I finally got to see Alien vs. Predator after all these years. The film came out in 2004. If I had waited one more year, it would be hitting its 20^th anniversary. Alien vs. Predator came out a year after Freddy vs. Jason. The only real similarities between the two films are the fact it was taking two iconic franchises and pitting the characters against each other. In this case the Aliens and the Predators. I would think one challenge for this film would have been the fact the main characters are creatures that don’t talk. It was probably slightly easier doing Freddy vs. Jason since Freddy Krueger does talk even though Jason Voorhees does not. Of course, both films had all the human characters who get killed off. Alien vs. Predator was no different. Most of the cast did not survive and there was a bit of carnage for both the Aliens and the Predators as well.

I thought Alien vs. Predator was a good movie for the concept. I saw Freddy vs. Jason when it came out in 2003. It has been years since I saw the movie. One notable difference between these two films is that Alien vs. Predator is PG-13 as opposed to Freddy vs. Jason which was rated R. This was a surprise even when the film came out in 2004. I know there was some controversy regarding the rating mostly since both the Alien and Predator franchises were R rated to begin with. For me the rating did not make much of a difference. There was a fair amount of blood and slime. The movie was a little slow at the beginning. It took a little bit before the Predators and Aliens came onto the scene. I am familiar with both franchises, but I have not seen any of the Predator movies and I did see the first Alien movie as well as Prometheus. Prometheus came out after Alien vs. Predator. I am going to assume that this movie was meant as a standalone and not really linked to either franchises. They seemed to have changed the origin a little bit in order to explain how the Aliens and Predators are even on Earth to begin with. The stars of the movie are the creatures themselves. It does not really matter if the human characters survive or not. My understanding is that the sequel Alien vs. Predator: Requiem has an entirely new cast of characters, it really is not necessary to get invested with any of the human characters. Again, most of them died anyway. I think it was a good length. This was not too long. It clocks in at around one hundred minutes counting the credits. I think that is just enough time. How long can you really spend on Aliens and Predators duking it out? Plot wise, it had a decent plot given the main event is seeing two iconic creatures duke it out.

Spoilers Ahead

One thing I thought was cool was toward the end of the film one of the characters team up with the Predator to help take down the Aliens. I am not sure if this has been done before in any of the Predator movies that came prior to this, but I feel like they typically don’t do that. I thought it was something cool and different for these franchises. That did not happen in Freddy vs. Jason. The fight scenes were alright. For me, it may have been slightly more impactful if I had seen this when it came out in 2004. By this point I have seen even more movies and television shows, not to mention being spoiled with the Marvel Cinematic Universe that came a few years later. I also think this was probably more challenging to do this movie since its creatures fighting as opposed to humans. In the case of Freddy vs. Jason, there are actors who play those characters. I would think the Aliens would be trickier since the Predators are played by actors. Given those challenges, I think the scenes were handled well. Kudos to the puppeteers and it seems there were a fair amount of them given how many names were in the credits. It did have a typical ending the way most horror movies end, but I thought it was fitting, especially knowing there is a sequel and both franchises have had films since this one.

Alien vs. Predator is a good movie. It gets the job done for the concept it uses. The PG-13 rating did not bother me. I don’t really know why they made that decision. My only thinking would be to try to get a younger audience to be able to see the movie. If this was Rated R, I think the movie would have made the same amount of money it did. This wound up with 80 million in the US which is around the same range of Freddy vs. Jason the year before and that movie was rated R. Freddy vs. Jason was 82 million in the US. Since I watched this, I do plan on seeing the sequel. I am curious if the sequel will have any connectivity to this movie or if it will ignore this one and do something completely different.