Directors: The Brothers
Strause
Writers: Shane Salerno, Dan
O’Bannon (“Alien” characters), Ronald Shusett (“Alien” characters), Jim Thomas
(“Predator” characters), John Thomas (“Predator” characters)
Starring: Steven Pasquale,
Reiko Aylesworth, John Ortiz, Johnny Lewis, Ariel Gade, Kristen Hager, Sam
Trammell, Robert Joy, David Paetkau, Tom Woodruff Jr., Ian Whyte
This is the fourth time I’ve
forced myself to sit through this atrocity to both the “Alien” and “Predator”
franchises. Why would I watch it four times? As humans we have a need to try to
understand the inexplicable, I guess.
However, for the first time
this movie didn’t seem entirely inexplicable to me. I mean it’s bad. It’s just
as bad as I always thought it was, but this time through I felt I could see why
this story appealed to the filmmakers. The story itself isn’t as bad as the
movie. It eschews most of the established signatures of these once great film
properties, but at least there actually is a story here.
A Predator/Alien hybrid gets
loose from a Predator starship, and a Predator comes to Earth to hunt it down
and destroy the evidence. Why they would only send one Predator for this job is
as mindboggling as why that Predator would leave evidence of his own kill
hanging in the trees when he destroys every other bit of evidence that either
he or the Alien leaves behind. The plot is filled with such idiotic
inconsistencies. Overall, it could’ve worked though, with 6 or 9 more rewrites.
The real heart of this film’s
atrocities lie within how it is all executed. Made by The Brothers Strause, as
these brothers like to be known, you’d think their vast experience in producing
special effects for a number of excellent special effects laden movies like “300”
and “The Day After Tomorrow” would’ve informed them of the necessity of the
audience actually being able to see what was on screen.
This movie is so dark, it’s
as if they’ve totally misinterpreted the Clint Eastwood philosophy on
cinematography. Eastwood famously asked of one of the dark shots in the movie “Firefox”,
“Can you see it’s me?” When his cinematographer said “Yes,” Eastwood told him
to print it and move on. The Brother’s Strause seem to have altered this dialogue
slightly.
“Can you see the Alien?”
Cinematographer, “Um, no.”
“Well, can you see anything?”
“There seems to be a speck
of light traveling fr…”
“Print it!!!”
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment