Trashy, unrewarding hybrid of two sci-fi/horror franchises. The Wiki one-liner reads: ”scientists are caught in the crossfire of an ancient battle between Aliens and Predators as they attempt to escape a bygone pyramid”, and that’s pretty much all there is to it. There’s a lot of monster action, but very little suspense.
It’s let down by a terribly lazy script. Characters waste valuable moments stopping what they are doing in order to tell the aliens things like “Die, you ugly son of a bitch!” before firing at them.
It also suffers from an often nonsensical plot:
1. Why do the predators need to turn invisible when they are already deadly assassins? And if they are such high-tech beings, why is their invisibility only partial?
2. The motive of Weyland (Lance Henriksen) is never really explained. Did he just want to discover something “important” before he died? I was expecting a far more sinister motive involving world domination, but he turns out to be a disappointingly ordinary billionaire.
3. The Italian archaeologist (Raoul Bova) is able to glance at alien artefacts once and suddenly know all there is to know about them – leading to some unintentionally funny, laugh-out-loud moments.
4. The Scottish chemical engineer (Ewen Bremner) never stops going on about his kids, leading you to think he has to survive to be reunited with them – but he doesn’t and isn’t.
5. The heroine (Sanaa Lathan) is somehow able to make friends with a dreadlocked predator, even though they use humans for sacrificial purposes.
6. They are meant to be in Antarctica, but the humans can wander around without coats.
On the plus side, I did like the sliding, interlocking jigsaw pieces of the pyramid, which rearrange themselves every 10 minutes. This idea – a neat one – may have been “borrowed” for The Maze Runner (2014).
The aliens – gooey and nasty – are probably the best thing about the film, but the colour scheme, in which aliens, predators and the pyramid itself are all the same grey-black, makes everything less interesting to look at.
It’s let down by a terribly lazy script. Characters waste valuable moments stopping what they are doing in order to tell the aliens things like “Die, you ugly son of a bitch!” before firing at them.
It also suffers from an often nonsensical plot:
1. Why do the predators need to turn invisible when they are already deadly assassins? And if they are such high-tech beings, why is their invisibility only partial?
2. The motive of Weyland (Lance Henriksen) is never really explained. Did he just want to discover something “important” before he died? I was expecting a far more sinister motive involving world domination, but he turns out to be a disappointingly ordinary billionaire.
3. The Italian archaeologist (Raoul Bova) is able to glance at alien artefacts once and suddenly know all there is to know about them – leading to some unintentionally funny, laugh-out-loud moments.
4. The Scottish chemical engineer (Ewen Bremner) never stops going on about his kids, leading you to think he has to survive to be reunited with them – but he doesn’t and isn’t.
5. The heroine (Sanaa Lathan) is somehow able to make friends with a dreadlocked predator, even though they use humans for sacrificial purposes.
6. They are meant to be in Antarctica, but the humans can wander around without coats.
On the plus side, I did like the sliding, interlocking jigsaw pieces of the pyramid, which rearrange themselves every 10 minutes. This idea – a neat one – may have been “borrowed” for The Maze Runner (2014).
The aliens – gooey and nasty – are probably the best thing about the film, but the colour scheme, in which aliens, predators and the pyramid itself are all the same grey-black, makes everything less interesting to look at.
No comments:
Post a Comment