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by Blender Dumbass

Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".

In my Predator 2 review I observed that the merger of Alien and Predator franchises was not a Paul W. S. Anderson's ( the director of AVP ) fault, since even that movie already had a lot of Alien references in it, including a Xenomorph scull. So it was almost expected by this point that the next movie in the franchise would feature Xenomorphs.

Canon-wise this movie is weird. If we learn in the Prometheus ( 2011 ) that humans were designed by the engineers and that engineers later decided to kill humans ( presumably after humans killed Jesus ) and for that they developed a weapon of mass destruction ( aka the black goo ) that was later triggered by a visit of Wayland, when one of it's crew members happened to get injected with it, then have sex with his wife, who got pregnant with an embryo that later grew into a prototype face-hugger, that means Xenomorphs could not have existed prior to all of that taking place.

Yet in AVP we learn that Xenomorphs were present on the planet Earth itself before the pyramids were built, with an alive ( but frozen ) Alien-queen. Unless there is some time travel bullshit that can make sense of this whole thing, AVP is kind of not canon.

Also AVP has a middle aged sick Wayland himself played here by Lance Henriksen ( who you may know from Alien 2 and 3... and there is also a reference to the knife scene from Aliens in this movie ). And that Wayland actually dies in this movie ( which takes place in 2004 ). The mission Prometheus went on in the Prometheus film took place way farther into the future and has an alive Wayland. Yes a weird kind of Wayland, that might have been somehow alive in 2004. But believing he survived a nuclear blast in a face is a stretch. So AVP is not canon.

But is good though?

A lot of people dislike movies by Paul W. S. Anderson because of other two ( Paul Thomas Anderson and Wes Anderson ) who are properly good film-makers, while W. S. Anderson is a kind of a wanna-be Michael Bay. His films are usually intense, with fast edits and pretty shots. He likes violence and action. And goes for audience pleasing moments a lot.

In this film a human character Alexa ( Sanaa Lathan ) teams up with a teenage Predator to defeat newborn Xenomorphs. This is an audience pleaser through and through.

The visual effects in this film are solid and ( for the most part ) still hold up 21 years later. The visuals in general in this film are great. The film looks good because W. S. Anderson has a good eye for good looking images. Similarly to Michael Bay.

The story is a bit strange. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense why Wayland would choose this specific group of people for his expedition. Like for example one character straight up fails and gets fired for his blunder and seconds later Wayland calls him to hire him on a job because he is apparently "the best" at his job, or something.

And then a lot of the movie straight up makes little sense. Though if you think about the fact that Predator 2 was straight up a B-movie, this movie is actually surprisingly good. It has very interesting concepts, like the constantly shifting 3D maze of a place, the characters are stuck in. Or the human teaming up with a Predator. Good stuff, if you see this movie as it is. As a B-movie done on an A movie budget.

Happy Hacking!!!

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