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Chad
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Posted: November 14, 2004 at 12:00am
Billionaire Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen) has found out about a buried pyramid in Antarctica through the use of satellite imagery, and puts together a crack team of drillers, scientists, and archaeologists. Leading this team is enviro-nut Alexa Woods (Sanaa Lathan), a lady that is quite familiar with survival in Antarctica. As they make their way to the pyramid, they find that there's a hole that seemingly comes from the sky (the rim of it lines up with a burnt away portion of a station roof in front of it) and goes down through the ice, into where the pyramid lies. This doesn't make sense to our team, as this hole wasn't there just yesterday. Little do they know that this was the work of a Predators ship melting away the ice as a result of the Predators rites of passage; the Predators breed Aliens here in order to kill them and prove themselves as worthy to their species. Blissfully unaware, the humans make their way down the hole and into the pyramid and are caught between the two battling species.
Not much to our storyline, as after the introductions and setup are rushed through we're left with nothing but action sequence after action sequence. Considering the title, I wasn't expecting much more from the movie; however, the majority of the action sequences involve either the Aliens or the Predators mowing through the human fodder of a team. With the exception of the main lady and one other guy, every one of the humans is killed off shortly after the action starts. The guy lasts for a bit longer than his companions, but is soon killed off as well. Introducing a large number of people that really serve no purpose other than kills for the main monster(s) is really nothing new in horror films, but the amount of fodder found here is incredibly horrid. It would have reduced the amount of human kills and made-for-trailers scenes, but the storyline would have moved along much better that way.
<Spoilers>
While I realize that teaming the Predator up with a human is faithful to the original comic series, the level of teamwork that was shown here was just too much for me to handle. If a human managed to kill an alien in the comic world, then the Predator would mark them with the aliens blood, give a nod of approval, and that was that. They most certainly didn't equip the human with weapons and defense, protect them, fight with them, save their life, and then die while protecting them some more. This really killed the storyline, for me at least.
</Spoilers>
I also wasn't too keen on the changes made to the Predators, but thankfully, they weren't done as badly as I had anticipated. The Aliens found here are pretty faithful to the originals, though they did seem a lot weaker than when they were the stars of the movie. The Predators were the ones who really got the god-awful Anderson-reimagining. Unless I was seeing things wrong, the Predators start the movie at around nine feet tall, but by the end of the running time, they're back down to a normal human size. While this was extremely hilarious (and not in a good way for the movie's sake), it really killed any sort of mood that the movie was attempting to set. They were also given some new and modified weaponry, which made for a bit of sadness for those looking for the Predators of old... though, this was definitely the least of my gripes.
This is action sequence after action sequence, no more and no less. Storyline is almost non-existent in this world, and the actual Aliens vs. Predator scenes are a bit scarce. I wasn't expecting a whole lot going in, but this was still disappointing. Not really worth the rental money unless you're a huge fan of either character, but even then I'd be willing to bet that you'll regret picking this up. 3/10.
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Crispy
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Posted: July 13, 2005 at 7:08am
This would be the 3rd time Paul Anderson fucked up something that was INSANELY looked forward to with Resident Evil and Mortal Kombat being the other two
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.
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Posted: September 13, 2005 at 8:29pm
I thought this was going to be excellnt. What a let down.
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Ginose
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Posted: September 15, 2005 at 4:19pm
Let me put it like this: I wish there was a rating lower than "crap" on this site.
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bluemeanie
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Posted: October 18, 2005 at 9:52pm
Who wins? E.T. -- he kills them with kindness. Not as great as "Freddy Vs. Jason", but not terrible either. 6.5/10.
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ScarsRstarS
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Posted: January 10, 2006 at 8:53am
The fight scence at the end awsome.
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BuryMeAlive
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Posted: September 1, 2006 at 1:29pm
I didn't think it was that bad at all.... Sure as hell is alot better than Predator 2
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Kain
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Posted: June 4, 2007 at 2:53pm
I enjoy movies. They can be major influences in and on my life, thought processes, and emotions. This...was.....abysmal. Outside of some eye candy, which there certainly was, the movie was essentially a pile of cash that would have been better spent by the Bush administration. Crispy, I truly have to agree with your sentiments, and couldn't have summarized that statement better myself. The story line was there, albeit a bit weak, but not awful. It's evident, however, that as soon as they all sat down in their big, plushy, pretentious, rolling office chairs to discuss how this film would be written/produced/filmed, that the creativity gods fearlessly unloaded their bowels all over every mind in that room. The aliens were turned into a sort of locust moreso than any form of legitimate threat, the predators were effectively emasculated, and the humans were regrettably displayed as what they truly are (rather than how we'd often like to think of them)...a weak, poorly equipped excuse for an evolved animal species. I'm glad my amigo covered the pay-per-view fee on this one, so I didn't have to feel as though I was cheated out of anything more than my precious time. Now was it truly THAT bad?? Probably not, but anyone who has ever seen and even slightly enjoyed one of the predecessors to this film should justly be outraged. If nothing else can be provided as solace to my bruised sense of entertainment by any other attendee of this site, please answer me this; at the end of the film, how does that commiserable little coo survive in the vast Antarctic Cocytus with nothing more to guard her daintiness than a damn longsleeve shirt and a frail pair of pants??? Ah, were I a lesser sport I might have had trouble with this movie's level of believability.............
-KAIN
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Rik
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Posted: September 22, 2007 at 1:48am
Bishop huh? Isn't he the android from Aliens? And they used Lance Henrikssen too. So I suppose he's like the template for the android? I thought this movie sucked ass. The first 2 predators got wiped out like they were extras in the battle scene of 300. That already ruined the entire movie for me. Too little shoulder cannon action. And yeah, the predators shrank alot... thanks for pointing that out. It was entertaining, but I hated the way it ran. 3/10.
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Lucid Dreams
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Posted: February 16, 2010 at 11:09pm
This movie could have been so good, but instead it was crap. 3/10
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