In Defense Of: “Alien Vs. Predator” (2004)

When The Monsters *Finally* Fight, The Action Sequences Are Pretty Damn Good

Sure, it’s a slow, protracted buildup before we finally get what we came to see: our two favourite sci-fi monsters duking the living snot out of each-other. However, when we eventually get there, the movie thankfully delivers, with some pretty satisfyingly cool skirmishes, brimming with a multitude of predator gadgetry, buckets of luminescent green blood, and a woman armed with an alien-head-shield and an alien-tail-spear (ok, perhaps try and forget that latter point).

The Matrix was very much the du jour in the early noughties, and it shows in Anderson’s Alien Vs. Predator, as many of the action sequences borrow heavily from The Wachowski’s bullet time slow-mo panoramic shots. Despite cribbing some visual motifs from the dystopian sci-fi classic, the action scenes are quite a sight to behold, and they still hold up surprisingly well to this day.

The Concept And Setting Is Actually Quite Cool

The story was co-written by Dan O’ Bannon, an American filmmaker and screenwriter, who wrote the original horror classic Alien. Truth be told, it’s a pretty neat concept, too.

Every 100 years, three adolescent predators take part in a rite of passage, which tasks them with coming to earth and facing off with the galaxy’s ultimate prey: the xenomorph. Historically, humans worshipped these otherworldly beings and willingly sacrificed themselves to aid “The Hunt.” Sure, it’s a bit silly, but if you went into Alien Vs. Predator expecting a narrative akin to Citizen Kane, then I’m sorry: You’re a dunderhead.

The setting is cool, too. A deserted whaling station, and an ancient, underground pyramid buried 2000 feet below a glacier off the coast of Antarctica. The film’s sets are visually arresting, with a constantly shifting pyramid that changes the layout of the architecture every ten minutes. This really helps to ratchet up the tension as the team are rapidly split up by the ever-changing geography of the labyrinthian locale, and picked off one-by-one by the marauding predators and xenomorphs. Ultimately, it really feels like Alien Vs. Predator has its own distinctly unique personality that’s unlike many of its forebears, for better or for worse.