Pissed at The Mist (2007)

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Good monster movies are hard to come by, let alone good monster movies that were released in theaters. In the case of The Mist, the 2007 adaptation of a Stephen King novella that was released in theaters nationwide, we get a monster movie that is well made and has a lot of potential. The central premise about an invasion from another dimension is intriguing, the cast is solid, and the scriptwriting and direction by King adaptation vet Frank Darabont keeps the plot moving at a steady pace. Unfortunately, the story itself never comes together, largely because it’s nothing more than an assemblage of familiar King character types and situations taken from other, better monster movies. Read on for my complete review.

The Mist is about a group of people who are trapped in a supermarket by a mysterious mist that appears to consume anyone who dares to venture into it. As the monstrous inhabitants of the mist slowly reveal themselves through a series of brief encounters both inside and outside of the supermarket, tensions violently escalate between rival factions of the human survivors.

The best part about The Mist is its large menagerie of monsters, both great and small. Their appearances are infrequent, but these creatures handily steal the show from the human characters. If you love movie monsters such as big bugs or dinosaurs--or even bug-like dinosaurs or dinosaur-like bugs--then you might want to give this film a chance just to see what these beasts look like. (In fact, while I was watching The Mist, I kept wondering what this film would've looked like if it were shot in the 50s and classic creature creator Ray Harryhausen had been tasked with doing the monster designs and effects.)


That said, the greatest strength of The Mist is also its biggest drawback. For as deadly and fearsome as the monsters are, they only attack whenever the script requires them to attack and only retreat whenever the script requires them to retreat. They are extremely capable of tearing the supermarket asunder and feasting on all of the people trapped within yet they never do, and it’s never made clear what attracts them and what repels them. Likewise, the mist that enshrouds the creatures is only as thick as the script needs it to be. Some people get lost in the mist and quickly become monster chow, while other people are capable of driving through the mist without colliding with other obstacles or getting stepped on by one of the larger creatures. Such inconsistencies drain the suspense out of the narrative, and I couldn't escape the nagging feeling that I've seen all of this done before and better elsewhere in Aliens, The Birds, Jurassic Park, Cloverfield, and George Romero's zombie movies. Given that the creatures' designs are much more inspired than the situations in which they are placed, they probably would’ve been better utilized in a survival horror video game based on The Mist instead of a direct adaption of the original story.

I've never been a Stephen King fan but I’m familiar enough with his work to recognize the character types that he frequently uses. Many of them are here in The Mist: the reluctant, brave and bland male hero; the outspoken yet ultimately doomed skeptic; the witty and well-spoken elderly sage; the sleazy and self-righteous antagonist; and the easily duped denizens of small town America who fall under the sway of the antagonist. These character types can be found in other horror stories but with King they usually follow the same dramatic trajectories, which makes the interpersonal conflicts inside of the supermarket feel contrived and they do not correspond with the external threats that lurk in the mist. By relying on formulaic character types and conflicts, King--and by extension Darabont--chose to play it safe in an otherwise apocalyptic scenario, and the story that begins with such promise ultimately sputters its way to the end. The film’s final few minutes tries to muster up one last, shocking twist, but the scenes immediately leading up the end are so bereft of momentum that it feels empty and undeserved.


I can only recommend The Mist to die-hard King fans, although some of them might think that this movie is just an abbreviated version of The Stand. Monster movie fans are better off with superior titles such as Alien Raiders, Infestation and Splinter, each of which I wrote about in a previous post here.




The Smithsonian Hosts The Art of Video Games

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As someone whose first video game console was an Atari 2600, I can tell you with great certainty and enthusiasm that video games have come a long way since their early Pong days in the 70s. But don't just take my word for it--it appears that the Smithsonian agrees with my opinion in their current exhibit, The Art of Video Games.


According to the exhibit's site, "The Art of Video Games is one of the first exhibitions to explore the forty-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking visual effects and the creative use of new technologies. ... The exhibition focuses on the interplay of graphics, technology and storytelling through some of the best games for twenty gaming systems ranging from the Atari VCS to the PlayStation 3. Eighty games, selected with the help of the public, demonstrate the evolution of the medium. The games are presented through still images and video footage. In addition, the galleries will include video interviews with twenty developers and artists, large prints of in-game screen shots, and historic game consoles."

I missed the opening GameFest weekend, which was held during March 16 - 18, but additional events are scheduled for April and May. After the exhibit closes in Washington DC at the end of September of this year, it will travel to 10 other locations throughout the US for those avid gamers who can't make it to our nation's capital. There's also a companion book for the exhibit, The Art of Video Games: From Pac-Man to Mass Effect by Chris Melissinos and Patrick O'Rourke, which you can learn more about here.



Topps’ Mars Attacks Trading Card Series Turns 50

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One of the coolest horror/sci-fi events that's coming this summer won't be playing at your local multiplex. Topps' legendary Mars Attacks trading card series is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year and in honor of this pop culture landmark, Topps will re-release the original 55-card set this July along with 25 additional cards that feature never-before-seen art. Several other companies have also signed on to release a wide selection of other Mars Attacks merchandise during this summer, including action figures, plush toys, comic books and model kits.

A 50th Anniversary Mars Attacks Action Figure, by Mezco.

In the long list of alien invasion novels, movies and TV shows, there's nothing quite like the Mars Attacks card series. It's an insane mash-up of 50s-era nostalgia and over-the-top violence; even though the cards depict a story about an alien invasion of Earth by skull-faced, large-brained invaders, the story doesn't weight itself down with complex characters and nuanced story arcs and goes straight for the gory carnage in card after card.

The Atomic Age feel of the Mars Attacks art is hardly coincidental. Len Brown used Wally Wood's cover of Weird Science issue #16, a sci-fi comic book that was published by EC Comics during the early 50s, as a source of inspiration when he pitched the card series to Topps. Horror and sci-fi comics disappeared from newsstands by the mid-50s due to the Comics Code Authority (CCA) but their influence clearly lived on in other titles such as Mars Attacks. (Read more about horror and sci-fi comics from the 50s here in my review of Jim Trombetta's book, The Horror! The Horror!: Comic Books the Government Didn't Want You to Read!)

The comic book cover that launched a trading card invasion ...

... And its tribute card from the 1994 Mars Attacks re-release.

Given its source of inspiration, Mars Attacks inevitably generated its own controversy back when it debuted in 1962, but that wasn't enough to stop the invasion. The cards were re-printed during the 80s and 90s with additional cards included, and the Mars Attacks license expanded to include comic books, novels, and even a feature-length movie by Tim Burton in 1996. There's also THQ's Destroy All Humans! video games, which are essentially video game versions of the Mars Attacks cards.

If you're a fan of gory horror and sci-fi art, then the Mars Attacks card series is something that would fit perfectly with your collection of artistic atrocities. Click here to see the complete set of Mars Attacks cards as they were originally released in the 60s, and you can also check out the official Mars Attacks Facebook page here.



Bring Me The Head of Charlie Brown: The Best Peanuts Parody Ever!

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Things have been pretty busy for me lately over in my corner of the geek-o-verse, so I thought I would take this time to share with you this hilarious cartoon short, "Bring Me The Head of Charlie Brown":


The Peanuts comic strip by the late Charles M. Schultz (as well as its ample supply of licensed merchandise and ancillary media titles such as holiday specials and feature-length movies) had become such an institution during its original 50 year run, so much so that newspapers still feature it on their comics pages over a decade since Schultz's death. Thus, there have been many, many parodies of the strip, yet I think that so few of them are as funny (and as wildly violent) as "Bring Me The Head of Charlie Brown".

I first saw this 1986 short while I was in college, when it was making its rounds on VHS bootlegs in Japanese anime fan clubs. (Sadly, the video quality of the short is pretty poor, and I doubt that it will ever get a "special edition" treatment.) The short was made by Jim Reardon, whose subsequent career would include Tiny Toon Adventures, The Simpsons and WALL-E. Be sure to check out the short's credits, which includes a "please don't sue me" disclaimer intended for Schultz. Happiness is a warm Uzi, indeed.



Avengers + Spider-Man + Tron = Must-See TV on Disney XD

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Even though the latest live action film versions of the Avengers and Spider-Man won't be arriving in movie theaters until this summer, you can get your fill of both when they premiere on Disney XD this April. Furthermore, while Tron Uprising isn't scheduled to begin airing as a regular series on Disney XD until this summer, a preview "micro-series" will begin in a few weeks. Read on for a closer look at each of Disney's new offerings to superhero and sci-fi fans alike.

Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes will begin its second season on April 4th. The second season will feature even more cameos from the Marvel universe, as well as new regular characters pulled from the Avengers' own comic book history. Expect to see the Fantastic Four, Dr. Doom, Ms. Marvel, The Vision, Falcon, and both the Kree and the Skrull during the new season. Check out the season 2 preview video below for more details.


Ultimate Spider-Man is scheduled to premiere on April 1st. After the abrupt cancellation of the excellent Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon, Disney appears to be sparing no expense to make Marvel's famous web-head a regular feature on its XD channel. Not only does the new Spider-Man series share the same name and some plot threads with the popular comic book series by Brian Michael Bendis, but it will also have Bendis serving as the show's producer along with superhero cartoon vet Paul Dini (Batman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond). Ultimate Spider-Man will have some familiar names among its voice cast as well:

* J.K. Simmons will reprise his role as J. Jonah Jameson, the same role he played in Sam Raimi's trilogy of live-action Spider-Man movies.

* Clark Gregg will reprise his role as Agent Phil Coulson, the same role he played in the live-action Iron Man and Thor movies (as well as in the upcoming Avengers movie).

* Adrian Pasdar will be reprising his role as Tony Stark/Iron Man, the same role he voiced in the recent Iron Man anime series that aired on the G4 channel.

Here's the preview trailer, which provides a better idea of what to expect from the latest web-slinging TV show:


For those of you who are keeping score, Cartoon Network has Young Justice and Green Lantern, while Disney XD will have Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes and Ultimate Spider-Man. It appears that no matter which live-action superhero franchise makes the most money at the box office, fans of superhero cartoons will usually end up getting something worthwhile out of it.

Last but not least, Tron Uprising will make its debut TV appearance in April as a 10 episode micro-series, with each episode running at three minutes in length. Exactly when the micro-series episodes will air on Disney XD has yet to be announced, but the animation will be a mixture of traditional 2D animation and 3D CG animation. Judging from the preview clips available (such as the one below), the kind of geek-centric eye candy that Tron Uprising will provide will rival that of the CG animated Clone Wars. Game on!





Darth Maul Returns (Again) to the Star Wars Universe

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The relationship between what is considered canon and non-canon in popular horror and sci-fi movie and TV franchises has always been a curious one, in my opinion. Usually, only the movies and/or TV episodes are considered canon, while other stories that take place in the same franchise but are told in video games and print (such as novels and comic books) are not. Yet this is not to say that the non-canonical elements in a franchise have no influence at all on what is later considered canon. For example, several story ideas that first appeared in Predator and Terminator comic books eventually re-appeared in each of the Predator and Terminator movie sequels (and, in the case of Terminator, in The Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series). Another example of the relationship between canon and non-canon happened in the recent fourth season finale in the Star Wars: The Clone Wars, when Darth Maul returned to take his revenge against the Jedi order.

Darth Maul in Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

The return of Darth Maul was originally suggested in a short story that appeared in Star Wars: Visionaries, a one-shot comic book that was published by Dark Horse Comics shortly before the release of Revenge of the Sith back in 2005. To further verify the connection between comic book and cartoon, the Force-powered cyborg Maul in Clone Wars looks almost exactly like the Force-powered cyborg Maul in Visionaries.

Darth Maul in Star Wars: Visionaries.

Fortunately, resurrecting Maul is more than just a ratings stunt for Clone Wars. The two-part finale that depicted the return of Maul was a fantastic way to wrap up an already outstanding season of this series, and it laid the roots for the Maul's ongoing menace during the fifth season. I'm assuming that Maul will continue his revenge against the Jedi, and perhaps even cause some trouble for Count Dooku (a.k.a. Darth Tyranus), the Sith apprentice who took his place. Also worthy of note is that Maul is voiced by veteran Star Wars voice actor Sam Witwer, who previously contributed his talents to The Force Unleashed video games and the Planet Mortis story arc during the third season of Clone Wars. Check out Witwer practicing his craft in the recording booth along with Clancy Brown (who voices Maul's brother, Savage Opress) in the video clip below.




Trailer Thursday: Avengers Assemble

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Yes, this is the UK version of the movie coming out, but this trailer is amazing and I love how we're finally getting to see the Hulk and Hawkeye do something. I'm really looking forward to this film:




Incidentally, if you live near an AMC theater (which I unfortunately do not) you can go ahead and buy your tickets now for a Marvel Movie Marathon which includes all six Marvel films (3 of them in 3D: Thor, Captain America, and the Avengers) for $40...and you even get a set of custom 3D glasses you can keep!

Paranormal Activity 3 Review: A Tale of Two Doomed Sisters

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It's rare for a horror film franchise to produce sequels that remain devoted to a group of characters with a consistent chronology. It's even rarer that the same franchise can tell its ongoing story in reverse chronological order, and that the franchise keeps the budget and production values of each of its films consistently small. Upon viewing Paranormal Activity 3, I can confirm that this "found footage" franchise, which began back in 2007, meets all of those attributes, which makes it a valuable rarity unto itself.

Click below to read my full review for PA3, which contains some mild spoilers. I really enjoyed this sequel, largely because it provides some great scares and it adds a great deal of new background information to Katie (Katie Featherston) and Kristi (Sprague Grayden), the sisters from the first two movies. If you prefer to stop reading to avoid spoilers of any kind, then I can only recommend this: If you're of the mindset that prequels are completely unnecessary and anti-climactic because the fates of the key characters have already been established, then PA3 is not for you. However, if you are genuinely interested in how it all began for Katie and Kristi, then this prequel is worth your time.

PA3 starts shortly before the events of PA2, when Katie drops off a large box of home videos for Kristi as she and her husband Dan (Brian Boland) are preparing a nursery for their soon-to-arrive son. The rest of the movie consists of edited footage from those VHS tapes, which show what happened during the month of September in 1988 when the sisters were children and living with their mom (Lauren Bittner) and her boyfriend Dennis (Christopher Nicholas Smith). Dennis earns his living by producing wedding videos and when odd things begin to happen in their home, he sets up cameras around the house to capture on tape what's behind the occurrences.

PA3 remains faithful to the standard set by its two predecessors. The special effects and shot compositions are simple, as is the story itself. The scares start small, and then build throughout the course of the story until its grim, vicious ending. To prop up the film's running time, the movie features a few scenes and plot devices that are reminiscent of other haunted house movies. There are some segments in PA3 that will have horror fans recalling other horror films such as Poltergeist, and the common horror plot device of a child who has an invisible, imaginary friend who isn't imaginary at all plays a major role in the story. These observations may make PA3 sound like a tired rehash of what has come before in both the PA series and in the horror movie genre in general, but this sequel is anything but. There's a lot of talent in this film both in front of and behind the camera, and it shows.

Katie and Kristi as adults ...

... And as children, played by Chloe Csengery and Jessica Tyler Brown.

As I was watching PA3, I would occasionally wonder how the same scenes would look if they were shot like a non-found footage horror movie. There would be a more stylized use of lighting, different camera angles, and background music to build tension before certain events happen. The fact that PA3 is still a scary film in the absence of these filmmaking techniques shows how well the movie's production crew of understood both the strengths and weaknesses of the "found footage" subgenre of horror. Even in the absence of fast-moving "shaky cam" found footage, PA3 can still squeeze substantial scares and dread out of footage shot by cameras that barely move, if they move at all.

That said, you don't go into a movie such as this one without expecting to have many things left to your imagination. There are many shots where characters see and react to things that are just outside of the camera's view. This is why I would strongly recommend that viewers see PA and PA2 before seeing this sequel, since PA3 cunningly plays off of what you already know--and don't know--about Katie and Kristi and their family history to build tension. For example, there's a scene where one of the sisters is innocently playing dress-up in adult clothes. This would come across as sweet and adorable in any other movie, but it's absolutely bone-chilling in PA3 because of what has come before (or what is yet to come, given that this is a prequel). Curiously, the film takes place in 1988, which puts it in the middle of the "Satanic Ritual Abuse" (SRA) panic during the 80s and 90s that began under the claim of "recovered memories". (For as crazy as SRA accusations sound, that didn't keep innocent people from being put on trail and serving jail time in the real world.) Hidden abuse and buried memories both play major roles in PA3.

I should also stress that like its two preceding movies, the setting and the characters themselves are very mundane (at least on the surface). There are no exchanges of complicated, layered dialogue between characters or dramatic complications that the characters experience that allow them to change and grow as characters. (Actually, for what revelations there are in the movie, they happen too late for the characters to do anything about them.) This not only complements PA3's simple story structure and modest visual style, but it makes the increasingly violent supernatural events so much more jarring and vivid. Perhaps this is why found footage films have found a home in horror and not in any other genre--such intense mixings of the plain and ordinary with the unthinkable and horrific wouldn't have nearly the same impact anywhere else.

The camera reveals all ... or does it?

While PA3 is a solid prequel that's better paced than PA2 (read my review of that film here), it does have a few nagging quirks. For movie that's made from footage recorded on a slow speed on VHS tapes from the late 80s, the overall quality of the video images is much better than it should be. Even the visual glitches that were common on VHS tapes from that time, such as brief screen discolorations and occasional lines of static, are nowhere to be found. Furthermore, this is the only film in its series so far that doesn't have some sort of message thanking a law enforcement agency or relatives for allowing the filmmakers to use the footage. To follow the narrative logic of most found footage films, the "real" footage was assembled by a "real" documentary crew who got the footage after a "real" investigation into the strange events depicted on the footage and the people involved. If we're lucky, maybe PA4--which is scheduled for release in October of this year--will show us who these fictitiously real/really fictitious documentarians are and why they have been so devoted to tracking the fateful lives of the sisters Katie and Kristi.

PA3 is great sequel, and I recommend it to anyone who's a fan of the series or scary found footage films in general. The details that are revealed during this movie leave this franchise open for many more stories outside of Katie and Kristi and their family, so I'm curious to see what new kinds of found footage frights PA4 will have to offer later this year.





Coming Soon: 2012 Annapolis Comic-Con

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If you live in Maryland or anywhere else near the Chesapeake Bay area and feel the need to get your comic book geek on, you’re in luck. Third Eye Comics will be holding the 2012 Annapolis Comic-Con on March 24 and 25.


This year’s con has an impressive list of guests, including John Ostrander (Suicide Squad, Star Wars: Legacy), Jo Chen (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel), JK Woodward (Crazy Mary, Zombie Tales), and many more. The topics of panel discussions will range from comic writing and painting, to selling your original comic book creations, to zombie survival techniques (yes, you read that last item correctly). There will also be a cosplay forum and a costume contest—must-haves at any self-respecting comic book convention.

Check out the Annapolis Comic-Con site and Facebook page for more details and pictures from last year’s convention.

R.I.P. Ralph McQuarrie (1929-2012)

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I don't usually do obituaries on my blog but given how frequently I cover visual art and sci-fi franchises such as Star Wars, it would be remiss of me to not mention the recent passing of concept artist and matte painter Ralph McQuarrie. He passed away on March 3 at the age of 82, from complications due to Parkinson's disease. There are many places around the Web that feature much more information about McQuarrie's career and art (check out his official site here), so I thought I would share a few memories I have of his sizable contributions to my lifestyle choice of obsessive geekhood.

Even though his career didn't start in the entertainment industry, McQuarrie contributed his talents to many movies and TV shows. He provided conceptual art for Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Cocoon, Nightbreed, Jurassic Park and the original Battlestar Galactica TV series. Yet he left his biggest impression on the original Star Wars trilogy, and I don't think that any other entertainment franchise expressed its gratitude for McQuarrie's contributions as much as Star Wars did.

As a young fan of Star Wars, I didn't know much about the film's production outside of what George Lucas did; however, I did know who Ralph McQuarrie was in relation to Star Wars and its two sequels. I saw McQuarrie's concept art in many Star Wars books, magazine articles, posters and bubblegum cards, and he and his art also appeared in several issues of Bantha Tracks, the newsletter for the official Star Wars fan club. To sum it up in a single sentence, McQuarrie was the link between what Lucas envisioned for his movie and the sci-fi pulp art from the early twentieth century that inspired Lucas to make Star Wars in the first place. It was in McQuarrie's art that Lucas' ideas for the Star Wars saga took form, long before a single frame of film was shot.


In the years since the original trilogy, McQuarrie's art (both original art and concept art) would reappear in various pieces of Star Wars merchandise. Click below to see some examples of these items, which thus makes Star Wars the only franchise where fans can collect replicas of popular characters and vehicles in both their official and conceptual forms. Beat that, Star Trek!

McQuarrie's art started appearing on toy shelves back in the 90s, when Galoob asked him to produce some original art for some of the toys in their Star Wars Micro Machines line. His work appeared on the packaging for four of the Action Fleet play sets: the Death Star, the Ice Planet Hoth, the Yavin Rebel Base, and the “Double Takes” Death Star. Click here to read more about McQuarrie’s work for Galoob's Star Wars toy license.






Since then, more Star Wars merchandise has been modeled after McQuarrie's conceptual art for the first Star Wars trilogy. Hasbro produced many action figures based on his concept art, and high-end collectible companies such as Gentle Giant and Kotobukiya did the same with character busts and dioramas.













Prometheus Versus Alien Vs. Predator (AVP)

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Last week, 20th Century Fox's promotional campaign for the upcoming release of the Alien prequel Prometheus moved into the area of viral marketing. Fox launched the Weyland Industries site, which features a video clip of its fictitious founder Peter Weyland (played by Guy Pearce) providing a TED Talk in the year 2023. I included the video in the window below.


Alien fans will notice nods in Weyland's speech to a few entries in the franchise--particularly Alien and Aliens, with brief mentions of androids and terraforming. Weyland also recites the ancient Greek myth of Prometheus, the namesake of this movie. From what I've pieced together from other sites that have covered this video, Weyland's TED Talk predates the events in Prometheus by 50 years, although Pearce will appear in the prequel as well. Whether he will play Peter Weyland's grandson, Peter Weyland himself in flashbacks, or something else entirely remains to be seen.

Regardless of exactly where and how this clip fits with Prometheus, it supports a theory that I've had since I first read the plot summary of the movie a few months ago. Between the idea of ancient astronauts and the involvement of one of the key founders of what will ultimately become the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, I think that Prometheus will be Ridley Scott's rebuttal of Alien Vs. Predator (AVP), which was directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. Read on for more thoughts as to why the new entry in the Alien franchise might remove one of the more recent Alien movies from series' continuity.

According to the early plot summaries of Prometheus, a team of space explorers (presumably supported by Weyland Industries) travel to a distant planet to better understand the origins of human life on Earth. As early teaser footage shows (see below), the explorers encounter a race of ancient astronauts whose space craft bear a strong similarity to the derelict craft that was seen in Alien. It is assumed that these same beings are also the creators of the acid-bleeding, bio-mechanical parasites seen throughout the Alien franchise, and that these origins will be explained in greater detail in Prometheus.


2004's AVP had a similar premise. That film also featured a team of explorers who were supported by Weyland Industries as they went on an expedition involving ancient astronauts, except that the explorers never left Earth and the ancient astronauts were the titular monsters from the Predator franchise. In AVP, the founder of Weyland Industries was identified as Charles Bishop Weyland; Weyland accompanies the explorers on their expedition, and he was played by Alien franchise vet Lance Henriksen as a nod to the characters he played in Aliens and Alien 3.

I was a fan of the Alien and Predator crossover idea since Dark Horse Comics started it in 1989, and it later expanded into video games, toys and novels. Having two sets of monsters tearing each other apart with humans stuck in the middle presented a narrative dynamic that was different than most other monster tales, where it's just humans fighting against one monster or one kind of monster. The most entertaining Alien/Predator crossovers were the ones that kept it simple, with the conflict between the two creatures taking center stage and only vague references are made (if any) to the characters and events from the stand-alone franchises. That's why Dark Horse's first Aliens vs. Predator miniseries worked so well: It took place on a space colony where the Predators showed up for a ritual hunt with a few Alien eggs in tow, and the narrative simply flowed from that premise. Nothing happened in the miniseries that would call into question the characters and events in the Alien or Predator movies.


Given how he has gone on record before stating his admiration of Alien franchise directors Scott and James Cameron, I can see why Anderson would jump at the chance to make his mark on the Alien franchise by setting up AVP as the story that would link it to the Predator franchise--namely, to have it as a sequel to the Predator movies and a prequel to the Alien movies. Unfortunately, his attempt at doing this fell flat for a number of reasons. First, his story felt contrived and uninspired, most likely due to the fact that it was a retread of his own 2002 Resident Evil movie. All Anderson did was replace the underground Umbrella Corporation research lab with an underground pyramid in the Antarctic, replace the zombies with Aliens and Predators, and replace the Licker monster with the Alien Queen for the final confrontation, and Resident Evil becomes AVP. (It should also be noted that Anderson did quite a bit of franchise tinkering in his Resident Evil movie, which featured many characters and plot threads that never appeared in the video games of the same name.) Even the inclusion of Charles Bishop Weyland seemed lackluster, since the reasoning behind his character's direct participation in the expedition doesn't make much sense outside of using an appearance by Henriksen as a way to further appeal to Alien fans.

Another problem with AVP was its attempt at giving the Predators an "ancient astronaut" back story. Anderson said he got this idea from Predator 2, particularly how the inside of the Predator ship in that movie looked similar to the architecture of Mesoamerica. Yet it made no sense to have space creatures who like to hunt people for sport and then skin and/or decapitate them for trophies as being the same space creatures who taught the ancient Egyptians, Mayans and Cambodians. If anything, this plot device only serves to explain why the movie takes place on Earth in the Antarctic; it doesn't add anything interesting to the Predator mythos, so it's no surprise that it's never mentioned again in subsequent Predator stories and Alien/Predator crossovers.


That said, I actually enjoy AVP and its 2007 sequel Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem. Both films have great special effects and intense action sequences, and I find them to be much more entertaining than many other franchise and genre mash-ups (such as Cowboys and Aliens). Yet Anderson is not as creative and talented Scott, and I think that Prometheus will greatly exceed AVP in terms of telling an epic story about the beginnings of the Alien universe. Then again, if Anderson's decision to write AVP as a prequel to Alien was what prompted Scott to return to the Alien franchise to tell his own origin story, who am I to complain?