My Thoughts on “Alien vs. Predator” (2004)

(This is the poster for Alien vs. Predator (2004).)

 

Alright, first review of June, let’s go. Alien vs. Predator (2004), or AVP (2004) for short. I decided to fast track this because I happened to watch Alien vs. Predator (2004) on Hulu while I was visiting my cousin’s house and that peaked my interest in it again and motivated me to review it. Although I watched the theatrical version when I was at their house and I watched the longer unrated version for this review. I did intend for this to be a May review, but things didn’t pan out that way, and I got caught up writing other stuff. Had it not been for my A Working Man ♂︎ review, I probably would’ve gotten this out before the end of May. I probably would’ve reviewed Tron: Legacy a lot sooner too instead on the very last day of May. But, whatever, I’m making it the first review of June. It fits the month of June better since Predator: Killer of Killers is coming out this month. But, I did originally want to review this in May so that I could get it out of the way and be done with it by the time Predator: Killer of Killers so that I could jump into that series and not have to worry about reviewing Alien vs. Predator (2004), or Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, or Predator 2. I am still thinking of reviewing those movies, I plan on reviewing Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem after this one, not just because it’s a sequel because the two films are intrinsically linked.  

 

Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem picks up immediately where this movie leaves off. It’s not one of those sequels that takes place years, months, weeks, or even days after, no, it takes place seconds after. I also don’t think the movie’s as bad as people often make it out to be (people have either said it’s the worst Alien movie or the worst Predator movie or is the worst of both franchises), and I feel defending it a little bit. And if I have time, I’ll also review Predator 2 because it’s an underrated movie, it get nearly as much attention or credit that it deserves. The AVP films would literally not exist if it weren’t for Predator 2 laying the groundwork for them. It also took the Predator franchise in a much better direction than the Terminator franchise by not including Arnold Schwarzenegger, even though they definitely tried and wanted to get Arnold back. Later on down the line, I may also review Predators, Robert Rodriguez’s Predator movie (although he didn’t direct it, he just produced it), and even The Predator, Shane Black’s Predator movie that hardly anyone likes and often viewed as the new worst. The Predator is the only Predator movie prior to these new Predator movies coming out this year, Predator: Killer of Killers and Predator: Badlands, that haven’t seen, so it’ll be a first viewing for me, but I’m not exactly enthusiastic about it because I’ve heard some pretty bad things about that movie 😬. 

Now, this movie was directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, the director of such movies as Mortal Kombat (1995), Event Horizon, Soldier (1998), all of the live action Resident Evil movies starring Milla Jovovich except for Resident Evil: Apocalypse and Resident Evil: Extinction, Death Race (2008), The Three Musketeers (2011), Pompeii (2014),  Monster Hunter (2020), and In the Lost Lands. Depending on how who are, that resume either excited you or made you shutter a bit. He’s one of those directors that people hate or make fun of, sort of like Michael Bay, or Roland Emmerich, or even Zack Snyder to a certain extent. He isn’t really taken seriously as a director and is often dismissed as an idiot, a joke to be laughed at and ridiculed. Most of his movies, besides Mortal Kombat (1995) and Event Horizon, have either gotten mixed reviews or negative reviews, especially the Resident Evil movies, which are considered brain dead action flicks that are often lumped in with Michael Bay’s Transformers movies, and are often seen as examples of bad video game adaptations. Those movies are a huge part of the reason why Paul W.S. Anderson isn’t respected or taken seriously as a director by most critics, but he is still getting jobs, he’s still making movies, he’s still able to get decent budgets on his movies, and able get big actors like Dave Bautista to work for him. He hasn’t been banished to the direct-to-DVD 📀 or straight-to-streaming realm…yet. Despite most of them being hated by critics, some of his movies have gained cult followings over the years, including this one.

This movie was hated for many years by fans of both franchises, for a few reasons. They didn’t like the fact that it was rated PG-13, they didn’t like that it took place on Earth 🌎 and in the present day, and they didn’t like that it took place in Antarctica 🇦🇶. They also didn’t like the small details, like how the Alien life cycle was shortened for the sake of time, or how the Predator’s infrared vision was more red and orange and not the rainbow color 🌈 like in the Predator movies, they didn’t like that the Predator were all bulky and had all kinds of armor, they didn’t like how the Predator ships and Predator technology in general looked different than they did in the Predator movies, and they didn’t like that the wrist blades were lengthened several times what they were in the Predator movies. 

 

A lot of those complaints were pretty nitpicky in hindsight, but those were real complaints people had about this movie. But, more recently, fans of both franchises have started to soften on this film a bit. More so Predator fans, but Alien fans too. Is it nostalgia? Yeah, mostly, but a lot of Predator fans and Alien fans have said that they think that this movie is the better of the two AVP movies that have been made so far, and is an okay film in its own right. Considering the bad installments of both franchise since the AVP movies, this movie really doesn’t look that bad by comparison. We actually had it better than we thought at the time. But even now, after both franchises have gotten back on track with installments that people actually like, whether it’s Prey (2022) for the Predator franchise or Alien: Romulus for the Alien franchise, people have still softened on this movie and actually do like it now unironically. 

I’ve always liked this movie, I saw it when I was very young, I was 5 years old when it came out and when I saw it, which yeah, that is pretty young to be seeing a movie like this, but my parents didn’t really care what I watched back then. As long as it didn’t have sex or nudity in it, they let me watch it. But, it was rated PG-13, it wasn’t like this rated R or anything like that. I actually did see the first Predator movie before that, which is rated R, and in fact, I saw the first Predator movie before I saw any of the Alien movies. I didn’t watch the Alien movies until years later when I was a bit older, and this movie was actually my first exposure to Alien. I didn’t know anything about the Aliens or the Alien Queen. In fact, when I first heard that there was an Alien Queen, I for some reason thought of the queen from that one Madeline game on PC, you know which one if you’re in anyway familiar with the Madeline franchise, because I had that game around that same time. I know that sounds weird but it’s the truth. 

 

You can imagine my surprise when I saw the movie for the first time and the Alien Queen was nothing like that. I was actually terrified this movie the first time I watched it, and that was mainly due to the jump-scares and how loud they were in that theater. The Aliens and the Alien Queen also terrified me a lot. But, the second time I watched it I was fine. The jump-scares didn’t bother me as much and the Aliens didn’t freak me out nearly as much as they did the first time I saw it. I actually enjoyed the movie the second time around. This is one of the few movies I’ve seen in theaters multiple times. I don’t know exactly how many times I saw it, but it was a lot. I think it was at least four times. One time in the regular theater (Regal Cinema at Cottonwood Mall in Albuquerque) and then three times in the dollar theater 💵 (Movies West on Coors Blvd. NW in Albuquerque, which closed down during the pandemic 😷🦠). The only other movie I saw in theaters more times than Alien vs. Predator (2004) was Transformers (2007), I think I saw that movie a whopping 7 times at least. If not 7, then at least 6. 

 

Maybe that’s why this movie was rated PG-13, for people like me. Maybe not as young as me, but definitely young than most of the fans who were already adults when this originally came out. But, the backlash towards the PG-13 from older fans, meant that the sequel was going to have to be rated R no matter what, and every Alien and Predator movie since this movie has been rated R. This is one instance where a studio and the producers involved in the franchise actually learned from their mistakes and didn’t repeat them. Of course, they’d end up making new mistakes, but that’s beside the point. At least, they learned not to make another PG-13 rated Alien or Predator movie ever again. There is an Unrated version that adds in a bunch of extra scenes as well as CGI blood 🩸, and that to me is the superior version of the movie even if you can tell the CGI blood 🩸 was added in after the fact and doesn’t always look natural. 

 

Not that practical fake blood 🩸 always looked like real blood 🩸, it didn’t, but it was usually more convincing than CGI blood 🩸 tends to be, at least when it’s done wrong. CGI blood 🩸 is probably used more often than we still, but we just don’t notice it because it’s actually good. As one ongoing YouTube series says, “good CGI is invisible CGI,” or “No CGI is invisible CGI,” something like that. Bad practical fake blood 🩸 tends to either look really watery or too much like paint, bad CGI blood 🩸 just looks digital, plastic-y, and even floaty sometimes. Like you can tell it’s not really there and was added in post. Those extra scenes they add in really explain a lot of things weren’t that clear in the theatrical version, and they allow the movie to breathe a bit as the theatrical version did feel like it was rushing through things. If you are going to watch this movie, watch the Unrated version. It pains me every time I see someone react to this movie on YouTube and they react to the theatrical version. So many of the questions that they ask while reacting to this movie are answered in the Unrated version. Plus, even if it is CGI blood 🩸, at least the Unrated version has more blood 🩸. 

 

Although, when the movie released on DVD 📀 the first time, they had a version of the movie was called the “Extended Version” or something like that, and didn’t have any of the additional scenes that were in the Unrated version on the Blu-Ray release 💿, the only scene it had was the prologue scene set in 1904. It didn’t have any CGI blood 🩸, which makes me think that they added that blood 🩸 in years later for the Unrated version on the Blu-Ray release 💿. I wonder if they’ll ever do a 4K release 💿 of this movie, if they do, then it’s probably going to be Arrow Video that does it. Criterion isn’t touching this with a ten foot pole. They already got a lot of backlash for doing a 4K release 💿 for WALL•E, can you imagine the backlash they would face if they did a 4K release 💿 for Alien vs. Predator (2004)? So, if any company is going to a 4K release for this movie, it’s probably going to be Arrow Video, even if their track record is a bit dodgy when it comes to their releases. They’re a lot more hit or miss compared to Criterion admittedly. 

 

The 4K releases they did for both 12 Monkeys 🐒 and The Cell most recently had issues on their discs 💿, and as far as I know, they haven’t really done anything to rectify them. Correct me in the comments, but I think Arrow Video had addressed these issues, usually in social media posts, but they haven’t actually done anything to correct them. They haven’t recalled any of the 4K discs 💿 that do have issues with them. So, when you buy a 4K 💿 by Arrow Video, you’re not really sure what you’re going to get, it’s not guaranteed you’ll get a quality disc 💿 with zero issues with it 👌. You best watch reviews of Arrow Video releases before you actually go out and buy them. Don’t want to waste your money 💵 on something that doesn’t work properly and will probably never get fixed.

As for why the movie takes place in Antarctica 🇦🇶 and not somewhere warmer that you’d think would be better suited for the Predator, the reason that Paul W.S. Anderson gave in the behind-the-scenes special features is that he felt that Antarctica 🇦🇶 was the one place on Earth 🌎 that came the closest to feeling like an alien planet 👽, and also because it’s a great way to isolate the characters and make them more helpless. Can’t exactly call for help or get help in timely manner in an environment as inhospitable as Antarctica 🇦🇶. The movie had to take place on Earth 🌎, that was non-negotiable, so the place to set the movie that still felt alien was Antarctica 🇦🇶, even if it exactly suited for the Predator given Predators are known for liking hot climates 🥵. It’s the whole reason the City Hunter set up shop in Los Angeles in Predator 2 because it was having a heat wave 🥵, as well as increased crime and gang violence, that helped too. I think that would’ve made a lot more sense if the Predators were wearing coats or some type of cloth that protected them from the cold 🥶, at least until they got to pyramid, which does internal heating due to the energy source they have inside to generate the heat bloom and to awaken the Alien Queen and start the Alien reproductive process. Yeah, they’re wearing armor, but that doesn’t seem like it’d be enough to protect them from the cold 🥶. They’d still freeze 🥶, and yet they never do. 

 

Paul W.S. Anderson was the one who insisted on the movie being set on Earth 🌎 and in the present day (at the time), there were scripts for the movie that were set in the future and in space, closer to when and where the Alien films take place, but those scripts were all rejected in favor Paul’s pitch and the movie ended up being set on Earth 🌎 and in the present day. The reason he gave for why he wanted it set on Earth 🌎 and in the present is that he wanted the movie to be closer in timeline to the Predator movies, since the easier and more obvious thing to do would be set in space (on another planet) and in the future, and also wanted it to act as a prequel to the Alien movies. That’s why the movie shows us Weyland Industries, it’s showing us what Weyland was like before it merged with Yutani Corporation and became Weyland-Yutani. We even see Ms. Yutani herself, the woman ♀︎ the company is named after, in Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem at the very end, though her face is obscured by shadow. At some point, Weyland Industries buys out a company called Borgia Industries (the evil corporation introduced in the video game, Predator: Concrete Jungle) in a hostile takeover after its senior board of directors die, and then it merges with Yutani Corporation to become Weyland-Yutani Corporation in 2030. 

 

And that was the accepted origin for Weyland-Yutani Corporation until Prometheus and Alien: Covenant retconned it. They even retconned Charles Bishop Weyland (played by Lance Hendrikson) being the founder of Weyland Industries and had Peter Weyland (Guy Pierce) be the founder. It isn’t called Weyland Industries anymore, it’s now called Weyland Corporation. Ridley Scott is on record saying he had no intention of following what the AVP films established about the origin of Weyland-Yutani, so he basically just ignored them and pretended they didn’t exist. Well, sorry Ridley, but they do exist, and they were considered canon until you came along, you get to pretend they don’t exist. How’s about we just pretend that Prometheus and Alien: Covenant don’t exist and aren’t canon and these movies are canon? How does that sound, Ridley? In fact, if I was making an Alien movie, I would say in interviews that I had no intention of following what Ridley Scott established in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant and I would completely disregard and pretend they don’t exist because those movies suck. Well, Prometheus sucks, I haven’t seen Alien: Covenant so I can speak about the quality of that film, but it looks about the same or worse than Prometheus. Also, Ridley Scott’s an asshole and I hate him 😠.  

 

 

 

 

 

(This is a proposed flag for Antarctica 🇦🇶 designed by Evan Townsend in 2018. As you can see, it is different from the flag used as the flag emoji to represent Antarctica 🇦🇶. But, it is pretty cool, and many people like this flag better than the other one used as the flag emoji designed by Graham Bartram, and have requested that Apple change the Antarctic flag emoji 🇦🇶 to this one instead.)

 

 

 

Lex is wrong when she says that Antarctica 🇦🇶 is the one place on Earth 🌎 that no one owns since several countries lay claims to pieces of territory in Antarctica 🇦🇶. The UK 🇬🇧 has a claim over Antarctic territory 🇦🇶, Australia 🇦🇺 has a claim, New Zealand 🇳🇿 has a claim, Argentina 🇦🇷 has a claim, Chile 🇨🇱 has a claim, Norway 🇳🇴 has a claim, even France 🇫🇷 has a claim. These countries mainly use their claimed land for scientific research, though they have research facilities outside of their claimed land and have allowed countries without territorial claims over Antarctica 🇦🇶 such as China 🇨🇳, Spain 🇪🇸, Italy 🇮🇹, the United States 🇺🇸, Japan 🇯🇵, Russia 🇷🇺, Pakistan 🇵🇰, India 🇮🇳, South Africa 🇿🇦 (SANAE 🇿🇦; South African National Antarctic Expedition 🇿🇦), and Poland 🇵🇱 to set up research facilities in their claimed territory. Now, if she said that no one permanently lives there, that there isn’t a permanent population of people that lives in Antarctica 🇦🇶 and makes it their home, then she’d be correct. But not that no one owns it since there are 7 sovereign nations lay claim to territory in that continent, and I just listed them all. 

 

 

 

(This is a map showing all of the territorial claims over Antarctica 🇦🇶 in different colors. The orange part is claimed by Argentina 🇦🇷, the peach colored part is claimed by Australia 🇦🇺, the blue part is claimed by Chile 🇨🇱, the purple part is claimed by France 🇫🇷, the green part is claimed by New Zealand 🇳🇿, the pink part is claimed by Norway 🇳🇴, and the red part is claimed by the United Kingdom 🇬🇧. The part that’s almost an off color white is the Marie Byrd Land region and is unclaimed by any nation.)

But, even if the movie is set on Earth 🌎 and is in the present day and not in space and in the future, it still takes a lot of stuff from the comics, which is really where this whole Alien vs. Predator thing started. It started out in the comics, going under the name, Aliens vs. Predator since it was more tied to Aliens than to Alien, and it didn’t become a movie until they featured an Alien Easter egg in Predator 2. They showed an Alien skull in the Predator ship at the end of that movie, indicating that they exist in the same universe and that they have hunted Aliens before. After that they did, that’s when the studio and the producers decided to do an actual Alien vs. Predator movie and didn’t get made until 14 years later in 2004. It’s sort of like what Jason Goes to Hell did by having that scene at the end by having Freddy’s gloved hand grab Jason’s mask and drag it down to Hell. It set up the eventual Freddy vs. Jason movie, although that was already in development long before they included that stinger at the end of Jason Goes to Hell. It’s funny that I bring that up because this is kind of a twin film of Freddy vs. Jason.

 

They were released a year apart with Freddy vs. Jason being released the year before in 2003, and both films are crossovers between two horror icons (Predator is more of a thriller or action franchise but just roll with it) that were stuck in development hell for many years. Much more has been said about Freddy vs. Jason’s production history, how it struggled to get off the ground because of rights issues, the Friday the 13th franchise moving from Paramount to New Line Cinema (the same studio that produced the Nightmare on Elm Street movies) and not being able to call them Friday the 13th movies and only being able to call them Jason movies because Paramount still owned the Friday the 13th label, and because of a revolving door of screenwriters and directors, so many proposed scripts and concepts that were rejected. But, it still took awhile to make Alien vs. Predator too, especially since there was all that talk about doing an Alien 5 with Ridley Scott and James Cameron attached (one of them would direct or both would direct, and one would produce and/or write) that never went anywhere. That Alien 5 project that Cameron and Scott were working on never happened. 

 

Then, there was that Predator 3 project that Robert Rodriguez was working on, that was going to bring back Arnold Schwarzenegger as Dutch Schaefer (because of course it was, everyone who worked on the Predator franchise tried to get Arnold Schwarzenegger to come back until he got way too old and now they’ve just completely given up on trying to bring him back), which would end up getting turned into Predators, which Robert Rodriguez didn’t end up directing (it was directed by a guy ♂︎ named Nimród Antal) and only produced. So, there things standing in the way of Alien vs. Predator getting made as well, though not as many or as bad as the things that were standing in the way of Freddy vs. Jason. And of the two movies, Alien vs. Predator (2004) was the only one that got a sequel, unless you count Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash as a sequel. 

 

It even had that iconic tagline: “Whoever wins, we lose,” which isn’t technically true since the Predators technically won, even if they all died, and by them winning, we won because Lex teamed up with the Predator at the end, the last surviving one, Scar, and because she helped the Predator win, humanity got to survive and the threat of the Aliens had been vanquished on Earth 🌎…at least, for now. Freddy vs. Jason didn’t really have an iconic tagline like that, even if that tagline applies just as well to that film as it does Alien vs. Predator (2004), if not more so, since no one truly benefits from either Freddy or Jason winning. I mean, the outcome of the fight was intentionally left ambiguous, but I always interpreted it as Jason winning even he was helped out by Lori and Will. I guess, they’re better off with Jason winning the fight than they are Freddy since Freddy is the most evil of the two slashers, and had he won, he would’ve continued haunting their dreams 💭. But, they pulled him into the real world, so maybe he wouldn’t have, but he still would’ve killed them, whereas Jason just leaves them alone after defeating Freddy, returning to his slumber at the bottom of Crystal Lake. 

 

But again, I read a YouTube comment somewhere that said that even if you kill Freddy in the real world, he just gets sent back to the dream world 💭, and we see at the end of the movie that he’s still alive even if he’s just a severed head now. So, really, was anything really achieved by the end of this fight? It seems Jason, Lori, and Will really didn’t accomplish anything except maybe delay the inevitable of Freddy coming back to kill again. The outcome of the fight between the Aliens and the Predators in Alien vs. Predator (2004) is a lot conclusive and decisive, and you feel like the characters did accomplish something, even if it lead to an Alien infestation in Colorado. But even then, that infestation was stomped out, by a combination of Wolf and the US military 🇺🇸 dropping a nuke ☢️ on the town [Gunnison]. So, the threat of the Aliens had been vanquished, at for a few hundred years. A few centuries would pass before the Alien Queen in Alien vs. Predator (2004) is discovered, thaws out and ends human civilization by the time Alien Resurrection takes place, if that alternate ending is anything to go by. 

I do like Freddy vs. Jason as well, I’ve watched it a bunch of times, but I didn’t see it in theaters, I was only 4 years old when it came out after all, and I saw it much later on when I was a bit older and could better handle a movie like that. I saw it on TV first, I think on Sci-Fi (before it changed its name to SyFy), and I watched it on DVD 📀 by renting it in the mail 📮 from funnily enough, Netflix. Remember when Netflix did mail order DVDs 📀, you used to be able to rent movies from them and they’d send them to you in the mail 📫, and you could send them back in the mail 📫. Those were the days, weren’t they? Things were simpler then. Blockbuster tried doing the same thing, but Netflix was better at it than they were, and then they even tried to do their own streaming service just like Netflix but they were a little bit late to the party, ended up going bankrupt and going out of business. Blockbuster was the first casualty of Netflix’s crusade to kill the film industry and take it over. They took out video rental stores, now they’re trying take out movie theaters. We cannot let them win 😠. After I watched the movie on my mail order DVD 📀 from Netflix, I bought the movie in a pack that came with the other two Jason movies that New Line Cinema produced, Jason Goes to Hell and Jason X, which both recently got 4K releases by Arrow Videos funnily enough. They came in these really skinny cases, you remember how some DVD cases 📀 were really skinny for some reason? 

The fact that the Predators in this movie are teenagers and hunt Xenomorphs as part of a rite of passage to become men is lifted straight from the comics. Even the last surviving Predator, Scar teaming up with a human at the end is lifted straight from the comics too, since there was this whole storyline in the AVP comics about how this Predator teamed up with this woman to wipe out a Xenomorph infestation and they were so impressed with her skills that they decided to make her a part of their tribe, teaching her their ways, and she ends up going on hunts, dressing like Predator (wearing those fish net shirts that wear, wearing some Predator armor, wearing a biomask, and even styling her hair to look more like a Predator’s hair) and using Predator weaponry. The character’s name was Machiko Noguchi, and she is a famous character in the comics and it is a famous storyline, and a lot of fans like it, especially Predator fans. It was the first that Predators had actually teamed up with a human and inducted them into their ways, made them one of them. It further showed that there was more to Predators (the Yautja) than just hunting and killing, that they were capable of compassion and were willing accept someone who wasn’t their species as one of their own. 

 

This movie doesn’t go that far with the partnership out of necessity between Lex and Scar, but it went further with it than the Predator movies up that point did. No one had really seen that before in the movies, up until that point, people were only used to seeing Predators vs. humans, so to seeing Predator teaming up with human was pretty new and shocking. But, they had a common enemy: the Xenomorphs, and if they didn’t work together, then they wouldn’t have survived and the Xenomorphs would’ve escaped to the surface and spread across the world. Though how they would’ve gotten off Bovetøya Island and made it to civilization is beyond me since that Antarctic water 💦 was enough to freeze the queen 🥶, at least for a while. It is implied that this is that same queen that destroyed the world in Alien Resurrection, that’s what they were implying by having the queen be submerged in water 💦 and sinking to the bottom at the end, they were trying to set up and provide an explanation for why the world ends and why Earth 🌎 is all messed up when Ripley 8, Call, Johner, and Vriess make it back in that alternate ending. At some point, the Alien Queen from this film is discovered, thawed out, and ends up starting a new Alien colony that ends up wiping out all of humanity by the time the events of Alien Resurrection take place. This makes me think that Paul W.S. Anderson likes Alien Resurrection, or at least was willing to acknowledge it and pay homage to it even if it was an unpopular installment and is still very divisive amongst the Alien fandom, along with the fact that the Aliens (or Xenomorphs) in this movie look more like the ones from that movie than any of the other ones. 

Paul W.S. Anderson was the one who added in all of the Ancient Aliens 👽 stuff about how human worshipped the Predators as gods, the Predators teaching them how to build pyramids and instructing them to build pyramids for them and their manhood rituals, and using the humans as livestock to breed the Xenomorphs, by creating this whole ritual where humans would be selected amongst themselves to sacrifice themselves and become hosts for the Xenomorphs so that the Predators would have Xenomorphs to hunt every 100 years. The last time they appeared on Earth 🌎 for this manhood ritual was in 1904 which is exactly 100 years before this movie takes place, 2004. But, if the infestation grew too large and if the three selected Predators were unsuccessful in hunting the Xenomorphs and proving themselves worthy and capable of surviving and hunting other life forms throughout the galaxy, then they would wipe out every trace of the Xenomorph and make sure none survived until the next hunt. Because even the Predators recognize that if they allow the Xenomorphs to spread out of control, they will wipe out all life on Earth 🌎 and then there will be no more hunt, it’ll just be a dead planet. As Sebastian points out, without humans, there can be no hunt, and that applies to the survival of the human race. 

The Predators’ intention is not to wipe out humanity, they just want enough humans to breed more Xenomorphs for their hunts, and maybe even hunt some humans along the way too, any stragglers left behind who weren’t killed by the Xenomorphs. And if the Xenomorphs spread, then it’s all over. Their whole ritual and tradition is ruined and can no longer continue, at least on Earth 🌎. And Earth 🌎 is the ideal location for them, it’s a “backwater planet” that no cares about, no one else will want to touch it, and because the humans are not as technologically advanced as them and are mostly unaware of other intelligent beings besides them, the Yautja can carry out their traditions and use the Earth 🌎 for their own purposes and humanity as a whole would be none the wiser. 

 

And humans themselves make the ideal hosts for Xenomorphs, their intelligent and durable enough to where any Xenomorph born from them will be a formidable opponent. A Xenomorph born from a “non-sentient” animal (like say, a dog 🐕 or an ox 🐂) would be too animalistic and uncontrollable, and a Xenomorph born from a Yautja or any other alien creature 👽 would perhaps be too powerful that even they wouldn’t be able to stop them, depending on what abilities that alien host 👽 had. The Xenomorphs do have after all, take on the physical characteristics of their hosts and even inherit some of their abilities. Or at least, that’s what I’m guessing. And ancient humans especially were susceptible to superstition and religious practices that they could be suckered into becoming willing hosts for alien parasites 👽, or parasitoids since the Xenomorphs only spend a small portion of their life cycle as parasites. They were willing to do anything to please the gods and get whatever they wanted so that they could survive and thrive. 

Some fans at the time, didn’t really like this. They thought it was silly, they thought it changed too much of the Predator’s lore and why they come here, they thought it cheapened the Xenomorphs and reduced them to just being cannon fodder also robbed the Alien movies of their urgency since the Xenomorphs have already been on Earth 🌎 for thousands of years and nothing bad has happened so far. But now, I think fans have accepted it and more okay with it, especially the fans like myself who grew up with it. I think it works for this film and explains why Predators would hunt Xenomorphs and why the humans are there. They’re there because the Predators wanted them to be there, they lured them there using the heat bloom caused by the pyramid’s internal power source. They needed hosts to breed the next wave of Xenomorphs so that the hunt could begin. Of course, it didn’t go exactly according to plan, there were hiccups along the way, such as the humans stealing their guns. Of course, this did make some people question why the Predators were upset with the humans being there if they wanted them there in the first place and planned all this? 

 

Well, they weren’t upset, at first. Everything was going according to plan, just as their elders had set up, but it wasn’t until they went to go get their plasma cannons or check to see what happened to them and if they were still there, and when they saw that they were gone and that the humans had taken them, that’s when they got mad 😡. And they spend the rest of the movie trying to get their plasma cannons back because they were useless without them. Chopper and Celtic both gotten taken out pretty quickly. Scar did pretty good without his plasma cannon, killing a Facehugger and an adult Xenomorph using just his shuriken, but even he started to struggle a bit without his plasma cannon, and when he got it back, when Lex gave it back to him, he was smoking Xenomorphs left and right. Of course, this raises the other questions, if the plasma cannons were by far the most effective weapon against the Xenomorphs, why weren’t they equipped with them from the start? Well, this is explained better in the Unrated version. It’s part of their rite of passage, they have to earn them. I’m assuming that they have to kill some Xenomorphs first and mark themselves with their acid blood to prove that they can kill one without using the most powerful weapon in their arsenal, the easy way out, and then they can go get their gun. 

 

 

 

 

(This is picture of Celtic fighting the Alien that would come to be known as Grid, due to the distinct grid-like pattern left on his head by the razor net that Celtic shoots at him in an attempt to incapacitate him and give him enough to kill him. This is before he gets the grid pattern on his head though. He does become a mini antagonist in the film due to him being the most distinctive of all the Xenomorphs, he’s easy to spot in the crowd due to the grid pattern on his head which is not yet present in this picture. He also managed to kill two Yautja in a row, he killed Chopper with very little effort, and while Celtic managed to put up a little bit more of a fight, Grid was ultimately able to beat him.) 

 

 

 

 

 

When Sebastian opened the sarcophagus and Weyland’s men ♂︎ took the plasma cannons, they interrupted this process, and that’s why the Predators were alarmed 🚨 and went to go check because the sarcophagus sent a distress signal to the Predators’ wrist computer, and they instantly knew something went wrong and things were not going the way they were supposed to. They didn’t take into account that these were archaeologists being led by an old eccentric billionaire with a terminal illness (I think it’s lung cancer 🫁, but they don’t actually say) who wanted to go on one last archaeological find before he died, and one thing that archaeologists are known to do is snoop around and touch things. Especially movie archaeologists, they don’t just touch things, they steal them, usually triggering a booby trap in the process, which is essentially what happens here when they take the plasma cannons. 

 

 

 

 

(This is some fan art of Celtic by the artist on DeviantART called AgentPendergast.)

 

 

 

 

 

Another question that comes up with this movie is why is the queen so much bigger than the one in Aliens? Well, it’s because this is an older queen than the one in Aliens. This one is hundreds, if not thousands of years old, the older they are, the bigger they tend to do. In fact, if the Xenomorph queens live long enough, they become empresses, which are much bigger and more powerful than an average queen, and then if the empresses keep growing, they become Queen Mothers, which are almost Godzilla sized (The AVP Fandom Wiki, Xenopedia says they’re about 15.2 meters or 49.8 feet tall on average, but the Alien Anthology Wiki doesn’t list a size, and they’re probably a lot bigger than that which is why I say that they’re “almost Godzilla sized”) and are much rarer than any of the other Xenomorph types. Only a handful of them are known to exist. 

 

Though I really don’t know how much of this is still canon given most of this stuff was in the comics or the video games, and Ridley Scott is in charge of the Alien franchise and is not coy about disregarding everything from the expanded universe, not just these movies. He’s even sort of disregarded Aliens and that movie is canon still…I think. He doesn’t like anything Alien that he wasn’t involved with somehow, or doesn’t follows his aesthetic and style and no one else’s. Another thing people question and have questioned for years and still question to this day, is how did these Aliens have such a short gestation period? They went from a Facehugger to a Chestburster to a full grown adult in a matter of minutes it seems like. 

 

Well, the answer usually given by defenders of this movie that these Aliens were specifically bred to have a faster gestation period so they wouldn’t have to wait as long to start hunting them. And while this is a mostly acceptable answer, it doesn’t explain why it took longer for the Predalien to gestate inside of Scar than it did for the other Xenomorph to gestate inside of the research team. Honestly, the real answer is that they want to have Xenomorphs as soon as possible and didn’t want it to take up half the runtime to do it, and the reason the Predalien took so long is that they wanted to have an end stinger that would be shock and a surprise to the honest. Kind of like the ending of Freddy vs. Jason, where Jason rises up from Crystal Lake carrying Freddy’s severed head, only for Freddy to wink 😉 at the very end, showing that Freddy isn’t actually dead. Neither of them are dead, they both survived their battle because they’re both undead. You can’t kill what’s already dead.

 

 Except I think the scene where the Predalien bursts out of Scar’s chest is way cooler than that scene, and even if they probably didn’t do it explicitly for this reason, it does brilliantly set up a sequel. A sequel that many people consider to be vastly inferior to the first one, but we’ll get that one soon. They were following film language and wanted to have cool stuff happen in the movie regardless of whether or not it made logical sense. Movies are not always logical, in fact most of the time, they aren’t. To quote Spock Prime from Star Trek (2009), “put aside logic, do what feels right,” in this case, “what feels rights” means whatever’s the coolest thing to do in the moment. 

 

Another thing to consider is that things we see in movies don’t happen in real time. Movies condense time or accelerate time to convey information about things that happened over the course of weeks, months, and even years. That way, we only see what’s actually important to the story and to the characters. The Aliens might’ve actually gestated for the time that they usually do, we just didn’t perceive it because the movie’s speeding ahead to get us to the moment when the Aliens actually burst out of their chests, so we aren’t waiting in real time to see this happen. Even the original 1979 Alien movie did to a certain extent since the gestation of the Alien inside of Kane happens over the course of days, and yet for us, only felt like a few minutes because these events were not shown to us in real time. They were shown to us in movie time. It may not be a perfect answer, but it is a lot closer to the truth of something that really isn’t that big of a deal. It isn’t actually a real flaw with the movie, and most people won’t even notice or care about it unless they’re like really deep in this stuff and are really pedantic about it. 

I really do like Lex, or Alexa Woods as her full name is, she’s pretty cool, Sanaa Lathan did an excellent job with the role. She’s one of the favorite characters in this movie and one of my favorite heroines of the Alien franchises. The Predator franchise isn’t really known for its heroines, since most of its lead heroes are men ♂︎, adding to this perception that the Predator franchise is this testosterone drenched franchise that’s really only for men ♂︎, men’s men ♂︎ that is. Naru from Prey (2022) was the Predator franchise’s first female main hero ♀︎, unless you count Isabelle from Predators, which I don’t because she was more of secondary lead and more in a supporting role, Royce was the main hero in that movie, or count Lex in this movie, which I do…sort of. This movie’s kind of a part of the Predator franchise, but also kind of not, just like how it’s kind of a part of the Alien franchise but also kind of not. 

 

She’s tough without coming across as bitchy, which is a fine line writers have to walk when writing strong female characters ♀︎, and honestly, you can fully understand her frustration throughout most of this movie, especially the first half. Charles is being really irresponsible with this expedition, sending the team out without proper training or prep, and just rushing this thing as quickly as possible so that he can get to the pyramid before anyone else does, and so he can have his one last moment of glory before he dies. He endangers everyone on the expedition because of how reckless he’s being and the stupid decisions the men in his security detail make, particularly Maxwell Stafford (played by Colin Salmon, the guy ♂︎ who played James “One” Shade in the first Resident Evil movie as well as a clone of him in Resident Evil: Retribution), and we see that when everyone gets killed except for Lex. Although she wasn’t predicting that alien monsters 👽 would be the main hazard that they’d encounter on this expedition and would end up killing everybody except her. 

 

It’s a tradition for the Alien franchise in particular to have a female lead ♀︎, a female survivor ♀︎, they kind of pioneered that sort of thing and actually made it empowering especially in Aliens, when Ripley was given the chance to fight back and prove how badass she truly was, but it was bold for them for the female survivor/female lead ♀︎ in this movie to be a black woman 👩🏾. It’s a kind of a cliché for the black character to die by the end in a horror movie (usually the first victim or one of the first), in fact, it’s a huge cliché and a notorious one at that due to how racist it is, however unintentional it may be 🤨. Usually, it’s a black man 👨🏾 who doesn’t survive to the end, but even black woman 👩🏾 don’t make it to the end in horror movie. Freddy vs. Jason’s black character, Kia Waterson (played by one of the members of Destiny’s Child, Kelly Rowland) didn’t make it to the end, and she was one of the better characters in that movie, in my opinion. But they defied that cliché in this movie by making Lex the main lead, have her be played by a black woman 👩🏾, and have her survive until the end. The movie does admittedly indulge in a lot of horror movie clichés, but it didn’t indulge that one and there’s something to admire about that. 

 

I also like Sebastian, I do wish he lived to the end, but I understand why he didn’t since he was only really there to provide exposition by almost instantly deciphering this ancient language that hasn’t been spoken for thousands of years, and figuring everything out about the backstory of the Predators, and why they came to Earth 🌎, why they built this pyramid, and why they hunt Xenomorphs just from reading these hieroglyphics on the ceiling of that one room that him and Lex and hiding in. They also wanted to have their final girl ♀︎, that is one trope they followed very closely because it’s a tradition for the Alien franchise and it’s what it’s mainly known for, they had to do it, and you can’t have a final girl ♀︎ if a guy ♂︎ survives along with her. 

 

Speaking of Lex, I do like the little friendship that they have that starts out pretty early on as soon they first met, and have throughout the entire rest of the movie, at least until Sebastian gets got. It does help that they’re both attractive, and in Sebastian’s case, he has a nice accent to go along with his good looks. He’s Italian 🇮🇹 after all. It wasn’t that obvious to me when I was younger that he was Italian 🇮🇹, but watching it now, they make it pretty apparent that he is Italian 🇮🇹 because they have him say some Italian words and phrases 🇮🇹 at a few points throughout the film. The most memorable of which is when he says, “La luna del cacciatore 🌕,” which means “hunter’s moon 🌕,” get it? Hunter’s moon 🌕 because it’s a movie about Predators, aliens 👽 that hunt humans and other aliens 👽. I do think that Hunter’s Moon 🌕 would be a great title for a Predator movie, like Predator: Hunter’s Moon 🌕, that’s a great title. Or even Prey: Hunter’s Moon 🌕, or Prey 2: Hunter’s Moon 🌕 if it was a prequel, either of those would be good titles too. 

 

You’ll notice that Lex spends way more time with Sebastian than she does with Miller, even though he was the first one of the scientists going on the expedition that she met. Miller BTW, another one of my favorite characters, it’s a shame he didn’t live longer but that’s what he gets for talking having kids and even showing a picture of them to Lex. Characters who have kids and talk about seeing them again or show pictures of them always die in horror movies. It’s a cliché that this movie does indulge in. It’s a lot saying you have “two days till retirement” in a horror movie or even in action movies, since characters who are about retirement always die in action movies too. 

 

The retirement thing is a general movie cliché and is not bound to just one genre, while the “picture of your kids” cliché is mostly just restricted to horror movies, though I have seen in it some action movies, mostly in war movies. If a character in a war movie has a picture of their wife and/or their kids, they usually end up dying. Either that, or they leave the force like Cougar did in Top Gun. But, Miller is still pretty likable before he dies. He’s played by Ewen Bremner, the guy ♂︎ who played Spud 🥔 in Trainspotting and the stuttering guy ♂︎ in Pearl Harbor (2001). He also played the slimy assistant guy ♂︎, Wicke in Jack the Giant Slayer, which is another movie that I was a kid (I was a teenager when I saw it, 14 years old) and a lot of people hated when it originally came out. I may consider writing a review of that movie for this blog someday. 

If this were any other movie, those two would’ve become a couple by the end, or at least until one of them died, and while it does feel at points like they were setting them up to be a couple, they actually do. They just stay platonic friends and teammates throughout the whole movie…at least until Sebastian dies. But this is one instance where I wouldn’t have been opposed to them being a couple because they so much chemistry together, from the moment they share their first scene together, just the two, you could tell, it’s there. They didn’t have to keep Sebastian alive by the end, they could still have their final girl ♀︎, but at least have them admit they had feelings for each other and maybe even kiss 💋 before Sebastian gets killed.