Editorials
Why ‘Alien vs. Predator’ Deserves All Your Love
Almost exactly one year after Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees finally clashed up on the big screen, director Paul W.S. Anderson brought together the two heavyweights of sci-fi/horror for a similar battle to the death. Like Freddy vs. Jason, Alien vs. Predator was foretold by clues that dated back many years prior, namely a comic book mash-up, an action figure two-pack, and of course, an Easter egg in Predator 2 that made a truly awesome promise: these two ugly motherfuckers exist in the same universe, y’all!
Released in 2004, Alien vs. Predator made a killing at the box office but didn’t quite do so well with critics or even hardcore fans of the two franchises. Most felt at the time that both franchises deserved better, and even all these years later, Alien vs. Predator is looked back on as a disappointing misfire that did no favors to either the Xenomorphs or the Predators. Mind you, it’s not nearly as hated by fans as follow-up film Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, but you’d be hard pressed to find too many glowing reviews out there on the internet.
My personal opinion? I revisited Alien vs. Predator last night for the first time in 13 years. And it was way better than I remembered it being. Hell, I feel no guilt in saying that I kind of love it.
How do you bring together the villains from two entirely different franchises? Many different writers attempted to crack the code over the years, but it was Paul W.S. Anderson (along with Shane Salerno) who came up with a pitch that won 20th Century Fox over. Anderson’s concept, which managed to make sense of the aforementioned Predator 2 Easter egg, was actually quite inspired.
Anderson’s story, which plays out like a big budget fan film, imagines that the Aliens and Predators have been locked in battle for centuries. Every 100 years, young Predators hunt the Xenomorphs for sport as a means to prove themselves worthy to their elders, with the battle highlighted in Alien vs. Predator taking place in 2004. Set deep beneath an island off the coast of Antarctica, the fight is kick-started when the Predators trick a group of lowly humans (including Lance Henriksen, brilliantly cast as the man the Alien franchise’s Bishop android was based on!) into entering the battleground so that they can be impregnated by the Face Huggers they’re literally forcing the Alien Queen to give birth to. After all, you need to first create Xenomorphs before you can hunt them.
It’s a bonkers premise, and one could argue that a franchise vs. franchise fight flick requires one of those. The film paints the Predators as weirdly benevolent Gods that humans used to worship, while it presents the Xenomorphs as so-called “serpents” that must never make their way into the general populace – in a stunning flashback sequence set atop a pyramid, we learn that the Predators have been trained to literally level entire civilizations in the event that the Xenomorphs start winning any given fight. They don’t want to destroy humanity, you see. They just need to use us as a means to carry out their ritualistic battle. The Xenomorphs, however, want to kill us and they want to kill us all.
When you buy a ticket to see a movie titled Alien vs. Predator, you’re dropping that money to see two horror icons fight rather than watch a group of boring characters talk, and AvP no doubt suffers from a setup that can best be described as lackluster. Before we get to the good stuff, Anderson sets the stage in a way that makes you feel like you’re watching a Syfy original picture rather than a $60 million collision between two mega popular horror franchises – but have no fear, because it soon becomes evident that Anderson was smartly ensuring he’d have money to spend on the good stuff.
And oh boy is the good stuff, well, good!
Once we get deep underground, the production values increase significantly; even those who hated Alien vs. Predator back in 2004 couldn’t help but praise the lavish sets and the decidedly incredible practical effects work. The film’s wrestling ring, so to speak, is an ancient pyramid with an internal structure that completely changes every 10 minutes, making for some fun sequences that evolve the environment in increasingly threatening ways. Ornate artwork depicting the various iconic figures in both the Alien and Predator franchises gives the sets a nice sense of history, effectively conveying the core idea of the mash-up film: these two species have a long history we sure as hell never knew about.
And then there’s the effects, which I was shocked to discover on my re-watch last night are almost entirely practical – according to Wikipedia, the dudes behind Amalgamated Dynamics Incorporated practically created an impressive 70% of the monster action on screen. Alec Gillis, Tom Woodruff Jr. and the ADI team created suits, miniatures and puppets to bring the various Xenomorphs to life (Woodruff Jr. himself played the film’s standout “Grid Alien”), while actor Ian Whyte was tasked with playing all of the Predators. And it all looks damn good, both for the time and still to this day.
But where AvP really excels in the effects department is in the inclusion of the Queen Alien, introduced in James Cameron’s Aliens prior to being prominently featured in Paul W.S. Anderson’s monster mash. A blend of practical effects and CGI, the visually stunning Queen is initially shackled up in the underground pyramid like a slave, but eventually breaks free (with a little help from her babies) to go on a rampage that takes AvP to a whole new level of cool. Watching the Queen run after the film’s final girl, smashing through a massive whale skeleton along the way, is one hell of a visual that makes a pretty good case for Anderson being the right guy to have helmed this particular ship. And goddamn did ADI go above and beyond on this one, bucking effects trends of the time in favor of old school-style work that did both franchises prouder than anything else on display in their big budget team-up film.
Of course, Alien vs. Predator has its downsides. For starters, the well documented PG-13 rating makes zero sense when you consider that every film in both franchises had been rated R up to that point, and the rating rears its ugly head a handful of times throughout – much of the monster-on-human carnage takes place off screen, robbing us of the “money shots” that would’ve really put the film over the top. But even with a PG-13 rating, the fight sequences between the warring species’ are a total delight to watch, if not a bit too over-edited – and since both monsters bleed colors other than red, the MPAA thankfully let a whole lot slide.
There’s a part of me that hates, or at least wants to hate Alien vs. Predator for reducing the Xenomorphs to Predator fodder and also for making the Predators out to be the heroes (the final act’s teamwork between the Scar Predator and final girl Alexa is as silly as anything you’ll ever see in the horror genre), but there’s just so much more to love about AvP than there is to hate. With expectations in check and properly calibrated, my 13-years-later revisit made me realize that it was every bit the fun spectacle everyone in their right mind should’ve gone into the theater expecting in the summer of 2004.
There’s just something great about a movie that fully embraces its own absurdity.
Steven Spielberg has always been conversant in the cinematic language of the horror genre, despite relatively few credits in the genre. His contributions as a writer and producer on things like Poltergeist are legendary, and films like Duel and Jaws certainly wield the horror genre in remarkable, often chilling ways. He may not be a horror filmmaker, but he knows when he needs to scare us, and he has the tools to make that happen.
I didn’t go into Disclosure Day, Spielberg’s alien epic, expecting outright horror, and indeed the film leans much more into thrilling than frightening. This is not a horror film, but for a few minutes in the middle, much to my surprise, it became one.
Spielberg has filmed more than his fair share of scary scenes over the years, but with Disclosure Day, he directed a new contender for the scariest scene of his entire career.
SPOILERS AHEAD for Disclosure Day!
Josh O’Connor in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
Among the various alien secrets laced throughout Disclosure Day are a trio of palm-sized rods, the color of pencil graphite. These rods, originating from another planet, can be used for a number of things, but for the purposes of this scene, the most important is “diving,” gripping the rod in one bare hand and using its power to “dive” into the mind of another person.
The person holding the rod in this scene is Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), head of shadowy cybersecurity firm Wordex, who is hellbent on keeping human knowledge of extraterrestrials secret from the general public. Scanlon’s trying to find whistleblower Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), who’s got all of those alien secrets tucked in a backpack while he’s on the run, and while Daniel’s more experienced mind is protected from diving, his girlfriend Jane’s (Eve Hewson) is not. So, monitored by medical personnel at Wordex headquarters (diving is dangerous), Scanlon pushes his way into Jane’s mind to find the location of Daniel’s safe house.
A telepathic invasion is scary enough on its own, but Spielberg doesn’t stop there. When Scanlon dives into Eve’s mind, he appears to her to be sitting across the kitchen table, like he’s in the room. Her bright blue eyes turn Scanlon’s dark brown, and she loses much of her control over her own body, not to mention her mind. Moments before, Daniel finally shared with her the secrets in his backpack, so Jane is shocked, conflicted, deeply vulnerable when Scanlon slips inside her head. This is not just telepathy. This is possession.
Spielberg underscores this not just through the visual language of the scene, as Jane breaks out in a sweat and struggles to sit upright as Scanlon invades her mind, but through Jane’s background. As she revealed to Daniel earlier in the film, Jane is a former novitiate nun who left her convent when she began to question her calling. She still believes firmly in God and, more importantly, believes that perhaps proof of alien life should be kept secret from the public because, in her eyes, it would upset the entire balance of faith in the world. God is a defining factor for humankind, Jane argues, and showing humanity proof of creatures from the stars would undercut that in dangerous ways.
This context, combined with the crucifix necklace Jane’s holding in her hand at the time of the dive, makes this scene the closest thing Spielberg will ever shoot to something out of The Exorcist. It’s not just a battle of wills, but a battle of faith. As an amoral technocrat worms his way into her memories, her beliefs, her faith, Jane turns the crucifix into a weapon, squeezing it until her hand bleeds when she discovers that a pain response can momentarily push Scanlon out of her head.
Of course, when you put a crucifix and a bloody hand together, it conjures images of stigmata. Screenwriter David Koepp pushes the allusion further by having Scanlon quote Christ on the cross to Jane by way of convincing her that she must be the one to stop Daniel by any means necessary.
It’s easy to see why this is scary, right?
On a very basic level, you have a powerful, wealthy man subduing and assaulting an innocent young woman, which is frightening enough. Then, the layers of the scene kick in. Scanlon doesn’t just assault Jane, but possesses her, seizes her memories, her knowledge, and finally her own free will, all while Jane literally clings to her faith in an effort to fight back. Disclosure Day is, among other things, a story about who has a right to the truth, and Scanlon believes that he should be the arbiter of that truth. Not just the truth as he sees it, but the truth as Jane sees it as well. If they don’t see eye to eye, he’ll make her.
But the possession, as it turns out, cuts both ways. Using the rod to dive is, for a normal human being, an intensely strenuous process. Scanlon admits that previous attempts almost killed him, and for some members of his time, so much as touching the rod results in a near-death experience. Even accessing an unprepared mind like Jane’s takes a lot of Scanlon, and when she kicks him out by squeezing the crucifix – again, so much meaning embedded in the details here – his team holds him back and tries to offer medical intervention. But Scanlon persists, pushing them away, and keeps diving back in.
This means that Jane can’t escape him because he just won’t stop pushing back through her defenses, but it also means that each time Scanlon enters her mind, and thus the safe house, he looks more monstrous. By the end, through a combination of lighting and makeup, Firth barely looks human, conjuring up images of the possessed Father Karras at the end of The Exorcist.
Colin Firth (center, standing) in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
On a pure, visceral craft level, all of this is quite frightening, but the real trick to making this scene into Spielberg’s most terrifying lies in the more existential horror surrounding all of this. Disclosure Day is a film about the battle for the truth over extraterrestrials, but it’s also about a fight against an impossibly powerful surveillance state, the devaluing of human and alien lives in favor of some nebulous collection of assets, and the value of the individual in a world that increasingly lumps people into demographic boxes and writes them off.
In this scene, the surveillance state becomes supernatural, a human life is worth less than a piece of information, and an extragovernmental technocrat would rather sacrifice his own humanity than see reason. In 2026, few things could be more terrifying than that. Spielberg knows this and wields it mightily, proving once again that, while he’s not a strictly horror filmmaker, he can direct horror with the best of them.
Disclosure Day is in theaters now.
Eve Hewson (second from left) in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
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