[brentl]

Wow, I went in and got what I expected which wasn't much.

Problems;

30-45 minutes without ANY Aliens.

I would think with a franchise that big you would have something other than a simple flashback to explain what happened and have aliens shown for the first time. I went for the Aliens, and was hoping for more of them.

What was the deal with the pyramid?? It seemed like it was going to be a Human VS Pyramid movie for a while. Sure was convenient when it started to move.

Stupid story telling to explain how the pyramid(and all the others) got there, and how they were our overseers(sp?).

Why do they insist on advancing the weaponery visuals, the advanced shoulder gun fired way slower than in the other movies, and the "arm bomb" had this "trekkie transporter" look to it when he was activating it.

The Predators were pretty well done, but they had a giant thud with every step, Way overdone!

Aliens looked good in closeups, but everything from midrange was all digital and was easy to spot. The Queen, when she was initially revived looked great, very Alien part 2.

The jittery camera work during the solo fight between the Alien and Predator made the Bourne Supremecy look steady!

We had a good look at the Predator drop ship in Predator 2 and they completely changed it, bad move!

The good

Initial Queen Alien scene was strong.

The part where the Alien was about to kill the Predator and he did his Hiss was my favourite moment.

Cool and fun ending on the Predator ship, kind of obvious but still fun.

Brent
I won't talk about the bad script or bad acting, but why weren't we offered a look into how Weyland/Yutani was formed?

[CoreyII]

Quote:

The Predator movies on the other hand... well the first one is normally referred to as being good "for being an Arnold movie" and the second one is normally trashed by everyone, even fans of the first one (I happen to like the second one though). It seems that the general public couldn't care less about a Predator movie, while new Aliens movie would have been a much safer bet.

To back up Tim Glover and Ben Osborne, the first Predator is a well loved action/sci-fi film from the 80's that hasn't lost none of its appeal over the years. As a matter of fact I was at Target yesterday and they were sold out of the special edition 2 disc set of the film.

As far as Predator 2 goes you would be surprised at how many people liked the sequel. The film definitely goes into more of the creatures past and not just the scene with the Alien skull,but also when the creature gives Danny Glover the gun from 1756(don't remember the exact date). And the Gary Busey scenes were great, I liked how Busey explained the creatures past and how he referenced to Arnold's team from the first film.

In my opinion Predator 2 problems are: the supporting cast, while Glover and Busey, are great in the film the rest of the cast especially Glover's team of cops are just bland. Rueben Blades, Maria Conchita Alonso, Kent McCord, and Bill Paxton are just not as cool as badass Sonny Landham, Bill Duke, Richard Chaves, Lethal Weapon creator Shane Black, Jesse "The Body" Ventura, and of course Carl "Apollo Creed"/"Action Jackson" Weathers. Bill Paxton is perhpaps the worst offender because all he did in Predator 2 was rehash his Hudson role from Aliens.

But, perhaps Predator 2 greatest fault is being a sequel to an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie without having Arnold in it. Although the film is about the Predator and the studios were smart to focus on the creature, the original Predator was still a vehicle for one of cinema's greatest action stars and Im pretty sure most people were expecting him to return in part 2, not Roger Murtaugh.

[Alex Spindler]

Just saw it and it was fair, but not especially good.

The good was that they managed a few good confrontations between the titular factions, one or two of which were satisfying. There was a fair amount of use of bullet-time, or should I call it face hugger-time, but there are one or two scenes that find good benefit from it.

The bad are a couple of logic problems, a serious departure from the Alien lifecycle, and two or three really missed opportunities.

For the Aliens,
- Why was it necessary to completely abandon the lifecycle concept? Facehuggers that impregnate instantly, chest bursters in minutes (the one lady wakes up to see face huggers still going to work on her friends only to die minutes later), and full size aliens in an hour. Probably far too nitpicky, but it irked me to a great degree.
- I really liked the fact that they stuck to the classic alien adult style from the first Alien rather than using the ones from Aliens or others. They also didn't deviate from the Alien Queen design from Aliens which was a good choice.
- They really dropped the ball by not having the victor of the first two Predator deaths (the one that was scarred by the net) not be involved in a confrontation to the death between either the Predator or the human survivor. It was something I was looking forward to and was quite disappointed when he went up in the fireball like all the rest of the throwaway adults.

For the Predators,
- They did a fair job of giving the individual Predators some distinctive styles, which was good.
- It would be a very odd choice for the Predators to have a pyramid set in Antarctica given that their two films make no mistake their preference for temperate or hot climates.
- That they arrived without projectile weapons, but kept century old ones seemed really odd. I first thought it works as kind of a sporting safety device. Hunting only counts if you use hand to hand combat, but if you get in trouble, pick up the weapons. But then I remembered that the entire pyramid cycle was started by picking up the weapons, to include activating the sacrificial chamber, so it sort of fell apart. Perhaps the sequence was supposed to start with the Predators going into that chamber and dialing the date in.

For the rest,
- A real missed opportunity was not doing something more with Weyland. As best I can tell, his company is in shambles. I sort of assumed he'd escape with some shred of technology to catapult his company into the lead for the future films.
- I understand that they do this safari every hundred years, but how did a whaling team get there to start it up? - The leads soon decide that 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'. However, up to that point, I think the only experience with either side was the loss of several of their human friends at the hands of the Predators. But after reading the heiroglyphs, they decide that the Predators are the good guys? Talk about believing everything you read!
- There were some really nice homages in the film, from alien designs in the starting satellite, in the deserted whaling town, and perhaps even a visual reference to The Thing in their early exploration of the town.


All in all, I think it's Anderson's best since Event Horizon, but I wasn't too keen on Resident Evil and really didn't like Soldier.

[Michael Boyd]

I didn't really mind the team-up. As someone else said, that's from the first comic. (BUT! Was there no acid blood left in that Alien head/shield she wore on her arm?)

The final chestburst "surprise" ending didn't work. Why would that Predator have not killed himself with the wrist bomb if he knew he was impregnated? But my point is I wasn't bothered by the look of the chestburster. Wasn't that the theory why Alien 3's creature looked so different since it came out of a dog/ox?

I did like how the death of the Alien Queen mirrored Ripley's expulsion of her enemy. Instead of the abyss of space, it's the dark abyss of the ocean.

Anyway, this post was just to mention a few things I was okay with in this film. I don't think it was a good movie by any means. All the problems mentioned in previous postings, well . . . I concur!

[Patrick Sun]

I did enjoy that quick homage to Jurassic Park when whatshername is being chased by that huge Alien on the snowy topside.

[BrionL]

I thought it wasn't that bad but then again I had pretty low expectations.

Brion

[Patrick Sun]

I had pretty much no expectations and it still managed to underwhelm me.

[Brian Sheffield]

Definitey not a great movie, but I found myself enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would.

I'd give it a solid C- or 2 out of 5 stars.

[Johnny Angell]

Quote:

30-45 minutes without ANY Aliens. I would think with a franchise that big you would have something other than a simple flashback to explain what happened and have aliens shown for the first time. I went for the Aliens, and was hoping for more of them.

Remember how Alien started. Must have been a half hour before the face-hugger appeared, maybe more. Alien took its time setting things up.

Unfortunately, that's about all this movie has in common with Alien, taking its time.

[Dome Vongvises]

I have to agree with Ben on the assessment that Predator still holds up very well. And I'm one of the few people that like the sequel as well.

Again, I think the problem is that it's too conventionally nu skool. Slo-mo mid-air sequence, not-so-good camera work, mediocre script and dialogue, self-mockery. I'll go ahead and say that Paul Anderson isn't that bad, but he's not that good either. Ridley Scott, John McTiernan (back in the day), and James Cameron run circles around this guy.

I thought it was okay, but the one thing that I missed is getting to hear the Predators speak something. In the first one, it was really eerie how they tried to emulate human speech, and in the second one it was kind of cool when the guy said "Take it."

Otherwise, some nice touches like nods to Bishop's use of a knife to do the whole knife trick in his office.

But man oh man is the score to this movie so forgettable. I'm thinking of the creepiness and adrenaline filled strings of Aliens or the machismo of the brass in Predator. The score to AVP had none of that.

I realize as a film it has to stand on its own, but I thought the teamup at the end was a nice touch because it alluded to one of the comic series. Speaking of which, it makes me wonder why they just didn't do a direct adaptation of the comics.