Alien vs. Predator: When Icons Disappoint By I remember walking out of Alien vs. Predator feeling deflated, standing outside the theater, and wondering if perhaps I just wasn’t a big enough appreciator of either franchise to think the movie was incredibly cool.
Hardcore fans seem to take a lot of issues with the continuity, pointing out logic issues and plot holes, or upset that AVP contradicts ideas they’ve always believed to be true about their favorite IPs. Other viewers who weren’t as invested or were willing to accept this excursion as a non-canonical adventure shut their brains off and had a blast with what they saw, but I was somewhere in the middle of these two groups and felt this big brawl under the ice didn’t do it for me, with plot or action. I keep meeting people willing to defend the movie, or who enjoy it, but only on the down low.
Years later, however, I’m trying to look at again without comparing it too harshly to the other quality entries, because part of me truly feels like I should like a lot of what it was trying to do. The 2004 film was overseen by Paul W.S.
Anderson, a man who directed my favorite movie of all time, and he’s a huge fan of both franchises, even if many people like to say his Alien-biased shows too much here. He wrote the screenplay, an idea he’d had for some time and even pitched before, but it took a while for the timing to line up. After the nod to the Alien franchise seen at the end of Predator 2 (1990), fans were excite.