Wow! What a Piece of Shit!

8/14/04 by scott

I'm at a loss for words. I went to see AVP last night, and since then I've been unsuccessfully trying to come up with the best way to adequately express how bad this movie really was. Not only was it excruciatingly horrible, but I've been waiting for this movie for over fourteen years, so now I feel like a total jackass for ever getting excited about it. I should have known better. Fucking shit, man, I should have fucking known better!

Anyway, paying $7.00 to go see this movie was a whole hell of a lot like paying some gang of thugs $7.00 to let me watch while they take my mother out back and beat her with a pipe for 87 minutes. I feel cheated, ashamed, and humiliated. And the worst part? There was a group of about six teenagers behind us cheering. What the hell kind of society is this where people could actually like a movie this bad?

My suggestion to you: DON'T GO SEE THIS CRAP! Especially if you liked the Aliens or Predator movies. Seriously. Let me just explain to you how bad it is:

First off, there's a scene of a satellite picking up some unidentified heat source in Antarctica. And while the satellite is unfolding, it sort of looks like an alien queen, because director Paul W.S. Anderson thinks he's pretty goddamn clever. Then, using some pretty freaking sophisticated bat-gadgetry, the employees of the Weyland Corporation are able to determine that there's a pyramid with a whole mish-mash of architectural styles 2,000 feet below the surface of an isolated Antarctic Island.

So they decide to summon Captain Planet and the Planeteers, an ethnically diverse collection of half-dimensional characters that use their random assortment of unbelievable abilities to save the world from certain doom. First up is the cute and gutsy black girl, who we first see climbing up a mountain in a Mountain Dew commercial. She almost falls to her death, but stops just long enough to answer her cell phone as she's hanging on for her life. Of course it's some dude pretending to be Laurence Fishbourne in the Matrix or Tyrese in Equilibrium. He's the official spokesman of Charles Weyland, a gazillionaire who wants to be the first to see this crazy pyramid. Of course she accepts because what the hell else does she have going on?

Then, half a world away, Tyrese recruits Mario and Spud, the Italian and Scottish Planeteers. They're really busy shooting a pepsi commercial, but once Tyrese explains that there would really be no point to this movie without the scientist that has to explain everything even though he should have no idea what's going on and his wacky sidekick, they begrudgingly agree to join. They do, however, have one condition: that they retain the right to schlub Pepsi in almost every single scene.

So they all get together and meet Charles Weyland, played by Lance Henrikson, who tells them all what's going on. You'd think that since Henrikson played a cyborg that betrayed the humans in the first two Alien movies, that he would only be telling them part of the truth and he would betray them later. Wrong! That would only make sense. See, that's what this movie is all about. Director Paul W.S. Anderson throws enough stuff from the Alien/Predator mythos into the film to prove that he's watched the previous movies, but he just doesn't give a flying rat's ass about the spirit of the originals. It's as if he says to the audience, "Yeah, I know what you came here to see. But fuck you. I was sent here to make this movie suck." I mean, I wasn't going into this expecting anything oscar-worthy. It's Alien vs. Predator, for god's sake. But at least act like you give a damn. But I digress...

So, just when you almost forget this movie is supposed to have aliens and predators in it, there's about a five second scene with some predators watching from above Earth. In order to Advance the Plotline, they shoot a laser to Earth, digging a tunnel down to the pyramid so the humans can easily make it down there and get gobbled up by aliens.

Then the humans easily make it down there and get gobbled up by aliens. But not before spud gets scared by a penguin in the oldest, tiredest trick in the horror biz. And here's another thing: the first time someone sees an alien, he doesn't freak out or shit his pants as you would expect. No, he says, "You are one ugly Mother..." Jesus. My mom takes a pipe to the head. I think at this point I was actually flipping the bird at the screen.

So then before too long three Predators come in and kill a few humans in the most tactically inept ways possible, turning their invisibility on and off at random and periodically flipping out their wrist blades so they can make that cool wolverine-like 'snikt' noise. It's almost as if these predators had no intelligence whatsoever, they just kill indiscriminately for fun. Okay, whatever. But then, before you can even blink, a single alien kills two predators.

Let me repeat that. A single alien kills two predators. Now, I might be skirting into the territory of the nerd by debating the fighing prowess of the two characters, but I think that it's pretty obvious to anyone who has ever watched the previous movies that a single predator would have no problem taking out a single alien. No contest. The aliens strength is in their numbers, not their fighting skill... Mom takes the pipe to the ribs! Not only that, but the fight scene between the alien and predator is so dark and shaky that it's pretty much impossible to tell what's happening. But anyway...

So then mario, the italian planeteer, is able to read predator writing and tells the entire story of what's going on. Then he's able to find some predator shoulder cannons. By this point you kind of forget to care what the hell's going on until everyone but the sassy sister is dead, and she wins the respect of the predator by giving him his shoulder cannon back and killing an alien with his spear.

So then, just when you think it can't possibly get any worse, it gets worse. The predator starts communicating with her through hand gestures, which she of course understands immediately. So, armed with an alien head shield and a alien tail spear, she joins the predator to find the hive and destroy it. After a completely retarded 'escape from the tunnel before it blows up' scene where the predator and the black planeteer barely make it out alive, they make out for a while and he marks her face with the predator word for 'slut'.

But it's not a happy ending yet, as the alien queen makes it through the rubble and the dynamic duo have to work together to seal the deal. Then some other completely ridiculous stuff happens and then the credits roll and you find out who all is going to hell for releasing this disaster on an unsuspecting population.

Fuck, man. Fuck.

I have seriously never been this humiliated by a moviegoing experience. I've also never really wished a director would contract a fatal venereal disease either, but there's a first time for everything. Not only was this movie completely shitty, but now they'll never ever make a good one. I've waited over fourteen years for this movie, and this is what I get. It's a fucking insult. I've removed the topic in my forums where I encouraged people to see it, and I will never utter the name of this movie again, opting instead to refer to it as 'The Great Disappointment'. Hopefully, in time, I will heal, and I will forget. But I will never forgive. Fuck you, Fox, and fuck you, Paul Anderson. May you both enjoy your dicks rotting off in hell.

Disrespectfully,
Scott Powers