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Alien vs. Predator (film)

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For other films in the Alien franchise, see Alien (franchise).
Whoever wins... We lose.

Alien vs. Predator is a 2004 science fiction film about a human research team trapped in a pyramid built by a prehistoric Antarctic civilization in the midst of a battle between two extraterrestrial races. The film acts as a crossover spin-off to both the Alien and Predator franchises.

Directed and written by Paul W.S. Anderson. Story by Paul W.S. Anderson and Dan O' Bannon & Ronald Shusett.
Whoever wins... We lose (taglines)

Alexa 'Lex' Woods

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  • [to an Alien] You are one ugly mother...
  • [while exploring the abandoned whaling station, Miller is startled by a penguin] Careful. They bite.
  • [Scar shows Alexa that he is activating the bomb in his wrist panel] It's a bomb. Well, I hope it kills every fucking one of them!
  • [to Charles Bishop Weyland] Alexa Woods: When I lead my team, I don't leave my team.

Sebastian de Rosa

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  • This whole thing was a trap.

Charles Bishop Weyland

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  • [to the Predator] Don't turn your back on me!
  • [shows a 3D image of the pyramid] My experts tell me this is a pyramid.

Other

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  • [First lines] Technician: Hey. Hey, hey, come here, take a look at this.
  • Mark Verheiden: [to the Alien] You want a piece of me, you ugly son of a bitch!

Dialogue

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Gentlemen? It is my job to keep you alive on this expedition, and I need your help to do that. Since I don't have the time to properly train you, I'm laying down three simple rules. One. No one goes anywhere alone, ever. Two. Everyone must maintain constant communication. Three. Unexpected things are gonna happen. When they do, no one tries to be a hero. Understood?
Same principle as a condom. I'd rather have one and not need it, than need it and not have one.
You think that's the last thing your dad remembers? The pain? Or drinking champagne with his daughter fourteen thousand feet in the air?
I think this is a manhood ritual. The humanoid ones, they've been sent here to prove that they're worthy to become adults.
Sebastian de Rosa: The animals being hunted don't arm the hunters!
Alexa 'Lex' Woods: They're not hunting us. We're in the middle of a war. It's time to pick a side.
Sebastian de Rosa: We are on our side!
Alexa 'Lex' Woods: We have to consider the possibility that we might not make it out of here.
Alexa 'Lex' Woods: I'm not going to leave you to die down here!
Charles Bishop Weyland: You didn't.
Alexa 'Lex' Woods: [Lex discovers Weyland with his respirator] There's no room for sick men on this expedition.
Charles Bishop Weyland: My doctors tell me the worst is behind me.
Alexa 'Lex' Woods: You're not a very good liar, Mr. Weyland. Stay on the ship. We'll update you at the top of every hour.
Charles Bishop Weyland: You know, when you get sick, you think about your life and how you're going to be remembered. You know what I realized would happen when I go? A ten percent fall in share prices. Maybe twelve. And that's it.
Alexa 'Lex' Woods: I've heard this speech before. My dad broke his leg seven hundred feet from the summit of Mount Ranier. He was like you. He wouldn't go back or let us stop. We reached the top and he opened a bottle of champagne... Had my first drink with my dad at 14,400 feet. On the way down, he developed a blood clot in his leg that traveled to his lung. He suffered for four hours before dying twenty minutes from the base.
Charles Bishop Weyland: You think that's the last thing your dad remembers? The pain? Or drinking champagne with his daughter fourteen thousand feet in the air? [pause] I need this.
Adele Rousseau: What did you say this room was called?
Thomas Parks: Sacrificial chamber.

[the team finds the Predators' shoulder cannons]

Graeme Miller: Any idea what these are?
Sebastian de Rosa: No, you?
Graeme Miller: No.
Maxwell Stafford: It's a good thing we brought the experts.
Graeme Miller: Well, yeah, it is a good thing, cos' this is like finding Moses' DVD collection.
Alexa 'Lex' Woods: Everybody, listen up! Gather round.
Sebastian de Rosa: I told you she'd stay.
Graeme Miller: [towards Sebastian] Told you she'd stay. She can't resist my animal magnetism.
Mark Verheiden: Laugh it up, Miller. Laugh it up.
Alexa 'Lex' Woods: Gentlemen? It is my job to keep you alive on this expedition, and I need your help to do that. Since I don't have the time to properly train you, I'm laying down three simple rules. One. No one goes anywhere alone, ever. Two. Everyone must maintain constant communication. Three. Unexpected things are gonna happen. When they do, no one tries to be a hero. Understood? [towards Verheiden] Understood?
Mark Verheiden: Yes, ma'am.
Alexa 'Lex' Woods: Good.
Alexa 'Lex' Woods: [Rousseau is loading a pistol] Seven seasons on the ice, and I've never seen a gun save someone's life.
Adele Rousseau: I don't plan on using it.
Alexa 'Lex' Woods: Then why bring it?
Adele Rousseau: Same principle as a condom. I'd rather have one and not need it, than need it and not have one.
Jack the helicopter pilot: [flying over the ocean towards Antarctica] Just past the P.S.R.
Alexa 'Lex' Woods: Thanks, Jack!
Graeme Miller: Oh, damn! I wish I got a picture.
Alexa 'Lex' Woods: Of what?
Graeme Miller: Uh, the P.S.R. I wish he'd call it out before we passed it.
Alexa 'Lex' Woods: [laughing] The P.S.R. is the "point of safe return". It means we've used up half our fuel so we can't turn back.
Graeme Miller: Right, but if something went wrong, we could uh... land presumably.
Alexa 'Lex' Woods: We could ditch.
Graeme Miller: Yeah, ditch.
Alexa 'Lex' Woods: But the temperature of the water would kill us in three minutes.
Mark Verheiden: [Pyramid has reconfigured and Verheiden and Miller are cut off from the rest] We're never getting out of this place.
Graeme Miller: You got any children?
Mark Verheiden: A son.
Graeme Miller: Yeah, I've got two. That means we do not have the luxury of quitting. We're gonna make it out of here. We're surviving this if I have to carry you the whole way.
Alexa 'Lex' Woods: What's with the bottle cap?
Sebastian de Rosa: What?
Alexa 'Lex' Woods: What's with the bottle cap?
Sebastian de Rosa: Oh. This is a valuable archaeological find.
Sebastian de Rosa: When I was a kid growing up in Italy, you know what they call a moon that big? [in Italian] La luna del cacciatore.
Alexa 'Lex' Woods: [repeats] La luna del cacciatore.
Sebastian de Rosa: [in Italian] Brava!
Alexa 'Lex' Woods: What's that?
Sebastian de Rosa: Hunter's moon.
Alexa 'Lex' Woods: Hunter's moon. [they start laughing]
Alexa 'Lex' Woods: We're gonna round up the rest of the team and get to the surface. Let's move! [Stafford and Verheiden open their cases and pull out machine guns] What are you doing?
Maxwell Stafford: My job. Yours is over.
Alexa 'Lex' Woods: My job is over when everyone is back on the boat safely. And that gun doesn't change anything.
Alexa 'Lex' Woods: How do you say "scared shitless" in Italian?
Sebastian de Rosa: Non vedo l'ora di uscire da questa piramide con te, perchè mi sto cagando adosso. More or less.
Sebastian de Rosa: The enemy of my enemy... is my friend.
Alexa 'Lex' Woods: [pyramid starts to reconfigure] Let's go find our friend.
Adele Rousseau: What happened here?
Thomas Parks: [Nodding head] It's common in ritual sacrifice to take the heart of the victim.
Adele Rousseau: That's nice.
Thomas Parks: [nods head knowingly]
Adele Rousseau: But that's not where your heart is. Besides it looks like the bones were bent straight out.
Thomas Parks: [Glances up questioningly & stares at Rousseau]
Adele Rousseau: Something broke out of this body.
Alexa 'Lex' Woods: Where exactly on the ice is this?
Charles Bishop Weyland: Bouvetøya Island. But it's not on the ice. It's 2,000 feet below it.
Sebastian de Rosa: I think this is a manhood ritual. The humanoid ones, they've been sent here to prove that they're worthy to become adults.
Alexa 'Lex' Woods: You're saying, they're, what, teenagers?

Taglines

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  • Whoever wins... We lose
  • It's our planet... It's their war
  • The Enemy of My Enemy is my Friend

Cast

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About Alien vs. Predator (film)

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  • Being such a self-confessed sci-fi geek, was there ever a moment when you had to pinch yourself that you were really in charge of this movie?
Anderson: It was truly amazing to see the Alien just sitting there. But at the same time it's very demystifying as well, seeing this guy in a rubber suit who's incredibly tired in-between takes because it's so wearing to give that performance. All he does between takes is sit on an apple box. The drool is continuous, he has a bucket underneath him and he drools in his bucket and the drool tube goes right up the arse of the costume where his tail detaches. It's about as demystifying as you can get, but it still gives you chills. It was fantastic.
  • I don’t even know if Sigourney Weaver has read the “Alien vs Predator” draft I wrote. She’s never said she has. But, I was a fan obsessive of the “Alien” franchise, Sigourney. Big time. Particularly Ridley’s original, which is still unmatched. And “Alien vs Predator” — as a concept — is still killer, full of potential. Even its critically maligned first cinematic outing made $172,544,654 worldwide, compared to $159,814,498 for “Alien 3” and $161,376,068 for “Resurrection”. Hardly a financial “fail” there, Sigourney.
  • Yeah. Ridley and I talked about doing another Alien film and I said to 20th Century Fox that I would develop a 5th Alien film. I started working on a story, I was working with another writer and Fox came back to me and said, "We've got this really good script for Alien vs Predator and I got pretty upset. I said, "You do that you're going to kill the validity of the franchise in my mind." Because to me, that was Frankenstein meets Werewolf. It was Universal just taking their assets and starting to play them off against each other.
  • Its set-up is mundane: billionaire industrialist Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen, a.k.a. Bishop) hires himself a motley crew to go to Antarctica, where they find a perplexing, heat-generating Cambodian-Egyptian-Aztec temple 2000 feet under the ice. Luckily, they've brought along someone who can read the hieroglyphics, Italian archaeologist Sebastian De Rosa (Raoul Bova), who essentially explains the plot, if only his fellow adventurers would listen.
  • The heat Weyland's researchers noted results from preparations for the Predators' with each stage allotted its own room, for instance, "sacrificial chamber" (the structure is remarkably elaborate and mobile, with ceilings and walls shifting every 10 minutes, rather like the scary place in Cube [1997]).
  • While the film's tagline holds true -- "No matter who wins, we lose" -- the underlying notion here, as it has been in both previous entries in the Predator franchise, is that the hunters are comprehensible. Like gamers, they measure their own prowess and keep track of their kills.
  • Scar, so named in the movie's credits for a mark on his face and a ritual he performs with Alexa, recalls Cicatrix, the "Scar" of The Searchers (1956), one of the more complex Native American villains in U.S. movies. In Alien vs. Predator, villains and heroes become simultaneously concrete and abstract: they're functions of the game, the franchise, and the broader commercial and moral marketplace, yes, but they're also vaguely resistant, less transparent than they seem.
  • The Predator society builds sophisticated spaceships, yet they should not look as sleek and hi-tech as a Star Wars stormtrooper. They are a tribal culture, yet their look should not be as primitive as the orcs from Lord of the Rings. They are also a warrior culture, so the ornate cannot conflict with the practical.
  • Q: Which character is worse: Predator or Alien?
HENRIKSEN: Well, the Predator is more human. To me, the Aliens were always a mixture of like a tick or a parasite of some kind that was just indestructible. That's frightening to me. The Predator, believe it or not, they're more romantic. They have a culture and a code, where the other ones don't. Their code is survival.
  • Alien vs. Predator is a monster mash between two of 20th Century Fox’s franchise creatures. When H.R. Giger’s sleek and slimy killing machines face off against the Rastafarian headhunter, there’s a giddy childish thrill not unlike when King Kong faced Godzilla, or when Frankenstein met the Wolf Man. Their confrontations play out in the exaggerated manner of professional wrestling and take place in an ancient pyramid buried under the Antarctic ice where you half expect John Carpenter’s monster from The Thing to pop up and waste them both. These beasties frequently strut their extraterrestrial stuff and are geared toward audience cheers and jeers. While you can’t argue for Alien vs. Predator as a movie to be taken seriously, it certainly delivers as a loving homage to two of our favorite monsters and their respective super-duper powers.
  • Anderson shows such a lack of interest in character or mood that the first 45 minutes, pre-Alien and Predator battles, feels unnecessarily lugubrious. His film lacks the obsessive haunted house setting of Ridley Scott’s Alien, the virtuoso gung-ho action of James Cameron’s Aliens or John McTiernan’s Predator, the bleak doom of David Fincher Alien³, and the cartoon splashes of Jien-Pierre Jeunet’s Alien: Resurrection. Those movies were of varying levels of quality, but the filmmakers were committed to a singular vision. Alien vs. Predator is a technically proficient fan-boy’s wet dream, made for people who want to see the Alien bleed acid on the Predator’s body armor, or the Predator using his nifty laser to blow apart alien hoards. It’s not much of a movie, but it’s a geek’s paradise.
  • When it comes to monster films, horror films, and basically the sci-fi genre, African Americans aren't usually featured in a positive way. For years, we were always the first to die or weren't even featured in the film at all, but lately the trend is changing. In the last few years, the unexpected is happening. In "28 Days Later...", Naomie Harris made it through alive and so did Kelly Rowland in "Freddy Vs. Jason". We don't know what fate holds for Sanaa Lathan in the upcoming "Alien Vs. Predator", but she's considered to be the first black actress to lead a sci-fi film. That itself is a history making achievement. Having received a Tony nomination for her role in "A Raisin in the Sun" and co-starring with Denzel Washington in last year's "Out of Time", one would say that Sanaa has chosen some good projects as of late. In speaking with blackfilm.com, Sanaa talks about her role in "Alien Vs. Predator" and compares the physical work needed for this film to the one needed for her recent work on stage.
  • Do you realize that with the exception of Pam Grier, who starred with Ice Cube in "John Carpenter's Ghost of Mars", you are probably the first black female lead in a sci-fi film?
Sanaa Lathan: I think that's amazing and it's great. In 1979, "Alien" came out and Sigourney (Weaver) was in it with a bunch a guys and nobody at that time expected the woman to be the hero, so that was a tradition that the alien started. When Paul did this, I think he had in mind, and he auditioned all races, to set this apart and yet still carry on that tradition, which is great because it's a woman and you would never expect a black woman to be the hero.
  • When we do get to the Predators and Aliens, the film starts to look pretty promising. The Aliens look great, the Predators look great and, at first, their battles are fun to watch. Unfortunately, over-stylized herky jerky camerawork makes the action very hard to follow. It gives one the feeling of watching a fight with a crowd of large people in front of you. It's like you're always trying to jump up to see over someone's head or look around someone, but you keep missing the action.
  • I suppose going into this film, everyone has their favorites. For me, the Alien world has always been a very rich and exciting one. The Predator character is pretty cool, but I mean, really, the first Predator was good, but what do we really know about these dreadlocked ugly mothers? Well, I suppose Paul Anderson either disagreed with me or simply decided this was his chance to expand the Predator world, but the Aliens get the serious shaft here.
  • Like last year's Freddy Vs. Jason, Alien Vs. Predator never suggests a reason for existing other than the fact that it can. The logical curlicues used to bring the title beasts together defy description; the plot involves ancient civilizations, an abandoned Antarctic whaling station, and an underground pyramid that changes shape every 10 minutes. Into this lair of subterranean mystery and dimly lit sets marches a ragtag group of scientists and explorers led by overqualified Love & Basketball star Sanaa Lathan and funded by Alienseries vet Lance Henriksen. Soon, they discover they've walked into a death trap, an elaborate human-sacrifice machine designed to create Aliens for a ritualistic Predator hunt. Or something like that.
  • Was the film shot entirely in Prague?
Colin Salmon: Yes, apart from my entrance scene, which is the top of Mont Blanc. It's a fantastic entrance... It was a world record for the highest film set ever built. The scene was nearly pulled... but we started shooting and the results were great that the studio decided to put it back in.
  • There's a touching scene near the end of Alien vs Predator when an eight-foot, fang-faced predator, using the acidic blood from the severed finger of an alien face-hugger, tenderly scorches a mark of courage and respect onto the cheek of the last human survivor. She grimaces as her skin burns, and then their eyes meet across the great expanse of space and time that separates both cultures, and then they kiss … or they would have if the queen alien hadn't eviscerated the woman's new friend with the pointy end of her tail. And there ends the almost-birth of a new movie genre, the inter-species romcom.
  • AvP owes its genesis more to the video games than to the movies that preceded them, but this actually weighs in its favour in that it is not tied down by the conventions of the originals. (Although, that didn't stop the wonderfully loopy Jean-Pierre Juenet from making the spectacularly bonkers Alien Resurrection, a movie that, having Winona Ryder as a vengeful synthetic lifeform, is responsible for one of the most ill-judged casting decisions of all time.) And so, while I am still plagued by the question of how the aliens, without so much as gulping down a bottle of powdered milk, go from eight inches long to seven feet tall in the space of five minutes, in this context I no longer need to care.
  • And then there are two: one woman, one predator, and they do what they have to do. She proves her mettle doing what heavily armed eight-foot invisible predators clearly can't. She kicks alien arse, destroys the queen's eggs, and then they both race hand-in-claw into the night toward the almost-romantic denouement. Then, with her beau-that-will-never-be gone, it's down to the feisty Ripley-replacement to take out the alien queen and source some anti-scarring cream for her permanently disfigured face. He should have just given her a ring.
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