The first 'AvP' is pretty dumb fun. The first time I saw it, I was just outright disappointed - actually, I was outright disappointed when I first heard the synopsis: A group of scientists go to Antarctica and find a pyramid full of Aliens being hunted by Predators. It was just a laughable premise. Predictably, I suffered sitting through the movie. Yeah. It was disappointing.
Later I twigged onto what Anderson had actually accomplished, possibly inadvertently, was a movie in the mold of something that ER Burroughs, Arthur C Doyle or H Rider Haggard would have written. A pulp story of 'Boys Own Adventure' quality where a bunch of explorers visit a remote part of the world and the wild adventures that they have there.
In this regard I began to appreciate the movie very differently. It was no longer a Lovecraftian experience - and it was certainly no 'At the Mountains of Madness' which some people claim it to resemble in some ways. I certainly understand the reference but the tone is more in alignment with something like 'The Lost World' or 'At the Earths Core'. Wild adventure stories I grew up reading.
For me, this was the movie's saving grace. It brought home to me what it would be like if ER Burroughs had written a story featuring Aliens and Predators. It was a fundamental shift in perspective that allowed me to gain some form of recompense from the disappointment and watch the movie with a differently aligned sense of appreciation.
'AvP' certainly isn't a great movie by a long shot and it sits near the bottom of terms of my ability to appreciate it, but by goodness! It's the best piece of 1930's pulp action adventure I've seen featuring these antagonists. I sometimes wonder what the movie would have been like if it was shot as a period adventure piece of that era, contemporary to 'King Kong'. How much more digestible would it be if the characters were carrying state of the art firepower in the form of carbines and tommy guns, exploring the cold dark confines of that accursed pyramid? Now that would have been a totally amazing experience.
As for 'AvP-R', it's complete garbage. The only way I can reconcile myself with that movie is that maybe one day Asylum studios will remake it. At least you can see what kind of nonsense is going on in their movies.
-Windebieste.
