Industrialist Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen) brings a mixed team of scientists and guards, led by Lex Woods (Sanaa Lathan), to investigate an ancient pyramid buried under the ice of Antarctica. The pyramid is a combat ring where young predators come to prove themselves against aliens, and the humans are showing up when a new match is starting.
AVP: Alien Vs. Predator is for fans of the Alien franchise and the Predator franchise. If you don’t know those films—if you don’t already know that the aliens have acid for blood and that the queen is a mean mother, and that predators are hunters with nuclear bombs on their arms, then forget AVP. Instead, go out now and buy a copy of Alien (this very minute; if you are at work, fake an epileptic fit and get moving). When you are through watching it, go get a copy of Aliens, and, if you are feeling in a mood for mindless mayhem, rent Predator 1 & 2. No hurry on that last order. You may grab copies of Alien 3 & 4 if you wish, but it’s not necessary.
All right, so everyone left reading should be fans of the Nostromo and at least mildly amused by crab-men. Good. I like to know my audience, and for that audience, AVP is surprisingly entertaining. I went in with low expectation, imagining a film with the peppy joy of Alien 3 and the depth of Predator. Well, I was point on with the theme (I learned as much about life from these critters as I did watching Godzilla fight Mothera), but no one looking for theme should be anywhere near this film. AVP aims low, and hits its mark. The action is fast, bloody (well, gooey) in a PG-13 way, and filled with rotating blades and shoulder-mounted cannons. Who doesn’t love rotating blades?
The human characters are interesting enough for their purpose. I can tell them apart when they die, which is all that’s necessary. The two exceptions are Weyland and Woods. Charles Weyland has much more personality than I’d expect from his limited screen time (at least partly due to Lance Henriksen’s effortless performance). I actually cared what happened to him. Of course, Henriksen is playing an ancestor of his character in Alien 3 who is the basis for his android in Aliens. The company he runs is one half of what will become the corporate giant that owns the Nostromo. Ah, it’s all fitting together. The other exception is a problematic one. Lex Woods, dully portrayed by Sanaa Lathan, is another bland red-shirt, but as she’s the star, a whole lot more development would have been nice. I needed to be engaged by Woods; I wasn’t. Ripley she ain’t.
The humans are there because it would be too expensive to make a 90-minute film of only aliens and predators fighting, so let’s forget about them. Are there any flaws that matter? Well, the aliens are a bit too short (the single one in Alien was about a head taller), but that’s minimal. A bigger problem is that writer-director Paul W. S. Anderson (of Resident Evil fame) has sped up the alien lifecycle to a degree that requires a rewrite of physics. They put on about a hundred and fifty pounds in five minutes without consuming anything. The face-huggers attack and then a chest-burster pops out within ten minutes. Hmmm. I thought the little guys were incubating in their host; apparently, they are just passing through. Film reviewers everywhere may be asking if details of an alien life form are actually more important than character development. Silly reviewers. Of course they are, and anyone who asks such a question doesn’t understand what a movie called AVP: Alien Vs. Predator is about. This is a monster mash, not a character study. A monster mash is never going to be a great film, but if you like vicious fiends battling, you won’t be disappointed with AVP.