Random Reels: Alien vs Predator

Hey folks I am back again. Sorry for the delay but the Subspecies Audio Review took almost two days to cut, edit and complete. That being said we are doing some Random Reels today and I thought I would describe a film that was neither disappointing or amazing but really lackluster as a whole. A film combining two franchises that should have accelerated to the echelons of cinema and not in the bottom of the Best Buy five dollar barrel. This is Alien Vs Predator.

His name is Tusky.

This particular film had high hopes from anyone playing the arcade game of Aliens vs Predator based on a Dark Horse title started in 1993 which storyline has nothing to do with humanity and it is just Aliens and Predators going to town, along with Activison releasing a Super Nintendo version of the arcade game. With action figures, video games in development, these two terrifying creatures of space were held to a standard as high as the Universal movie monsters of yesteryear. So Fox green-lights a film treatment that was in development hell. Deciding if it should be a new Alien movie, will Ridley Scott or James Cameron come back for it, can they get Sigourney Weaver and/or Michael Behn back and so on. So how did this concept disappoint so many? Well...okay I'll tell you as best I can.

Looks like a remodeled Shang Sun temple.

Director/writer Paul W.S. Anderson (Mortal Kombat, Event Horizon, Soldier, The Sight, Resident Evil, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Resident Evil: Extinction, Death Race,Death Race 2 and Pompeii) tells a tale involving humanity, the xenomorphs (Aliens) and the hunters (Predators) and an ancient pyramid deep in the frozen wastes of Antarctica. Recorded by Weyland Industries satellite, a huge energy beam strikes the frozen region from the sky. For what purpose? No one can say. Owner of said satelite and growing corporation, Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen of The Terminator, Aliens, Alien 3, Pumpkinhead, Powder, Millennium, X-Files, Man's Best Friend, Madhouse, Hellraiser: Hellworld and Screamers: The Hunting) has video confirmation of something, a huge structure buried miles under the ice and wants to take an expedition to discover what it is.  Well being an Anderson movie you know this cast will consist of expendable one-dimensional characters who will tell the audience in clunky dialogue who they are and why they are so vital to the team. Anderson favorites include the very talented Colin Salmon, Tommy Flanagan and Liz May Brice. Yeah they show up in more than a few of these flicks and their roles as body count NEVER EVER changes.

Make two Blade sequels without me? What were they thinking?

To lead this dangerous trek we need a bad ass and there she is. Alexa Woods (Sanaa Lathan of Blade, Out of Time, Nip/Tuck, Powder Blue, Something New, Wonderful World, Tilda, Contagion, Boss and Shots Fired), mountaineer, trained medic and overall bad ass. Weyland describes what they will be facing and she puts her foot down worried that the expedition will be over before it begins. Some of these cats don't look cardio ready enough but Weyland will go forward with or without her help. So off into the tundra they go.

Meanwhile miles above the Earth, a landing party comprised of three predators proceed past this forgotten oil refinery/whaling town and head below the ice to find...a big honking pyramid somehow almost perfectly preserved from even these harsh climate changes. Let's be clear. This stonework is completely intact after years of no direct contact with the existing weather patterns. Our team of expendable (Not in the Stallone and Statham way) archeologists want the audience to believe it is an Aztec temple and the hieroglyphs speak of a hunting ground as a rite of passage to being full hunters. An Aztec temple in the Antarctic, possibly Cambodian. Boy, that will be a big shock for Mexico won't it? Oh and before we get into the sweet, sweet action this SciFi/Horror movie is rated PG-13. Conclusion on that? More young butts in seats equals a viewing pleasure.

Action scene wise, this is visually awesome. Watching two of the nastiest critters going at it in full death match looks amazing. You can hear every growl, snarl, bones cracking, masonry being shattered. Awesome sauce.

The downside is the dialogue is typical of Anderson creations in that it has no depth, no time for character development and no one is particularly interesting at all. Exception our bad ass mountaineer, the rest could have been replaced with voice actors and CGI green screen characters. I couldn't remember a single character name attached aside from Weyland and Alex and I have a near perfect memory. Bottom line, the story is crap but the visuals are amazing. The characters are dull and unfinished but the FX, props and makeup are astounding. My advice? Hit mute, turn on close caption and watch it unfold.

Sadly, Kevin Peter Hall did not get to reprise his Predator role as he died in 1991. the animatronic Alien Queen was rigged with a motion control remote allowing her movements to be recorded digitally and saved for implementation for the film. 

Guess the queen is into BDSM??

Hodgepodge Sci-fi: Predators

Greetings to Day 1 of Hodgepodge Sci-fi and let's start the festivities!!! Um, by that I mean I start writing and you enjoy reading it. Sorry, no parties to be had. Today's film hails from the director of Vacancy, (Nimrod Antal of Kontroll, Vacancy, Armored and Metallica Through the Never) so clearly a director with vision and credibility. Tackling a popular franchise is never easily, let alone pushing a sequel for a series that has not seen light for over 20 years. Will it be hard to re-capture the magic or will our director just nail the footage, splice and call it a day? We will find out. This is Predators.

Found your liver... in case you were missing it.

Our film follows Royce (Adrien Brody of Harrison's Flowers, The Pianist, The Village, The Jacket, King Kong, Giallo and Midnight in Paris), a trained mercenary who finds himself in a pile of foliage in a jungle after what appears to be a violent or less than comforting teleportation.

Armed, pissed and ready to inflict some damage he encounters similarly ticked off people such as: Cuchillo (Danny Trejo of Desperado, Spy Kids, Heat, From Dusk Till Dawn and Machete), a Mexican Cartel enforcer, Spetsnaz (Russian Special Forces) soldier Nikolai (Oleg Taktarov of 15 Minutes, National Treasure, We Own the Night, NCIS and Reach Me) Israeli Defense Forces Sniper Isabelle (Alice Braga of City of God, I Am Legend, Redbelt, Blindness and Repo Men) Yakuza (Japanese Mafia) enforcer Hanzo (Louis Ozawa Changchien of Robot Stories, Gigantic, Fair Game, The Bourne Legacy and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), Liberian revolutionary Mombasa (Mahershala Ali of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Place Beyond the Pines, House of Cards and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay- Part 1)Death row inmate Stans (Walton Goggins of The Shield, Justified, Sons of Anarchy and Mojave) and general practitioner of medicine Doctor Edwin (Topher Grace of That 70's Show, Spider-Man 3, Take Me Home Tonight, The Big Wedding and Interstellar) as they all confirm they too, were abducted from their beds in different parts of the world. Who has acquired them is yet to be determined as they are attacked by a pack of quadped beasts that they have never seen before.

GIT TO THE CHOPPA!!!  Wait, that's the other flick.

Royce becomes the defacto leader trying to make sure everyone gets out alive, everyone takes stock of food, ammo and water while Royce is trying to figure out where the hell they are. After the first creature encounter, the team takes shelter in a wrecked cargo ship of alien design when they realize they are not even on Earth any more. Our collection of bad asses encounter meet Noland (Laurence Fishburne of Apocalypse Now, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Cherry 2000, Othello, The Matrix, Mission: Impossible III, CSI: Crime Scenes Investigation and Black-ish) a former Special Forces that has been living and surviving on the planet for ten years. Sadly rather than becoming a main character, Noland is the voice of exposition, telling the wayward travellers that this planet is one big hunting preserve to sharpen the Predators' skills, aim and talents by tracking and killing live game and they have all been drafted as prey. Will they escape? Can they be rescued and how many Predators can they take with them when they die?

Okay, now to the nitty gritty of the flick. The original script was written by director/writer Robert Rodrigez back in 1994 and was shelved and off the green-light for 16 years before anyone showed any interest. Initially cameos of both Dutch (Schwarzenegger) and Harrigan (Danny Glover) were scheduled for an appearance but I guess they was just too old for that crap. Hey, I keep it PG-13 around these here parts.

Adrien Brody manged to put on 25 lbs of muscle for the role but for some reason felt the Clint Eastwood Man with No Name/ Kurt Russell Snake Plissken gruff, rough voice would lend his character a bit more stature. My opinion, it did not. 

 Kinda got tired of the countless Predator shrieks. Whether or not it is a primal scream of rights of the hunt or maybe they are simply psyching themselves and their prey up I could not say. As far as directing, I feel Nimrod Antal did an excellent job having to breathe life back into the franchise and was a damn sight better than say... Alien: Resurrection.

Dammit, we're on an Alien set.  Who has the map?

Schwarzenegger Week: Predator

Howdy folks and welcome back to Schwarzenegger Week as we view an action/sci-fi hybrid taking the best of both genres and directed by veteran action guru (John McTiernan of Nomads, Die Hard, The Hunt for Red October, Die Hard: With a Vengeance, The 13th Warrior, The Thomas Crown Affair remake and Rollerball remake) who brings his experience and expertise to the table.  This is Predator.

Told you it wasn't a gopher!

Poncho: You're bleeding, man.
Blain: I ain't got time to bleed.
Poncho: Oh... Okay...
Poncho: You got time to spoil?



An elite special ops team lead by Major Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger of The Jayne Mansfield Story, Conan the Barbarian, The Terminator, Commando, Twins, True Lies, Eraser and End of Days) assigned by a Major General character actor/mentor/path provider with a joint CIA mission to get a presidential cabinet member free from guerrilla forces.

Dutch's team consist of Sgt Mac Elliot (Bill Duke of American Gigolo, Palmerstown, U.S.A., Commando, No Man's Land, Action Jackson, Bird on a Wire, Payback, The Limey and Exit Wounds) Blain Cooper (Governor Jesse Ventura of WrestleMania III, The Running Man, Thunderground, Abraxas, Guardian of the Universe, Ricochet and Major League II) Billy Sole (Sonny Landham of Blood Bath, The Warriors, 48 Hrs., Firewalker, Action Jackson, Maximum Force and Lock Up) Poncho (Richard Chaves of Witness, Ohara, War of the Worlds, Night Eyes II, Night Realm and Dark House)  and Hawkins (writer/actor Shane Black of Night of the Creeps, Dead Heat, Robocop 3, Night Realm, As Good as It Gets, Monkeys and Any Day).  Working with CIA contact in Central America is Dutch's old buddy Dillon (Carl Weathers of Rocky,  Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Force 10 From Navarone, Rocky II, Rocky III, Action Jackson, Tour of Duty and In the Heat of the Night) who is in charge of the mission.

It's got Betty Davis Eyes!

No sooner does the crew hoof it through the jungle they find a downed helicopter with the skinned remains of an Army Special Forces team lead by Dutch's friend Hopper.  Dillon clams up on it and claims they should have never been out here.  They hit a rebel encampment hard, smoking these poor schmucks like a pack of Marlboros spraying the  camp with enough lead to block Superman's peepers.

Dutch finally confronts Dillon over the inconsistencies to his story and Dillon tells them their were CIA Agents nabbed by guerrillas.  the spec ops team went in to find and rescue and well we know how well that went.  

Back on the move, the team can almost feel eyes on them.  Hawkins is watching the prisoner the team picked up when something appears out of the jungle and runs Hawkins through leaving the female prisoner unharmed.   What else is out there?  Is it another guerrilla they missed or has another chess piece been added to the board?

A few comments and trivia about the film now.  Jean-Claude Van Damme was originally cast to play the Predator but was dropped by McTierran due to his relentless complaining.  Such the diva our Van Damme.  After Dutch skewers a bad guy against the post with his machete, Arnold drops his one-liner "Stick around" purely by improv.

 Between rough terrain, humidity, snakes, leeches and freezing cold night shoots, the actors almost threw in the towel.  Schwarzenegger especially with the cold mud smeared over his face, arms and torso.  Schnapps kept him warmer but also got him a wee bit hammered.  Who says you can't drink on the job?

Be vewy, vewy quiet.