Alien vs. Predator (2004)

Director: Paul W.S. Anderson

Cast: Sanaa Lathan, Raoul Bova, Lance Henriksen, Ewen Bremner

Have I Seen it Before: Probably?

Did I Like It: That’s likely the problem. It definitely doesn’t feel like it would be a movie I would watch twice. In fact, I only started running it because after running through the entire Alien series in the lead up to Alien: Romulus (2024), I found myself re-charmed by those acid-filled critters. Where else was I going to get a fix? Playing Alien: Isolation, the most frustratingly hard game created in recent times*? Suddenly start getting into expanded universe novels and comics? That seems like a crazy move, especially when my life is already filled to the brim with barely coherent EUs**.

And yet, I probably have seen it before, although most of the film has disappeared into the ether of being unmemorable. The entire film has a familiar sameness throughout, and any surprise—the only one I can readily point to is the inclusion of Henriksen as the pater familias of what would one day become the Weyland Yutani—I met with less of an “Oh, really?” and more of a “Oh, that’s right.” Maybe it’s a film made up of dim references to other things that work. Great films can do that, even in this series. Aliens (1986) is just a war movie in space, but it feels like a great war movie in space. This is just a list of films I wish I would have watched instead.

I just wanted some sci-fi cheese, and even on that level I found the endeavor to be a little bit underwhelming. Limiting the scope to the then present day of 2004 and keeping things limited to Earth tries desperately to harness <The Thing (1982)>, but that also just adds one more tepid reference, and limits the scope of a film series whose main attraction is easily the gnarly, fucked up things you’re likely to find in the vast, unforgiving abyss of the cosmos.

Maybe I should just start re-watching the Predator films. That’s probably the most sensible way forward.

*I have been watching a lot of Youtube videos of people eating it in Isolation. And, yes, I am thinking of getting back into the game.

**I did start picking up EU novels and comics. Sometimes I just can’t help myself.

Alien 3 (1992)

Director: David Fincher

Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Charles S. Dutton, Charles Dance, Lance Henriksen

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: I get the complaints about the film. Hell, I feel the complaints about this film. Having an opening sequence designed solely to take the air out of any positive feelings one might have had at the end of Aliens (1986) feels like an injury one is not likely to overcome over the next nearly two hours. I think it is probably pretty fair to say—and Fincher would likely to agree—that David Fincher with one arm tied behind his back is not the filmmaker that James Cameron or Ridley Scott are in their prime. Editing problems abound. Early CGI effects abound that seem less designed to wow than to try and paper over some of those aforementioned editing problems. It all ends in a bummer. For a big summer movie, it’s a sad, not very thrilling affair.

And yet…

I’ve had the weird misfortune of watching a lot of misbegotten 90s sequels lately, and the more misbegotten those films are, there’s a rash of “Where’s Skippy?” moments. A beloved—or even liked—character from previous entries is missing from the entry. Inevitably, the actor reads the script and bows out of the prospect of more-of-the-same. The script isn’t re-written to be not include the character. Instead, there’s is fifteen seconds of dialogue about why the character is just off camera (“I broke up with Jack” Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997); “Taggart’s retired in Arizona” Beverly Hills Cop III (1994)), after which we are introduced to the same type of character so that the script wouldn’t have to be re-written and… gasp… the movie might lose its release date.

That doesn’t happen here. We can be horrified by Newt and Hicks’ fate (or lack of one in this film), but at the very least the filmmakers have something akin to the courage of making Ripley (Weaver, still good despite doing one film too many) always seem as if she is in mourning. The film may not care about characters from Aliens, but at least they didn’t send them to Arizona. It’s a film about mortality and mourning, and while the mangling of a big studio movie that would make any big studio nervous dulls that theme somewhat, the theme can’t be extinguished.

The Right Stuff (1983)

Director: Philip Kaufman

Cast: Charles Frank, Scott Glenn, Ed Harris, Lance Henriksen

Have I Seen It Before?: Maybe? There’s a half-remembered viewing on cable back in the day when people would watch movies on cable, but I couldn’t swear to it. I have read the book, though.

Did I like it?: In assessing the movie, I think I only have two complaints. First, I think the long runners at the beginning and the ending involving Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard) were extraneous. It really delays the film from where I am sitting, and doesn’t Yeager deserve his own feature, not just the short before this true story develops?

Second, tragically, there is no way a film features synthesizer music and isn’t either made in the early 1980s, or insists on making us think it was made in the 1980s. Thankfully composer Bill Conti kept his worst 80s impulses (see some of the early Rocky sequels for more examples of how bad it could get) in check for the most part and only a few scenes date the proceedings with their production, and not their settings.

Aside from that, the film is terrific. I blanched at its three-plus hour run time, mainly because I wasn’t sure what could be shown about the Mercury 7 that couldn’t be wrapped up in a tight two hours. I may have been right about that, if I focus on my complaints about the Yeager section, but aside from that the film zips around. The film is perfectly cast, with Ed Harris particularly equating himself well as the politician (and at that point, potentially future president) in pilots clothing, John Glenn. It’s a unique balance to fill a cast with character actors who also manage to pull off a job that is almost exclusively the province of big-name movie stars: remaining charming, even when they’re acting like complete assholes.

Aliens (1986)

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, Carrie Henn

Have I Seen it Before: It is one of the greats..

Did I Like It: It is one of the greats…

*I viewed the 1990 special edition, which is notedly preferred by director James Cameron.*

There can be a problem with director’s cuts, especially when the vast majority of additional footage is lumped into the first forty-five minutes of the movie. Hard to front load a story like that, but Cameron is right in his introduction. This movie has 40 miles of bad road before things go truly pear-shaped, but when it does, that first bunch of the film is necessary. Without them, the film would be less. It would be more like most of the bland movies that exist now. Most writing advice would have you start your story as close to the meat of the action is possible, and I’m glad that Cameron ignored—at least in one format—that advice.

This first sequel in the Alien series is a master class in floating opposites, and miraculously, it makes a strong argument for itself as the superior film. Where Alien (1979) is steeped in subtext within the relationships between the characters. 

The original film straddles between a space-based haunted house movie, demonic possession movie, slasher, and monster man-in-suit shocker, all while staying firmly weighted in Horror. This one embraces a full-throated action vein by becoming a Vietnam War picture in space, but still feels of a piece with the original film. It’s a tricky thing to do, as most movies in a series that try to jump genre usually have to jettison much of what made the earlier films work.

The people of the Nostromo in the original film don’t particularly care for each other or the work they do in the cosmos, but they’ve been on the job for so long that they would never dare speak about it. In this film, the marines have much more clearly defined relationships. The subtext is gone, but the motivations are far clearer, and richer for the specificity. In the original film, Ripley’s (Weaver) mission to recover the ships cat is a gaping flaw in the work, if for no other reason than not one character appears to have any particular attachment to the cat up until that point. Here, Ripley’s forming of a surrogate family makes her quest to recover Newt (Henn) makes perfect sense.

Is this sequel superior to its progenitor? I’m not sure there is an objective answer to that, as it will almost exclusively (as with a great many things) be a matter of taste. It’s certainly in the running, and it isn’t exactly like any other film in the series can compete in that fight.