 |
Whoever wins... you're not getting your money
back.
|
October 2004: a satellite belonging to Weyland Industries detects a sudden surge of heat on the island of Bouvetoya, off the coast of Antarctica. Shortly afterward, Alexa Woods, an experienced guide whose specialty is arctic environments, is contacted by the company's owner, industrialist Charles Bishop Weyland, as is archeologist Sebastian De Rosa while on an excavation in Teotihuacan. The two of them, along with a team consisting of language experts, drillers, mechanics, and mercenaries, meet up with Weyland on the ship bound for the island where he reveals to them that the satellite discovered an enormous, ancient pyramid beneath the island, one that, according to De Rosa, is made up of elements of several different civilizations. When she learns that Weyland, in his haste to reach the structure before someone else does, is planning to venture to the island with an unprepared team, Woods is initially reluctant to be part of the expedition but eventually changes her mind, intent upon the others following her guidelines. Upon arriving, the team comes across an abandoned whaling station that's right above the pyramid, once whose occupants mysteriously disappeared in 1904. They also discover a large passage that descends down into the ice to the pyramid, apparently drilled although they find no evidence of another team and don't know who could have technology advanced enough to have done so. Using the passage to reach the pyramid, they explore it and, after finding evidence of its having been part of a great civilization thousands of years ago, they find a sacrificial chamber with human skeletons that have large holes in their chests. Meanwhile, three Predators arrive on the surface and head down to the pyramid as the explorers unwittingly activate it, causing it to shift its structure and close off certain spots every ten minutes. An Alien Queen inside that the Predators brought out of frozen stasis is made to lay eggs that are taken to the sacrificial chamber and the people trapped there are impregnated by the facehuggers, becoming the hosts for Aliens. Destructive battles break out between the two races and the party is very quickly dwindled down, as De Rosa learns through the pyramid's hieroglyphs that hunting the Aliens is a rite of passage for the Predators and that the heat surge that the satellite detected was a means of luring them to the pyramid to become hosts for the creatures. Now, not only must they survive the all-out war going on but they keep the Aliens from reaching the surface, meaning that they will have to ally themselves with the Predators.
Let's start with the story, shall we? This is always the big problem in versus movies: coming up with a suitable and sensible way for two very different characters from two different film series to meet up and fight each other. Since the comics and video games had their stories taking place in the far future, when both the Aliens and Predators were well known to the general public, including the Colonial Marines, and depicted an out and out war between the two races, with many Aliens and Predators engaging in big, destructive battles, this was another thing I was expecting (one of the few cool moments in the movie is a flashback that shows the Predators fighting off an ungodly swarm of Aliens: that was what the whole movie should have been). What we get instead is such an incredibly lazy and uninspired story. Now, to be fair, the concept of Predators using Aliens as the ultimate quarry and keeping them in some kind of preserve, similar to the concept of Predators, could make for an interesting film, as is the idea that the Aliens are the deadliest creatures in the universe that the Predators have ever faced and use them as a means to really show off their hunting skills. It could have worked... if it took place in the future, on some other planet! Having this take place on present day Earth, which was the idea of producer John Davis, who thought it would make for an "original approach," is not a good idea, the simple reason being that the main, driving factor of the Alien series is that Ripley and everyone are trying to keep them from getting to Earth because it would spell doom for the planet. But according to this movie, they've been on Earth since ancient times. I could accept that the Predators stumbled across them in the far future before or after people or have known about them in the far past but not since prehistoric times on Earth! Paul W.S. Anderson said that the reason he set in the film in Antarctica was not to break continuity with the other films by keeping the Aliens in a remote environment where they'd remain undiscovered but still, that idea that they've, in fact, been here all along renders everything Ripley and the other casts went through in the past movies pointless. But within a pyramid that's beneath freaking Antarctica?! This story was doomed to suck from the start.
The story leads us to the reason why the studio decided to go with this concept: the budget. The estimated budget was $60 million, which is nothing to sneeze at but, at the same time, is not gigantic either, and, since the story takes place on Earth instead of somewhere out in space, 20th Century Fox decided that the movie should be filmed on sound stages in Prague (it seems like that that's where you film nowadays if you want to have a cheap movie; either there or Romania). Even Anderson himself said that the studio wanted the film to be done quick and relatively cheap. What I'm getting at is that it's obvious the studio didn't want to spend the money needed to make the film epic and on the scope of the comic books and video games. Even though both franchises have made fortunes that warrant taking chances with a big, crossover movie that fans had been waiting for, they decided to be cheapskates about it, and to that end, decided to take a concept that they wouldn't have to spend millions and millions of dollars on. I'm not saying the movie's budget should have been the size of something like The Lord of the Rings or Star Wars but they should have at least tried to make the movie much bigger and more satisfying because, as it is, it does feel cheap.
Here's another big problem: the rating. All of the previous films in both franchises had been brutal, R-rated flicks with either lots of gore or, at the very least, hard-hitting action, but Fox decided to try to maximize their profits even more by stipulating that this film get a PG-13 rating. While I don't think gore is absolutely necessary for a film such as this to be good, a movie about two ferocious races of monsters fighting each other to the death, one which gestates within human hosts and comes bursting out of their chests, another that has been known to hunt and kill people with deadly weapons and skin and make trophies out of them, with a group of people caught up in the middle of it, should be as hard hitting and brutal as possible. Case in point, Freddy vs. Jason, a movie about two lethal, undead killers who've been known to claim their victims in very grisly ways, is absolutely drenched in gore, as New Line Cinema understood that it wasn't a kiddy flick and was what the fans wanted. This, however, is far too tame and should've had much more of an edge to it (but, all that said, even more gore couldn't have saved this movie as is, as we'll see when we talk about the slightly bloodier "unrated" version).
The rest of the cast is the definition of cannon fodder. Past films in the franchises had memorable casts of characters, like the crew of the Nostromo, the Colonial Marines, Dutch's band of tough mercenaries, Mike Harrigan's crew, and even some of the characters in the maligned latter two Alien films, like several of the inmates on Fiorina "Fury" 161 or some of the crew of the Betty like Johner and Elgyn; these people are almost completely forgettable and the only reason why I know the names of some of them is because I looked them up. Graeme Miller (Ewen Bremner) is a twitchy, Scottish chemical engineer who spends most of the movie taking pictures for his two sons and is ultimately captured by the Aliens and forced to be a host for a chestburster. Adele Rousseau (Agatha de La Boude) is notable for being the only other woman in the group, is similar to Woods in that they try to make her come across as tough, and is the first one to have an Alien explode out of her chest. She also has a very corny line when Woods asking her why she's taking a pistol with her onto the ice: "Same principle as a condom: I'd rather have one and not need it, then need it and not have one." Quinn (Carsten Norgaard) is the head of the mercenary drilling team, staying on the surface with his men to supervise everything and ultimately getting hunted down, thrown down the tunnel leading to the pyramid, and killed down there by the Predator. Mark Verheiden (Tommy Flanagan) is one of the mercenaries who ends up trapped in a section of the pyramid with Miller, whereupon they form a bond when it's revealed that Verheiden has a child of his own. Miller tries to use that fact into motivating him to keep trying to escape but it ends up not working, as they both become hosts for Aliens. Tom Parkes (Sam Troughton) has absolutely nothing noteworthy about him other than he's a friend of Sebastian De Rosa's, working with him in Teotihuacan, figures out that the one room is a sacrificial chamber, and becomes one of the first hosts for the Aliens. The one person in the supporting cast who sticks out to me the most is Max Stafford, Weyland's assistant, as he's played by Colin Salmon, an actor who I recognized from a recurring role he had in the latter three Pierce Brosnan Bond movies. But, while he has a suave sophistication about him, especially in his voice, the character is little more than a jerk who often refuses to listen to Woods, especially once they're inside the pyramid, and becomes rather belligerent towards her and the others, going as far as to take out a rifle, along with a couple of mercenaries, when he feels she's interfering with his job. It's actually his fault that they get trapped inside the pyramid, as he ignores De Rosa's warning and takes one of the Predators' sacred guns, activating the structure, and he becomes one of the people that they specifically target in order to retrieve their weapons.
You need only watch this movie to see what a hack of a director Paul W.S. Anderson is. For one, his pacing is just terrible. While he doesn't waste any time in setting up the story, he still tries to go for the technique of gradually building up to a huge roller coaster ride of a second half but one problem with that here is we already know going in why we're here: to see Aliens and Predators duking it out. Another is that the movie is only 100 minutes long, with the ending credits themselves being around ten minutes, both monsters aren't completely established until 45 minutes in, and even after that, the film isn't very exciting. Again, half of the time, we're stuck with these characters we don't care about, waiting for them to catch up and figure out what we already know, but most criminally of all, we don't get to see the Predators and Aliens fighting that much. There's one scuffle that is kind of cool but it's so darkly photographed that you might have turn up the brightness on your TV to see it and even then, a lot of it is so quickly edited that it's hard to tell what's going on, and after that, there's no other real fight between the two species anywhere else, except for some quick kills that can't even be called fights. As I've said, we wanted to see an all out war! Speaking of which, there are only three Predators and two of them get killed off very quickly. In their previous movies, the Predators have always been depicted as real badasses, making it really insulting to see them reduced to such wusses here (that could be because of some bias Anderson has against them that I'll get into later). Even when the monsters kill the humans, it's not exciting because the PG-13 stipulation won't allow for any gore or creative kills, and Anderson throws in silly, clichéd stuff that he thinks is cool, like a facehugger leaping in Matrix-style slow-motion or a Predator catching an erupting chestburster and just snapping its neck like nothing (the latter could have been cool if we hadn't been shown how pathetic these Predators are). I'll go into more detail on this when we get into the action scenes but, on the whole, Anderson just flat-out destroys any hope this movie had at being exciting or cool with his lameness.
If I were to name any positives about the movie, one that I can give it is that it looks good. The production values are quite high when it comes to the sets, particularly the abandoned whaling station and the main sets of the pyramid interior. The whaling station looks suitably old and in shambles, bringing to mind the destroyed Norwegian camp in John Carpenter's The Thing, and while it's never close to being as creepy as the scene in that movie (because Paul W.S. Anderson doesn't have a modicum of the talent Carpenter has in his pinky finger throughout his entire body to make that work), it does have something of an atmosphere to it and makes you wish it'd been used more effectively in a better movie. I feel the same way about the overall setting of Antarctica too; knowing the potential it has for almost unbearable suspense and a sense of isolation, I always hate it when it's misused in bad movies like this. Regardless, as much as I dislike the idea and the concept behind it, the pyramid itself is well-designed and constructed by Richard Bridgland and his crew, looking appropriately ancient, with nice carvings and hieroglyphics on the walls, some of which depict the conflicts between the Aliens and Predators, statues of the Predators that they use to observe and stalk the characters in plain sight, and some notable rooms like the sacrificial chamber where the impregnations take place and the enormous room where the Alien Queen is kept, complete with an ancient type of conveyor belt that transports her eggs to the chamber. But, as much as I can praise the art direction, the pyramid is not given the atmosphere that it could have and its setting leads to us yet again having a movie where the Aliens are stalking their victims through dark, claustrophobic corridors, only now without the mood of the settings in the past films of either franchise and it feels very stale. By the end of the movie, I find myself feeling very sick of this place and ready to get out of it. They also try to create suspense and tension by having the pyramid shift and reorganize its structure every ten minutes once it's been activated by the humans taking the sacred Predator weapons, but for me, all that does is make it hard to keep track of where the characters are and where they've been (see, even in the stuff I'm supposed to be praising, I'm finding cons). Finally, the movie itself simply looks good: nice and polished, with a well-done color palette of blues, grays, and whites that fit with the arctic setting.
Another bit of praise that I can give Anderson is that he's a director who likes to do things in camera as much as possible, making this a rare instance of a sci-fi movie made in the 2000's that doesn't have a lot of CGI. Instead, a lot of the work is done through miniatures and practical creature effects, with some examples of the former being the icebreaker that takes them to the island, the whaling station in the wide-shots, notably during the climax where it's destroyed by the explosion of the pyramid and the battle with the Alien Queen, and the exterior of the pyramid. It's good stuff, with the ship being particularly impressive, as it was a nearly 13-foot long miniature with working lights and a moveable radar dish, and the whaling station was built so it could collapse and easily be reconstructed. And as you'd expect in this day and age, the integration of these miniature with the real-life actors is absolutely seamless and very well-done.
Getting to the monsters themselves, one of the best things about the film in my opinion is the depiction of the Aliens. As with Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection, Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr. are the guys behind the creature effects and the suit-work and animatronics they come up with look great. The eggs look just as organic and nicely slimy as they ever were, especially when they open up, and the same goes for the facehuggers, both the practical ones you see skittering out of the eggs and attached to people's faces and, as corny as it is, the digital ones when they're jumping through the air at potential hosts. Because of the PG-13 rating, the chestbursters don't get much screentime, save for a brief moment when one tears its way out of Sebastian De Rosa and jumps at the main Predator, only for him to grab it and break its neck. However, the film does end on a chestburster: a baby PredAlien that erupts from the main Predator's corpse, leading into the events of Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem.
The look of the adult Aliens is more or less the same as they were in Alien: Resurrection, with the same basic shape and the distinctive fin-like tips of their tails, but they brought back the original blue-black color rather than sticking with the brown they'd been in the previous two movies, which I appreciated, as well as the hisses and screeches rather than the low snarls in Resurrection. Once again, they look great and are very well-executed, with the most impressive effect Gillis and Woodruff created being this big puppet that was operated by hydraulics to make the Alien's movements faster and to make it look much skinnier than any person in a suit could. It's used in only six shots but looks so great that it's impossible to tell it apart from the suit-actor. The only times they don't look great, however, is when they're rendered completely in CGI (as does everything else, as it looks like a video game), which isn't a lot, thankfully, and is mainly for big group shots and for actions that can't be done any other way, but is still pretty cringe-inducing to see. Behavior-wise, they're depicted in basically the same way as they were in Aliens: ferocious, fairly intelligent but mainly instinct-driven animals whose only concern is to maintain their species by capturing potential hosts and bringing them to their hive (the design of which is identical to the way it looked in Aliens), where they're immobilized by being cocooned to the wall. Except for the chestbursters, I think this is the one movie where the Aliens don't kill a single person but just capture them. Also like before, they're fiercely loyal and protective of their Queen, coming to her aid when she calls for them and using her own acid blood to free her from her chains, showing that they're intelligent enough to know how potent their blood is. The most prominent Alien is the one who's listed as Grid in the credits, after the scarring that a Predator's net leaves on his head and is the one who's played by Tom Woodruff Jr. Not only does he appear to be the leader of the bunch, as he's the one who rallies the others to come to the Queen's aid, but he's also the toughest by far, managing to kill two of the Predators himself, in spite of the beating he takes from one of them and does a lot of the dirty work in the movie. He's only killed at the end when the main Predator's bomb blows up the pyramid.
While we're on the subject of the Aliens, I have to mention how their life cycles are very accelerated in this film, contradictory to what we've seen in all the previous movies. Facehuggers have always been depicted as staying on their hosts for a very long time, including what feels like a couple of days in some cases, and when they fall off, it's many hours later before the chestbursters finally come through, and then, it's yet another long period of time before the full grown Aliens appear. Here, the facehuggers latch onto their victims, fall off, the chestbursters come out, and the full grown Aliens appear all within about fifteen to twenty minutes. Case in point, the one that comes out of Adele does so in less than a minute after she awakens from the coma the creature induced (incidentally, when Graeme Miller and Mark Verheiden are cocooned in the Alien hive, the latter seems to be conscious, even though he does have a facehugger on him). Now, I've heard some say that the Predators had these particular Aliens' life cycle accelerated in some way so that they could get to the hunt faster, which is an acceptable explanation, although the movie itself does indicate as much, but in a movie this bad, written and directed by a hack like Anderson, it fills like yet another plothole to me.
As for the Alien Queen, while it's great to see her in a movie where she again has an active role, for some reason, she doesn't feel as cool here as she did before. Maybe it's because she spends the majority of the movie stuck in the enormous chamber where she's forced to pump out eggs and only gets to do stuff during the latter part of the third act, as well as that, during the former scenes, she's a large, practical puppet, but during most of the action at the end, she's bad-looking CGI or an awkward-looking rod puppet. I think it's also that she's portrayed as a mindless, rampaging monster during the climax rather than the cunning, badass mother we know she really is, and I also find her movements to be rather ungraceful and not as elegant as before. And, most significantly, by the time she's finally gotten loose, I'm so fed up with the movie and bored by it that I just want it to end and so, not even her awesomeness can salvage it. In short, it's a number of different reasons that come together to make me not care about the Queen's presence, which I didn't think was possible at all. Plus, being a major reason why the film's story takes place, she's also the center of a major issue I have with the movie. I'm not going to ask where the Predators got her, because it's plausible to assume that they probably just captured her when she was a chestburster and put her down there, but here's the thing: how does she survive down there? Of course, they keep her frozen and then thaw her out when it's time to produce Aliens for the hunt but how is she kept alive in between? We're not talking about hyper-sleep here, so do they somehow freeze her quickly enough to keep her alive and intact? If so, how exactly is she frozen again? And how is she fed and sustained? But here's the biggest plot hole: the flashback sequence to ancient times shows that the Predators used their self-destruct mechanisms to destroy all of the Aliens when they got out of hand. So, how was the pyramid not blown apart and the Queen along with it, especially since, apparently, the explosion was big enough to turn Antarctica from a tropical jungle-covered continent into a frozen landscape (which is also more retarded)?
As you've no doubt already gathered, I'm much more critical towards the depiction of the Predators here, which I think is very bad for the most part. First off, the way they look, which is short and stocky, not tall and intimidating as they were in the previous movies. Second, as I've said before, there are only three of them, when there should be a lot more. Third, which goes along with the second one, two of them get killed off early on, with one getting impaled through the back by an Alien before he ever knew what hit him. So, not only are we deprived of seeing armies of Predators fighting off swarms of Aliens but they're depicted as being rather easy to kill, despite the fight the second one manages to put up against Grid. I know Aliens are tough and that these particular Predators are inexperienced teenagers going through a deadly rite of passage but you'd think they'd have developed armor capable of shielding themselves from the Aliens' piercing claws and tails. Fourth, I don't like the idea of the last Predator, named Scar in the credits, teaming up with Woods. I know Predators have a code of honor and won't kill something that's unarmed or has a physical disadvantage, but why would one team up with a human just because she got lucky and killed an Alien (not to mention that he seems to inexplicably understand her when she talks to him)? To be fair, this concept has been done before in the Aliens vs. Predator novels and comics but it could have been done so much better here, such as forcing her to really earn Scar's respect by facing off with and killing a good number of Aliens by herself. Plus, giving her Alien body parts for armor and weapons doesn't amount to much in the long run and those shots of her and Scar running towards the camera in slow-motion make me think of Baywatch more than anything else. And finally, the fifth point: the way the Scar's face looks when he takes his helmet off at the end. Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr. may have trained under Stan Winston and are adept at making Aliens but with the Predators, they dropped the ball big time. He just looks so dumb and cartoonish, particularly when his mandibles spread out ridiculously far when he roars, and has none of the ferocity that the Predators Winston's team created before. The chief Predator that appears at the end looks a bit better but, regardless, this is a major step down from the classic designs before. Moreover, Anderson, who's also commented that the Predator designs in the first two movies haven't aged well and look like men in suits, actually said he thought they looked better than they ever did before. Normally, I wouldn't bash somebody for their opinions but how anyone could think that is mind-boggling to me, making me view Anderson as even more of an idiot.
Despite my grousing, there are good aspects to the Predators here. First off, all of the weapons and devices you expect them to have, like their wrist-blades (although, I think their extreme length here is a case of overkill), shoulder-cannons (which they have to take back from those who found them in the pyramid), spears, harpoons, razor-sharp nets that constrict around their targets, self-destruct bombs, cloaking devices (which looks really good, thanks to CGI), and infrared helmet vision and targeting (which, like in the games, can change texture in order to track Aliens), are all here, as well as some nice new ones. They have small knives that they can use for more adept close-quarters combat and simple dismembering, virtually invisible lassoes to string their victims up when they least expect it, and a Frisbee-like throwing weapon with long blades sticking out of its edges. Another thing I like is that each of the three Predators has his own distinct helmet, making it a bit easier to keep track of which is which (although, some of the facial designs of the helmets don't hold up well when they're shown in close-up). When it comes to their vocalizations, they keep the classic clicking, roars, and screams that they had in the other movies, which I like, but they also put in a bunch of stock lion growls that I'm not so fond of. Their spaceship, while nothing special in terms of its interior or exterior designs, looks pretty good, reminiscent of the ships seen in the first two movies, and also seems to operate in the same way as the one at the beginning of the first movie did by dropping the Predators off at the site in their own individual pods (although here, they get closer to the planet's surface by actually entering the atmosphere). And while I don't care much for his facial design or his teaming up with Alexa Woods, Scar (Ian Whyte, who also plays the other Predators in their solo scenes) does manage to come across as rather cool and more badass than the other Predators, able to take out Aliens with greater skill and managing to go toe-to-toe with the Alien Queen at the end, even though she does ultimately fatally wound him. I do particularly like the moment when he takes off his helmet and marks himself using the acid-blood of a facehugger he just killed, giving a bit more of an insight into the Predators' culture and how they operate.
Speaking of which, while I don't like some of the ideas that come with it, such as they're being the ones who taught the ancient people how to build pyramids, mainly because I just think it's lame and corny, I do like the notion of the Predators having been visiting Earth for thousands of years, something that was hinted at in the previous movies. I could totally buy them being worshipped as gods by an ancient race akin to the Aztecs or Egyptians, who would be willing to sacrifice themselves in some way for them, and you could also view it as leading into how certain sects of people, like the inhabitants of the village Anna mentions having growing up in in Predator and the voodoo-centered Jamaican drug lord, King Willie, in Predator 2, know of them, from legends and stories passed down through the generations from these first encounters. And as I said before, I don't think the idea of young Predators hunting Aliens to prove their worth or even the Predators being forced to blow themselves up if they get overwhelmed is a bad one... it's just that it takes place on Earth, which causes problems to arise, as we've discussed.
The first thing you see after the film's title is a silhouette that looks very much like the Alien Queen, right down to the enormous crown on top and the extra pair of arms... but, as the object comes into view and the camera pans around it, it's revealed to actually be the Weyland satellite that detects the heat flux near Antarctica. The film builds up slowly to the story, introducing Alexa Woods while she's climbing the frozen waterfall in Nepal, Sebastian De Rosa while on his dig Teotihuacan, and the arrival of the former on the ship, the Piper Maru, via helicopter. Later on, while they're inbound to Bouvetoya Island, a shot from space shows the moon and then the Earth, before gradually pulling back to reveal that it's from the interior of a ship that's coming online. Down below the main deck, a hologram of the pyramid appears in the center of three Predator helmets and, after some configuring on the computer's part, an enormous beam of energy is fired from the ship towards Earth, impacting on the planet's surface. Afterward, the team reaches the island and heads onto the ice in snow-cats (De Rosa notes the large size of the moon in the sky, telling Woods that when he was growing up in Italy, such a sight was called, "Hunter's Moon"; again, "real cool," Paul W.S. Anderson), coming across the abandoned whaling station that sits atop the pyramid. There, we get an attempt at suspense, when the team explores the place and Graeme Miller, disobeying one of Woods' strict rules, wanders off by himself. He enters a shack and, looking around, decides to take a selfie with his digital camera, placing it on a shelf. Once the picture's snapped, he's startled by a rattle behind him and then, he hears some scuttling. This freaks him out enough to cause him to back into some pots and pans hanging from the ceiling and he hears more skittering on the other side of a table. He shines his flashlight, trying to find what it is, when Woods unintentionally startles him by touching him from behind and admonishes him for going off by himself. Miller tells her that there's something over there but when they shine their flashlights, it's revealed that it was nothing more than a little penguin. She remarks, "Careful. They bite," as it skitters away, while outside, De Rosa calls everyone's attention to an enormous, angled tunnel in the side of a cliff that they learn leads down directly to the pyramid. Perplexed as to who could've made it so accurately in such a short amount of time, Weyland decides to get down there as soon as possible. They're not the only ones preparing: aboard their ship, the Predators are equipping their weapons and grabbing their helmets, all the while monitoring the humans.
Later, the team uses an advanced pulley system, set up by Quinn and his drilling team, to descend down the tunnel to the pyramid, when up top, the harsh winds from an approaching storm cause one man to bumble into some crates and send an object into the pulley. Shorting out the system, it suddenly stops dead and the force of it causes Weyland to become unhooked from his line, sending him sliding down the tunnel. As he whizzes by them, everybody tries to grab ahold of him but are unable to do so, finally forcing Woods, who's been leading the way, to jam her pick into the ice, through the hood of his coat, stopping him. Back up top, the Predators' ship flies in over the island, traveling so silently that it goes right over Quinn and his men and they never notice it. Flying over a snow-covered field, it deploys three pods that anchor themselves down into the snow before opening up. Down below, the team comes across the pyramid and they slowly enter it, checking out the carvings on the wall and its unusual structure. While walking in, De Rosa is unaware that he steps on a part of the floor that descends down, apparently sending a signal up to the Predators' ship to indicate that they're inside. In response, in an enormous chamber elsewhere in the pyramid, the floor slowly opens and a large mechanism with chains hanging down from it rises up to, pulling a huge, dark-colored object up out of the floor. Once it's in place, the object is revealed to be an Alien Queen, kept in frozen stasis. Sparks of electricity all-around her gradually thaw her out, enabling her to move her hands in the chains they're kept in and lower her jaw out of her head, after which she lets out a monstrous roar.
After the team comes across some ancient writing that De Rosa translates as, "Only the chosen ones may enter," up top, one of Quinn's men becomes frightened upon hearing strange sounds around him. He draws his handgun and spins around in a panic, unable to find the source of the sounds, when a thermal POV shows that he's being stalked by a Predator, which kills him before he can react. Quinn and the others, the latter of whom are inside one of the shacks, taking a break, hear his screams, when the door suddenly opens. They draw their guns, as a cloaked Predator silhouette walks in, and proceeds to make short work of them. One man is thrown clear across the room, another is impaled through the torso by the Predator's wrist-blades before being tossed aside, and a third man fires crazily throughout the shack with his assault rifle, only to be hit by an invisible force that sends him across the room and sticks him to the wall. The cloak is then slowly dropped, revealing the weapon to be a Predator spear. Quinn arrives in time to see one of the men's bodies being hoisted up from the ceiling and to swing around to get a glimpse of invisible wrist-blades splattered with blood. Panicked, he runs outside the shack and closes the door, just barely missing getting impaled by a spear that goes right through the door and sticks into the side of a hut across from him, and runs for it, unaware that he's being tracked from up top by another Predator. He trips and climbs up onto the pulley platform to find the bodies of his other men hanging upside down as well and then, he spies a handgun laying there. Grabbing it and standing up, he makes out one of the silhouettes and fires several shots at the Predator, disabling his cloaking device. Roaring in anger, the Predator jumps down from the rooftop and, pulling out a blade, stabs into him in several spots, sending him tumbling backwards into some shelving. Quinn grabs a wooden beam and smacks the Predator on the side, only for it to break like a toothpick and backhand him hard enough to send him tumbling down the tunnel. As he slides, Quinn tries to stop himself with his pick but it doesn't stick into the ice and he loses his grip on it, sending him heading down to the bottom with no way to stop. Back on the surface, all three of the Predators uncloak themselves, with one using a device on his wrist to map out the pyramid and the humans' current location, as the scene transitions.
In the pyramid, the crew reaches the sacrificial chamber, which contains the long mummified bodies of those who willing sacrificed themselves to the gods, with Tom finding an inscription that translates as, "They gave their lives so the hunt could begin," and Adele Rousseau noting the holes in the chests, with the bones bent outward. In her chamber, the electric currents being sent throughout her body cause the Queen to begin laying eggs on an ancient conveyor belt that takes them into the depths of the pyramid. Back in the sacrificial chamber, Max discovers a shaft in the floor that leads to another level, while at the base on the tunnel, Quinn, severely injured but still alive, awakens to see the Predators standing nearby. Two of them completely ignore him and walk by without incident, but the other, Scar, easily takes Quinn out with his enormous wrist-blades. Meanwhile, the team moves on to the lower level, while Max has Tom, Rousseau, and her mercenaries stay behind to catalog everything in the room. Reaching that chamber, they find a large sarcophagus in the center of it and De Rosa interprets the carving atop it as the ancient Aztec calendar, as well as a type of combination lock. Discovering that it's been exactly a hundred years to the day since it was lasted opened, De Rosa attempts to use the lock and the calendar to open the casket. He manages to do so and it opens up to reveal a large, mist-filled container housing three Predator weapons (their shoulder cannons, to be exact). When Weyland's illness begins acting up and Woods sees how late it's getting, she orders everyone to get back to the whaling station so they can head back out at first light. Max initially says that she can go back if she wants but they're staying there, but when she insists, Weyland tells Max to do what she says. He also tells Max to take the weapons so they can run tests on them. Seeing that something's not right about the weapons, De Rosa warns them not to remove them but Max, in a stupid moment of defiance, removes the last one, causing the container to close by itself. Seeing what's happened on their hologram, the Predators race inside the pyramid, cloaking themselves, as the door in the weapons chamber suddenly slams shut and a flight of stairs in the back of the room lowers down. Up in the sacrificial chamber, the same thing happens, with all of the openings around them closing, easily smashing through a large crate that Rousseau tries to use to brace one of them. She notes that they'll never be able to open the door, when Alien eggs suddenly rise up through the floor behind each of the mummified bodies. As they watch, the eggs slowly come to life and open up. Right after Tom reminds Rousseau that the room they're in is the sacrificial chamber, the facehuggers scurry out of the eggs and jump at their hosts. Rousseau tries to shoot the one that comes at her but it attaches itself before she can do anything and she falls to the floor. Hearing the commotion above them, Max and De Rosa attempt to get in touch with Tom and Rousseau but get no answer. Woods says that they need to round up everyone and get to the surface. There's a random tense moment when Max, Mark Verheiden, and the other mercenaries take out assault rifles, the former telling Woods that he's doing his job and hers is over, but Woods puts him in his place, saying that her job isn't over until she gets everyone out of the pyramid and that his gun doesn't change anything.
While the Predators make their way through the pyramid, Woods and the others prepare to head through the new passage, with Max and Verheiden leading the way, while Miller theorizes to Weyland that what his satellite picked up was the structure firing up, preparing for something. Meanwhile, in the sacrificial chamber, Rousseau awakens with a gasp to find a dead facehugger beside her and sees that everyone else still has them attached to their faces. Breathing heavily, she unzips her coat and her body lunges forward as she drops to the floor, wincing in pain, as the chestburster claws its way out of her with a loud screech. Down below, the others move through a large corridors with tall walls on either side that are dotted up top by Predator statues. Looking at them, Woods and De Rosa recognize the shoulder cannons on them as the objects they found in the other room. They move on, when one of the "statues" is shown to be watching them, his infrared imaging revealing the sacred weapons that they're carrying. With that, the Predator catches a mercenary bringing up the rear with a lasso, hoisting him up so silently that the others don't realize anything happened until his weapon clatters to the floor. Max has the unarmed ones take cover, while he and the other mercenaries try to figure out what happened. Scanning the top of the room with the laser sights on their rifles, one mercenary spots the Predator but he's immediately by a spear, causing him to rapidly fire off his rifle. The others look up and fire on the spot he was pointing at, shooting it to bits until they have to reload their weapons. Suddenly, the pyramid begins to reconfigure itself, with stones moving and sections of the floor opening. The Predator takes the opportunity to leap across the room, cloaking himself in mid-air, as they futilely try to fire on him, while in the chaos of the shifting walls, one mercenary gets knocked down into an opening in the floor. Seeing that the door on the other side of the room is closing, everybody tries to run for it, with Verheiden unable to do anything to help the man who becomes sealed in the floor. Verheiden and Miller become trapped themselves when the doors on either side of the room close completely, as do Woods, De Rosa, Weyland, and Max in another section of the pyramid. Meanwhile, the man who's trapped in the floor tries to compose himself and then crawls through the small space, yelling for the others, when he slips down an incline that leads into another narrow corridor. Looking around in a panic, he quickly grabs his rifle, which he notices is coated in a sticky slime.
While Miller and Verheiden form a mutual bond by talking about their kids and deciding that they're the reason they can't just give up, the others try to figure out what to do, De Rosa theorizing that, based on its tie to the Aztec calendar, the pyramid may shift every ten minutes. He's soon proven right when a nearby door to a narrow corridor opens by itself once ten minutes have passed, and the same occurs in Miller and Verheiden's room, a door opening to reveal a narrow crawlspace. Both groups proceed to make their way through the passages, with the latter pair doing so when Verheiden comes a fork in the path and, off to his left, discovers a slime-covered assault rifle. Hearing nearby screeching and squealing upon picking it off, he yells for the man he knows is the rifle's owner, frantically looking down each passageway to try to find the source of the sounds. He looks straight up, only for a trapdoor to open beneath him, sending tumbling to the end of another passage. Miller runs back to the spot and, upon seeing Verheiden, promises to find a way to save him, when the trapdoor closes on him. Miller futilely tries to open the door back up, while Verheiden, yelling hopelessly, realizes he's not alone, as he sees movement down a nearby corridor. A full-grown Alien rears its head up, snarling at Verheiden, who decides he's not going to go down without a fight and grabs both assault rifles. He yells, "You want a piece of me, you ugly son of a bitch?!", when another Alien suddenly appears to his left and a third to his right, which lunges its tongue at him. Up above, Miller hears Verheiden screaming and is then faced with an Alien himself, having little to react before it charges at him, grabs him, and pulls him up through the ceiling.
The other reaches a large chamber at the end of their corridor, when Weyland slumps against the wall, weak from his illness, dropping the Predator weapon he's carrying. Once he composes himself, Woods tries to convince him to leave the weapon but he insists, "Too much has been lost to leave here with nothing." She then tells him to give her the weapon, which he slides down into her backpack. All of this is seen by the nearby Predators, one of whom cloaks himself, as they prepare to make their move. In an instant, Max is faced by one of them, who fires at net at him that pins him up against the wall and proceeds to constrict itself around him. The others try to come to his aid, only to find that the net is too sharp for them to pull on and easily breaks a knife that De Rosa attempts to use on it. Max then yells them to watch out and they turn around to see a Predator stomping towards them. Woods swings her pick but he easily knocks her aside and does the same to Weyland. De Rosa gives him a punch to the stomach but the Predator grabs him by the shoulder, hoists him up, and Woods watches from nearby as he pulls out a long spear, while Max continues to slowly be constricted by the net. The Predator puts the spear all the way through Max and out the wall behind him, while continuing to choke De Rosa. Woods spies her pick nearby and goes for it, only for the cloaked Predator to charge in and kick her against a pillar behind her. As she gets up on her knees and sits back against the wall, the Predator stands above her and deploys his wrist-blades, ready to finish her off. Suddenly, a long, barbed tail lowers down behind the cloaked silhouette and punctures right through his torso. Woods watches as the impaled Predator, his cloak shorting out, is hoisted up into the air and turned around to face the Alien who eventually comes to be known as Grid (the shot of the two of them facing each other pretty much became the image of the film). Grid finishes him off a tongue to the head, as the other Predator sees what's happened and tosses De Rosa aside, deploying his blades. Grid does the same to the dead Predator and turns to face the other, who comes charging at him.
Snarling, Grid jumps into the air and tackles the Predator to the ground, smashing him through a pedestal on the floor. The Predator keeps Grid's head at bay by grabbing his neck and avoids swipes from his tail, although he gets clawed straight across his mask. As the two monsters battle, with the Predator trying to stab Grid with his blades and flipping them over so he's on top, Woods gets De Rosa to his feet so they can help Weyland. The Predator continues holding Grid down when the Alien turns the tables and flips him back over, trying to get at him with his tongue. Woods and De Rosa grab Weyland and the three of them run for it, as the Predator dodges Grid's tongue. He then manages to kick him off and send him crashing through the wall behind him. Grid goes berserk when he hits the floor and sits up, facing off with the Predator and hissing a challenge. They both charge, the Predator just barely dodging Grid's tail, which smashes into the pillar to the left of his head, blocks his whipping tail with his blades, dodges another swipe from it, tries to get it in mid-air again, and is then tripped by it. He falls to the floor and Grid jumps into the air, attempting to spear him with his tail, only to miss and jam the tip into the floor beside him. His tail stuck, Grid is unable to stop the Predator from slicing it in half with his blades, although his blades are damaged by the acid blood. Getting up, the Predator runs at Grid, grabs him and slams him into the pillar behind him, hard enough to bend it, and after the Alien falls to the floor, the Predator grabs his tail, picks him up, and swings him around the room, bashing his head into the pillars around him before sending him flying across the corridor. The Predator charges his opponent again, as Grid gets up and sends acid blood flying everywhere from his severed tail, melting stone around him, and sends some into the Predator's chest-plate. He quickly tears off the dissolving armor and flings it to the floor, only to look up and see that Grid's gone. Switching through different vision modes, still unable to find him, the Predator backs up, looking all around, when Grid appears above him when his back's turned. Taking the chance, he jumps but the Predator swings around and fires a net at him, which encloses him in mid-air. The Predator gets out of the way as Grid goes straight through the floor, into a lower level filled with bones, and jumps in after him, as he rolls across the room. He watches as the Alien struggles to get free, the constricting net cutting into his head and causing acid blood to bleed out onto the bones. The Predator stomps towards him and draws a dagger, ready to finish him off, when the acid burns through the net and smacks him down, causing him to drop the knife. He's quickly on him and, holding him down, punctures through his head with his tongue, killing him instantly. Grid then lets out a victorious screech.
Elsewhere, the others have to stop at a staircase because of Weyland's illness, but within a minute, Scar appears in the doorway they just came through. Woods and De Rosa try to get Weyland to his feet but he insists they go on without him, which they reluctantly do. Seeing that Woods is carrying one of the shoulder cannons, Scar storms up the stairs, while Weyland attempts to fend him off with a pick. Scar easily knocks the pick out of his hand and lifts him up by the throat. But, when he scans Weyland, he sees how diseased his lungs are and, following the Predator code of sport, drops him and carries on after Woods and De Rosa. Weyland, however, doesn't know when to quit and, pulling out his inhaler and lighting a flare, sprays the gas through the torch, creating a makeshift flamethrower that blasts Scar in the back. Rather than being injured, Scar is enraged at this and swings around with a snarl, deploying his blades and gutting Weyland. He sends his body tumbling back down the stairs and then resumes chasing after Woods and De Rosa, who have to run for it when the pyramid shifts again, crossing from a hallway, through a chamber, and into another hallway, narrowly avoiding getting crushed when the floor of the second hallway lifts up to the ceiling. De Rosa is also almost gutted by Scar's Frisbee-like weapon when he sends it flying through the space, whizzing by him when he reaches the other side and sticking into the wall. Stomping through the chamber, Scar turns to see a facehugger leaping at him but he throws another Frisbee and slices it clean in half, skillfully catching the weapon when it returns to him. An Alien "statue" above him then proves to be the real thing, crawling down the wall towards him, preparing for an ambush, when he swings around and slices its head with the Frisbee's blades. The Alien sits there for a few seconds before its head slides off and Scar puts away the Frisbee. Woods and De Rosa then watch through a slit in the wall as Scar unmasks himself, breaks off one of the facehugger's fingers, and uses the blood to burn two marks into his helmet before giving his own forehead a matching set. De Rosa explains that his marking himself as an ancient warrior would as a rite of passage. Unbeknownst to Scar, however, another facehugger scuttles up onto the ledge above him and jumps at him when he turns around, something Woods and De Rosa miss.
Despite their being a bit difficult to make out, De Rosa is able to read off the history of the pyramid from them. A flashback shows a Predator ship arriving on Earth for the first time, followed by a shot of the ancient people worshipping two as they stand atop a pyramid, while other ships hover above other pyramids in the background. De Rosa that the Predators would return every hundred years in order to hunt Aliens, with some of the people willingly sacrificing themselves as hosts for them, as shown in a scene where facehuggers attached to them and a woman begins to feel the chestburster coming out. A Predator is then shown sending an Alien tumbling down the side of the pyramid, roaring triumphantly with one's head at the end of his spear, as a ship hovers above him and shines a light down on him. After that is the scene that sold Fox on Anderson's idea for the movie: three Predators atop a pyramid, facing off with thousands and thousands of Aliens as they scramble up the side of the building at them. Ultimately, they're overwhelmed and one Predator sets off his self-destruct, wiping out the entire civilization. Back in the present, De Rosa theorizes that the heat given off by the pyramid was to lure them down to it so the hunt could begin; in short, it was one big trap. Elsewhere, Miller awakens to find himself cocooned within an Alien nest, finding Verheiden next to him with a facehugger attached and sees an egg open up only a few feet away from him. As the facehugger slowly reveals itself, Miller, spying Verheiden's gun still in its holster, tries to wrench his hand free in order to grab it. Surprisingly, Verheiden actually grabs his hand, still conscious, but as the facehugger wriggles out of the egg, Miller reaches up as quick as he can, grabs the handgun, wrenches it free, and shoots the creature down just as it leaps at him. Once it hits the ground, he finishes it off with several more shots. His victory is short-lived, though, as there are many other hatching eggs in the hive and while he's heard shooting, the yell he lets out informs us of his ultimate fate. Back in their chamber, Woods tells De Rosa that they have to give the Predator back his weapon so he can kill the Aliens, which she knows will destroy the world if they reach the surface. Once the ten minutes are up and the door opens behind them, they head out to find him, while Scar is then seen reattaching his helmet.
While searching for the Predator in a maze of corridors, Woods and De Rosa run into an Alien and they run for it down one in particular, which leads them to a walkway over an enormous chasm. De Rosa makes the jump easily but when Woods lands, the stones crumble beneath her feet and she grabs onto the ledge. The stones continue giving way and she almost falls, but De Rosa manages to grab her and attempts to pull her up. He doesn't get far in doing this, though, when Grid appears to his right, grabs him, and pulls him off into the depths of the pyramid, leaving Woods behind to pull herself up. Once she does, she finds that all that's left of De Rosa is the bottle-cap he wore around his neck and, after picking up, she heads down the dark hallway by herself. Clearly scared, she reaches a small room and when she checks her watch compass, she sees that it's been smashed. She's also not alone, as the camera reveals Scar standing behind her. Sensing his presence, she turns to face him, as he enlarges his spear and prepares to attack. She tries to talk him down, telling him to wait, and cautiously removes the weapon attached to her back, placing it on the floor, and sliding it towards him. An Alien then pops up behind him and he swings around in time for it to slam him into the wall, causing him to drop his spear. He manages to throw it off and slam it against the wall to the right and, instead of continuing the attack on him, it turns its attention to Woods and leaps at her. She quickly grabs Scar's spear and impales the Alien, which attempts to stab her with its tail. She's able to dodge both the tail and its mouth as she pushes the spear all the way through it, eventually causing it to seemingly slowly die from its injuries. But, when she tries to push it away from her, it suddenly springs back to life and tries to get her with its tongue, only to miss and slowly pull it back inside its mouth, expiring for real. Woods then manipulates it to the ground and thinks she can relax, when a targeting laser appears on her forehead; Scar has equipped his shoulder cannon and is intent on using it. But, before he can, he hears more Aliens in the dark corridor behind him and his vision exposes them climbing along the walls, revealing one of them to be Grid. Scar targets him and fires his cannon, only for Grid to dodge the blast, causing it to hit an Alien behind him. Scar proceeds to fire on the other Aliens, taking them out, while Grid watches from his hiding spot. Then, the Alien Queen lets out a loud screech in her chamber, which Grid hears and promptly follows, with the remaining Aliens doing the same.
Noting what's happened, and the sight of the dead Aliens' acidic innards melting into the floor, Scar turns back around and faces Woods. Instead of threatening her again, though, he simply removes his spear from the Alien she killed and begins walking down the opposite corridor. Woods chases after him, telling him that she's coming with him, and he swings back around and growls at her. He stomps towards in a menacing manner, his shoulder cannon whirring as if he's about to blast her, but when he looks back down at the Alien she killed, he instead pulls its body into place, gets down on one knee, pulls out a blade, and begins cutting. He eventually cuts and removes the exoskeleton from the head and, when Woods asks what he's doing, he rips off one of the fingers and squeezes the end, demonstrating the blood's acidic properties to her. He then cuts the end of the tail off and attaches it to the tip of the spear, giving it to her as a weapon and the head as a shield. The two new allies then race off, while in the Queen's chamber, her children, led by Grid, come to her aid. They run onto the pedestal in front of her, as she lets out a screech and motions with her chained hands and moves her head back and forth. Understanding what she means, they jump onto her and crawl up to the chains. With Grid leading, they puncture her skin with their tongues, splashing the chains with her blood. In another part of the pyramid, Scar and Woods come upon a hallway, the former finding a patch of Alien slime on the floor, while the latter sees that it leads into the depths of the nest. Walking into it, she finds Miller's digital camera on the floor and calls for him (does she honestly think he's still alive?), only to walk into the egg chamber ahead and find his cocooned body with a large hole in his chest and a dead facehugger next to a gun on the floor. Picking up the gun, she hears gasping nearby and, a few feet away, finds De Rosa, still alive, attached to the wall as well. She tells him she's going to pull him off but he warns her that it's too late, that an Alien is gestating inside her. Scar's targeting laser appears on his body but she quickly stops him from firing, saying that she has to help De Rosa. Scar scans him and sees the Alien embryo behind his ribcage, ready to burst out. De Rosa reminds Woods that the Aliens mustn't reach the surface and, knowing what she has to do, Woods pulls her gun, as he begins to convulse, and she hastily apologizes before firing, killing him with one shot. Shaking from what she's just done, Woods drops the gun and walks away, Scar watching her and deactivating his cannon. However, the still-living chestburster smashes out of De Rosa and jumps at Scar but he grabs it and easily snaps its neck with his powerful hand as it struggles, Scar cocking his head and snarling at it.
Back in the Queen's chamber, her acid blood weakens the chains to where she can break free and once she's loose, she rips herself free from her ovipositor and joins her children as they stampede through the hallway leading to the room. Woods and Scar hear this and the latter, scanning the many unhatched eggs and seeing that there are still facehuggers within them, some of which are starting to hatch, activates his self-destruct device and explains with his hands what it is to Woods. He detaches it from his arm and throws it amongst the eggs. The two of them run for it, making it out of the pyramid and back to the base of the tunnel, when Woods finds slime on the rig there. Unsure whether or not any Aliens made it to the surface, she begins punching in the code, when an Alien drops onto Scar from above, prying his cannon off in the process. Woods grabs a weapon, as the Alien spears Scar through his right forearm, and blows open its head, allowing Scar get back to his feet. The body slides across the ice to the feet of the remaining Aliens, who are all ready to kill them, when the rig begins to head back up. Woods and Scar grab onto it as it heads back up, an Alien leaping at them and just barely missing the back edge of it. The bomb then goes off, sending out a shockwave that blows off 3/4 of the pyramid and wipes out the Aliens, as Woods and Scar are quickly carried up the tunnel, outrunning the fireball behind them. They're sent flying through the air when they reach the top, the enormous explosion ripping out of the tunnel and into the whaling station. Both of them run as fast as they can, as the fireball tears the place apart (this is where you get the Baywatch shot), and they hit the deck to avoid the shockwave. The force of it sends a crack straight through the middle of the station, pulling everything down into the earth, and the two of them again have to run to avoid being sucked down as well, with everything collapsing around them. When they reach the edge, they have to jump over a big fissure that opens up and they fall into the snow, and once they get back up, they see that there's nothing left of the station. Turning to Woods, Scar removes his helmet and lets out a roar before removing the Alien finger he snapped off earlier. He holds it up and Woods, noting the scars on his forehead, knows what he intends to do, nods and turns her head to the side, allowing him to brand her cheek with the acid blood. In response, she offers him the Alien tail-tipped spear.
Suddenly, their moment is interrupted when something smashes up from underneath the ice and it then breaks the surface to reveal itself to be the Alien Queen. Enraged at the deaths of her children, she stomps toward them, as they back away, and Scar fires a harpoon through her neck. He then takes out the Frisbee weapon and throws it, hitting her in the neck again and when he throws it a second time, it hits her in the back edge of her head. But, before he can catch the Frisbee, she whacks him with her tail and sends him crashing through a bit of what's left of a structure. Scar gets to his feet but the Queen charges him from behind and smacks him back down to the ground, preparing to impale him through the back with her barbed tail. Woods rushes in and stabs her in the neck with her spear, sending the Queen tumbling sideways towards a shack, trying to pull the spear out, and flinging Woods in the process. When she gets up, she sees the Queen crash through the shack, while she has to get rid of her coat because of the acid blood that spilled onto it. She runs for it, as the Queen finally manages to pull the spear out and chases after her amongst a corridor of whale bones, getting close enough to her where she tries to bite her head off. She smashes through the bones and is so focused on Woods that she runs straight into a walkway connecting two water towers, although she quickly smashes it and continues her pursuit. Woods runs underneath another water tower, which the Queen slams into, trying to tip it over, and she then rips apart the bottom of the structure, trying to get at her. She tries to impale her with her tail several times but when she misses, she gets frustrated and deliberately slams the water tank repeatedly, moving it and exposing her, but unknowingly pushing the whole thing to the edge of a cliff. Once Woods is in sight, the Queen tries to get her with her tongue but misses, and when she backs up to try again, Scar comes leaping in behind her with a spear and stabs her straight through the head. Woods takes the opportunity to scramble out from underneath the tower and, as the Queen struggles to get back up, she notices a chain that's still attached to her back. Getting an idea, she grabs the end of the chain and, with Scar's help, ties it around a wheel-handle on the side of the tank of the tower. The Queen manages to slice off a piece of the spear from her head just as Woods secures the chain, telling Scar that she's got it. The structure begins to fall over the edge of the cliff, when Scar is suddenly impaled through the back by the Queen's tail. As she pulls him around to deliver the killing blow, Woods grabs a shovel that she finds and uses it to push the tank further towards the edge. The Queen is just about to puncture Scar's head with her tongue, when Woods finally forces the tank over the cliff, sending it tumbling down into the ocean below. The Queen is wrenched along with it, causing her to drop Scar, and though she tries to grab ahold of whatever she can to stop herself, making one last attempt to get Woods when she's pulled to the edge, she's ultimately unable to keep herself from being pulled down into the water and to the bottom of the sea with the tank.
With that taken care of, Woods walks over to Scar, who's lying on the ground, mortally wounded. He's able to only let out a few growls before he succumbs to his injuries and dies, leaving Woods alone... or so it seems, as another Predator uncloaks himself across from her, as does a large group of them along with their enormous spaceship. The Predator across from her, who's obviously the chief from the way he's dressed, with more elaborate armor and a long, red cape, notices the marks on Woods' cheek, who herself sees that he's holding Scar's marked helmet. Four other Predators come in and take Scar's body aboard the ship, while the chief, as a sign of respect, presents her with his own spear, which she takes. He then joins his comrades aboard the ship, which closes up and quietly lifts off, leaving Woods behind, with seemingly no way to escape but it's then revealed that there's a functioning snow-cat nearby, which somehow survived the destruction of the station and the battle with the Queen. The spaceship cruises up into space, away from the Earth, while onboard, the four Predators leave Scar's body in front of a window overlooking the planet. But, when they walk away, something smashes its way up through his mid-section, revealing itself to be a PredAlien chestburster, which lets out a hissing, clicking screech as the movie ends.
In describing his approach to the music score, Harald Kloser said, "This is a terrifying movie and it needs a terrifying, classic movie score to go with it; at the same time it's got huge action so it needs that kind of proper orchestral support." Methinks Mr. Kloser hasn't seen that many horror films, because this movie is certainly not terrifying in the slightest and the same can definitely be said of his score which, for the most part, is very generic and forgettable. It serves its purpose when you're actually watching the movie but, afterward, you're likely to forget most of it. There are some themes that I do find memorable, though, like the main battle theme, which you first hear during the fight between the one Predator and Grid, which has a nice, driving force to it, going, "Dun, dun-dun-dun, dun, dun-dun-dun, dun-dun!", the rather epic-sounding piece that you hear when Grid kills the first Predator before the fight, and some eerie, otherworldly, jungle-like sounds you hear whenever the Predators' ancient rites of passage are invoked, such as when Scar marks himself and his helmet. I also like some of the atmospheric bits you hear when they're first exploring the pyramid and additional, somewhat creepy bits during the ending credits but, on the whole, when compared to the scores for the previous Alien movies and Alan Silvestri's work on the first two Predator films, this score falls very far short.
Because of how bad this movie is, I sold my original DVD of it right before I started this blog and did my first draft of this review way back in 2011 (which is why that first version, admittedly, wasn't the best, as I couldn't remember half of what happened). I knew that there was an "unrated" version of the movie that had a little bit more blood but, given what I heard about the additional material not making much of a difference at all, as well as my opinion that no amount of splatter could possibly make this movie any better, I had no interest in seeing the unrated version and I never did until 2015 when I bought a Blu-Ray double feature of this and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, mainly so I could see the latter since I knew I'd review these movies one day. Looking at the unrated version, which is about eight minutes longer than the theatrical cut, there really isn't much to write home about in terms of the blood. In fact, most of it is digital blood added to the already existing scenes, as well as a few newer, bloodier shots in some cases, like when the chestburster comes out of Adele Rousseau and when the Predator's net constricts around Max. However, harder violence is not the only addition to the unrated version, as there are complete scenes that were put back in. Some are superfluous in the long run, such as a prologue of a man being hunted by a Predator at the whaling station in 1904 (complete with a title card that again makes me think of The Thing), only to get caught up in a fight between him and an Alien, which confirms what we could already deduce when Woods mentions that the workers there just disappeared, and a guy delivering pizza to the Weyland Industries research station that detects the heat spike on Bouvetoya Island, but there are other character moments that are more significant. For instance, when De Rosa discovers the bottle cap in Teotihuacan, his patron pulls his funding, and when we first see him on the icebreaker before the briefing, he's more interested in whether or not Weyland's check cleared than anything else. What's more, there's an earlier scene between Graeme Miller and Mark Verheiden when the latter chastises him for fooling around in a snowmobile and, later on when the two of them become trapped together, Miller has to calm the panicking Verheiden down. It may not be much but a little more meat to these characters such as this would've been appreciated, I think. What's more, the unrated version has some other new scenes in the pyramid, such as a room where the team finds a room filled with the trophies that the Predators have made out of humans, as well as a dead facehugger, a moment where the Predators actually find that their weapons have been taken, a moment where Weyland checks out the weapon he's carrying, as well as an exchange between him and Max where he sees that one of their men died making history, and a bit of dialogue where De Rosa figures out that these Predators are young ones going through a "manhood" ritual. Again, I think this stuff may have helped give the movie a tad more substance in the theatrical version, don't you think?
This crossover movie was so disappointing considering that it was very boring and lackluster for a crossover movie between two of the most iconic monsters of sci-fi! Add to the fact that it's got bad acting and rather poor effects makes it even worse!
ReplyDeleteThis movie was so disappointing to watch considering that it was rather generic and forgettable despite being a crossover movie between Alien and Predator! Add to the fact that it's got bad acting and effects makes this movie one of the worst sci fi movies ever made!
ReplyDelete