charles Bishop Weyland played by Lance Henriksen, quickly puts together an expedition to discover the source, but he runs into roadblocks immediately. The woman he has chosen to lead the expedition, Alexa Woods played by Sanaa Lathan, wants no part of it unless she can properly train the team going down. There is no time to do this, and after some debate by her she goes against her own better judgment and leads the expedition down.

Once the team arrives to the site where the pyramid is they find something surprising - something has already dug a way down to the pyramid. Instead of waiting, the team uses the already made tunnel to go down, and they find the pyramid. After a quick search, they also find some interesting finds and some things find them. The team has wandered onto a hunting ground where they turn into the bait to draw out one of the extraterrestrial creatures - the alien, so that the predator can hunt them. This pyramid looks to be the site of a long time battle between the two alien races. A small group of teenage predators is sent to the pyramid to fight the alien creatures in a coming of age ritual.

The aliens on both sides kills the crew one by one. The only survivor is the woman leading the team, and by the end of the movie she has joined up with the predator in order to kill the aliens. We all know from prior films how disastrous an alien let loose on Earth would be. They are successful, but the predator she joined forces with is killed and taken home. However, as we see at the end of the film, the predator brought back a little guest with him. This just leaves it open to a sequel now doesn't it?

I really did expect this movie to be cheesy, but I actually found myself enjoying it. It is gory in parts, but if that doesn't get to you then you should have no problems here. Nothing worse than we've seen in the Alien or Predator films before. I also liked how they brought back a familiar face. Lance Henriksen is someone we've seen in at least two of the Alien films. His character is very much the same here - just an earlier version and of course human. This is the man that the later Bishop androids were based off of in the Alien series. This film pleasantly surprised me. I really didn't expect to enjoy it but I did. It is action filled, and the plot they made actually found a way to make the two meet that was plausible. I'd recommend this film.

To check out this movie for yourself check out the following retailers: Amazon, J & R or rent through Netflix.com.