Ticket Stubs #32: Rogue V. Prey (Part I)

In a typical issue of Ticket Stubs, I'd give you guys a re-print/post/whatever of a review I did in the old days, closing things out with a relevant Critical Quickie or two before the usual "stay tuned" mumbo-jumbo.

This time, however, we're talking about the twice-mashed-up (and once-screwed-up) worlds of Alien and Predator, where blood isn't always red (or safe to splatter every which way), what you don't see may kill you, and what you do see is worth screaming about, except that no one in space can hear you. So a little more web space is required to give the newcomers their due.

To make the due-giving adequately possible, Ticket Stubs and Just the Ticket are crossing it over once again for a two-part update on a one-shot I wrote in college.

Without further ado, here it is FROM April 5, 2005 (SW@ Ticket #35: Rogue V. Prey): Alien V. Predator. Cheap cast, choppy conglomeration of the two franchises (unless you place AVP after Predator and before Alien, but that brings up a whole new set of questions about how the movies connect), an unoriginal premise, and a predictable conclusion, but a better VS movie than Freddy/Jason.

Here's how the movie goes: the Predator race taught all the pyriamid cultures how to build, and were worshipped as gods, making it that much easier to sacrifice the humans as hosts for their genetically engineered Alien race. Every hundred years, the Predators come to Earth to practice their hunting skills on the Aliens in an all-out gang war. If the Predators win, they get a fancy stick. If the Aliens win, the Predators return to their ship and nuke the battlefield like a bunch of candyass girlymen.
Caught in the middle of the 2004 rumble is a military expedition team led by a tough-as-nails Antarctic mountain climber (basically a variation on the Ellen Ripley archetype, portrayed by Blade's Sanaa Lathan). The team enters a subterranean pyramid that shifts every ten minutes, unleashing the Aliens, cutting people in half, and drawing the Predators incrementally closer to their victims' position. After an hour in movie time, the team is dead, leaving the kick-ass chick to team up with a lone Predator against the Aliens.
The natural progression from shooting the breeders to killing the drones to killing the Queen Alien is back, as is the Predators' techno-camouflage (although the heat vision thing has been deemed pass'e by some dumbass or other). The human/Pred teamup was a nice touch, making not just a clash of alien titans trampling on human dirt (as in Freddy V. Jason), but an actually enjoyable action flick and an awkward buddy picture. The last-minute birth of the Predalien was good, too. Thank God they didn't reuse the old blow-the-Alien-out-into-space-as-a-last-resort routine for the fifth time.
That's all I've got to say about AVP, so I give it a
C+

If the Lyric Fits:
"I'm a man in a box
buried in my sh--
won't you come and save me?"
- Alice In Chains, "Man In A Box"

And I can't update an AVP post without a Critical Quickie on the sequel, so here goes: Aliens V. Predator: Requiem--Steven Pasquale (Rescue Me). An uninteresting, moronically monster-centric movie on par with SyFy Channel superbeast mash-ups like Dinocroc VS Supergator, but more iconic and less ridiculous if you don't count the endless slaughter of rednecks. I basically forgot about this movie, and you should, too.
F

To be continued in Just the Ticket with a review of Prometheus and a Critical Quickie take on Predators. Stay tuned and don't let the facehuggers bite!