Featured Movies
Partners
Long wait, disappointing result
The sad thing about this film, which should never have seen theatrical light of day, is that it could have been something amazing. For starters, it has two of the best alien franchises ever to grace our screens, and they are locked in battle! As thousands of sci-fi fans drooled for years at the prospect of this movie (the idea came from ?Predator 2? where in the Predator spaceship a trophy Alien head is clearly visible on the wall) the film-makers should have left it as a wet dream rather than throw together this piece of rubbish.
It also has an all-star cast with an impressive collective CV. Back in the old days Lance Henrikson could have stopped an Alien or Predator in its tracks with his creepy wide eyed stare alone. Sadly, his character seems to lack the steel we normally associate with the great man (he currently has a pottery exhibition on in London, fact fans!). Ewan Bremner and Tommy Flanagan, two of Scotland?s finest, make up part of the cannon-fodder (or alien fodder) of the hapless scientific team that discover a great pyramid hidden deep beneath the Antarctican ice. It soon transpires that they have been drawn there by the Predators who fancy a bit of big-game hunting and need to generate some ?aliens? in order to do so, and the humans soon find themselves caught in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse between the two species. Bearing in mind that this is several hundred years before the Ripley ever took that fateful voyage on the Nostromo, it seems a shame that the film-makers took some liberties with the alien breed. For starters, the gestation period is remarkably quick ? only a matter of minutes before face-hugger = full grown alien. This is at the expense of the movie?s credibility bearing in mind the only people likely to watch this film are die-hard Alien/Predator fans. I feel they could have given us a little more meat for our money. These are ?pop-tart? aliens, sleek and black and oozing KY-jelly, yet half the time they do just look like a stuntman in an alien suit. The Predators are the only saving grace of this film. With kick-ass hardware they are super-cool and unafraid to die. It?s their frankly human attitude to hunting, and their attitude towards their prey (the aliens) and the humans they use to breed them that make them so likeable. You almost get the impression that they are the Supreme Bloke ? out on a boy?s weekend of extreme sports. They thrive on risk and the thrill of the kill, but won?t attack unless a victim is armed (which is more than we can say for the human species) and give respect where respect is due. They are top of the evolutionary ladder which is precisely where they deserve to be. |
