When “”Alien Vs. Predator”” was released last year, it was savaged by both the critics and fans alike. Personally I skipped the theatrical showing because I simply couldn’t make it to the critics screening, but thought the trailers and clips for it looked decent enough not warranting the pure venom spewed against this film. Fox Home Video’s recently released DVD confirms my suspicions.
Sure the film is pretty dumb and illogical, for instance the lead character stands in the middle of the Antarctic with only a shirt on, and she doesn’t even seem cold! Or the fact that there’s a scene where The Predator is in a life and death battle with an Alien, at the end of the scene we see his buddies were there all along and didn’t bother to help. But you don’t see a film like “”Alien Vs. Predator”” expecting everything to make sense, or to see Oscar level acting. You go because you expect it to be fun, and fun it is. The plot is so silly and confusing that it’s not really worth going into, as near as I can tell “”Alien Vs. Predator”” serves as a prequel to the other films in the series, it features the original Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen) the billionaire founder of what eventually becomes the evil Weyland Corporation in the later Alien films. In this film he is a man who is looking to leave a legacy behind, he finds it when he discovers an ancient pyramid that’s located under the Antarctic. He forms an expedition to explore the pyramids and the team is lead by Environmentalist Alexa Woods (Sanaa Lathan) who is the only sane person in this thing, the one who says “”We shouldn’t be going there.”” Of course there wouldn’t be a movie if they listened to her, or she followed her own advice. They eventually stumble upon a war between the Aliens and Predators. Not a bad premise but the film spends too much time on the humans, and it’s almost an hour before we finally get into the battle between the Aliens and Predators. When it does happen, it’s pretty cool, and fans of both series (which I’m not) shouldn’t be disappointed. The cinematography, acting, and direction are all decent. It tries to play it safe and doesn’t push the limits of the genre and that’s fine. Movie Grade – CEXTRASThe DVD has some decent extras including an alternate cut of the film that includes the original beginning – which turns out to be only about five minutes worth of material. There are three deleted scenes that are not worth talking about, a nice 15 minute making of featurette, a Dark Horse cover gallery, and DVD Rom content. The extra features are all short and doesn’t really add much to the over all package and experience. Extras Grade C FINAL THOUGHTS Like the film itself, the “”Alien Vs. Predator”” DVD package doesn’t try and push the boundaries of the format, the package is decent, but contains nothing that screams I must buy this. It’s a perfectly good rental, watch it once, enjoy it for what it is, and move on. OVERALL GRADE C