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Aliens VS. Predator
Feature:
One thing that I’m sure many Aliens and Predator fans have wanted to see
for a long time was a film clashing the two together – Alien vs.
Predator. This match up has all the impact of those big screen monsters
of the 40’s. When it happens just about anything goes. Horror and
monster fans waited with keen anticipation for years after rumors of
there being a script in the works, it finally came out. The basic plot
inter twines a lot of both the Alien mythos and the Predator mythos and
even tries to give a little back story into both these creature
entities. But talk about a fish out of water! This plot blows it out of
the water that the Alien was only first encountered in the far future.
In fact it sets the story in motion that the Wayland Corporation
(industries) learns about the Alien creature and sets things in motion
for the future…errr past Alien films. Scientists for the Wayland
Corporation discover an underground temple under the ice in Antarctica.
A team of explorers are brought together and soon an expedition sets out
for the temple. What they find is more than they bargained for with both
Aliens and Predators in a full scale battle and anyone in the way is
just so much cannon fodder.
I think one of the last things Predator fans would have seen coming was
the joining of a human and one of the mysterious predator creatures. In
this movie, a woman named Alexa Woods who leads the team of
archaeologists down into the. Alexa is the one who finds herself
partnering up with a predator to try and stop the aliens. One of the
features this DVD has is an alternate beginning that was never shown in
theaters. This as a tad bit more to the story line in general; your best
bet is to watch the extended version of the film. Is it less enjoyable
watching the original theatrical release? No, not at all… But it’s an
extra…enjoy it. All in all, the story has to pack a lot into it’s time
limit and does so pretty well, even to the point of caring about some of
the characters. One character the writers try to endear to the audience
by having him talk about his kids.
But there is not enough time to establish much of an emotional bond or
caring about too many of the characters. As they get picked off one by
one by either Aliens, or a Predator you don’t always have a feeling of
loss or dread at seeing a favorite character taken out of the picture.
More times than not most of the characters are meat for the grinder for
the Alien Vs Predator storm that rages around them.
The DVD has many special features, like commentaries, deleted scenes,
and other things. This film has a run time of about 100 minutes, has
English, Spanish, and French languages, and has subtitles in English and
Spanish.
Audio: The sound really kicks it on a surround system and the
nuances shine through enough to be an immersive sound experience. Audio:
English DTS 5.1, English Dolby Digital 5.1, Spanish Dolby Surround,
French Dolby Digital 5.1. Close Captioned: Yes
Video: This coupled with the film transfer to DVD with its vivid
pictures that bring out the beauty in even some of the more gloomy
places makes for a great viewing and listening experience. If you have
not gotten surround sound as of yet, your missing the full DVD
experience.
Extras: The bonus features for what they are, are pretty decent.
I think this day and age most features on DVD tend to either have an
over abundance of extras, not enough, or have some half baked static
information pages they tell you are special features. With Aliens Vs
Predator you come away feeling like the features are some what limited,
after getting a small taste you can’t help but wish for more.
In the mix of extra features are two feature length commentaries and
these are in the theatrical version only. One of these is by the
creator/writer/director Paul W. S Anderson and also the actors Sanaa
Lathan and Lance Henriksen. The second commentary is by John Bruno, he’s
the visual effects supervisor and He is joined by Alec Gillis and Tom
Woodruff jr. who are the creature effects designers. The commentaries
offer some insights to the world of the film and the processes it took
to bring it to screen.
Included in the special features are three deleted scenes, these run a
bit over two minutes, the choices are less than thrilling but Alien Vs
Predator fans will appreciate them none the less.
The best part of the extras is “The Making of Alien vs. Predator”. This
gives information on the concepts and the creation of this monster
flick.
The last bit of items seems to be some filler that someone decided would
be a good idea to just throw in there. They are wrong, a 30 second super
bowl spot and some promo for Fox’s American Dad series does not catch
much interest. If I want commercials I will watch Television, I don’t
think I should have to buy them on DVD.
The last bit is some cover art for the Aliens Vs Predator comics from
Dark Horse and some DVD-ROM stuff such as An Aliens Vs Predator comic, a
back ground study and an exclusive preview of the upcoming Aliens Vs
Predator. This extra content in DVD-Rom is like a double edged sword,
here we go again. To view the extra stuff on your computer the disk
tries to install some software called Hot Llama. There does not seem to
be anyway to check out the extra DVD-ROM stuff without installing Hot
Llama, You can watch the film and see the film extra features on a
computer by canceling install of Hot Llama and simply using your default
player (I’m using an NVIDIA movie viewing software coupled with an
NVIDIA Card.)
The software "Hot Llama" is also found in a couple of other FOX titles
such as "Day After Tomorrow”, some reports from other users state that
the software Hot Llama interferes with normal playback. I did not have
an issues, just some general slow downs. If you have an issue uninstall
Hot Llama which some view as extraneous software. Believe me you can
live with out the so called DVD-ROM Extras.
Final Say: In the end of it all Aliens vs. Predator DVD is well
worth a place in your collection and is a great pop corn movie. If
you’re looking for something deeper and a really compelling story…move
along. Don’t stop here.
Have fun, Play games, and watch a movie!
Edwin and Shael Millheim
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